My students have been getting comments from a computer class in Oregon. I’m not sure if anyone has commented back yet–this will need to be addressed tomorrow.

Unfortunately tomorrow is our last day of school and I’m not sure how many of my darlings will continue to blog over the summer. I will make it part of their final to comment on a blog at the Beaverton school. The cool thing is that many of them have blogs about issues they care about. It might be a nice circle back to the conversations that we had about what we care most deeply about and how we can inform, persuade, and effect change by communicating with others. Perhaps there will be some empathy with people who are trying to effect change in their own small way.

The other thing that was great for me to see on the Beaverton students’ blogs was the way they had incorporated multi-modal forms of communication (video, images, surveys, posters) All were cited, I was glad to see :-). I’m not sure if edublogs supports surveys or not, but I’m going to investigate. That could be a great resource next year. It looked like the Beaverton school used Google to do the survey. I’ll have to play around.

The DVD is burning as I write.  I knew it would take a long time to burn the first one, but I didn’t know how long.  I finally finished putting the whole thing together last night at 7:00–the last student left just before 6:00 and so then I decided that I just needed to put them all together before I left for my son’s baseball game.

It was pretty easy to export–I say that now after 35 e-mails, skype chats and harried voice mails to Bill, our friendly technology integration specialist.  I was using the export button instead of the export menu under File (file that away for next year) and when that was finally clear, I could easily save as an .avi file.  So I exported each project separately and then combined them into one big Premiere file.

Anyway, I let it render itself overnight (so it was nice and tender?) and then was going to burn it this morning before taking it over to Alex in Library Media to duplicate for the kids in class.  But the encoding and burning of one 25 minute video took over 2 hours.  I’m not sure how long it actually took because I left to go buy more blank DVDs, but it was a long time.  I need to remember to do the burning overnight.

Some problems:

• sound was very different in the different files–some were VERY loud and some were quiet–I played with the yellow bar that makes audio input levels, but even so, it’s still something I need to work on
• proof-reading–one of the titles had the wrong use of affect/effect–we’ll have to make sure they triple check spelling before burning–I know I shouldn’t have, but I changed it.
• Remembering to title the DVD menu–I listed all of the scenes, but forgot to put a title, so I had to stop the burning and go back and fix it.  Also, next year I will make the scene markers on places that have a picture instead of the transition–that way the little picture will be more meaningful.  I wonder if there is a way to keep the marker on the transition, but put in a meaningful image in the thumbnail.  Hmmm.

Also, I think Bill and I figured out a workaround for how the kids could share edited clips–do a “save-as” and then delete the rest of the clips and then export and then import.  It would be more lovely to just be able to share .prel files, but alas.

I think we will have 7 or 8 guests tomorrow.  I’m excited for the kids to see their work.

We reviewed the segments today.  How watching 5 five-minute clips could take all 90 minutes of class astounds.  But time, again, has lost logic when it comes to deadlines.

All five  groups did have a somewhat completed segment.  That’s good. The reviews were helpful–just wish we had done them last week.  Problems that were most common included:

• sound variations (need to modulate)
• clips not all the way clipped (sound or visual blips)
• some parts belonging more effectively in other sections
• lack of research incorporated
• difficulty in reading fonts–sans serif works better than serif
• short clips–keeping the pacing even throughout the whole movie (that’s probably not  going to change, but good to remember next year)
• narration not used enough

They were very frustrated that after the critiques there wouldn’t be much time to work on fixing them.  That is not ideal, to say the least.  About 8 kids stayed after to try to make their changes.

Andrew finished the introduction and conclusion.  The class decided on a title–Global Warming:  Cold Facts for a Hot Issue.  Not too shabby

Overall, the kids did a great job.  I’m very impressed with what I saw today and I hope the editing time tonight and tomorrow morning will give them enough time to fix the less successful parts.  This is a great class–they’ve really worked hard.

Now my job is to put the pieces together and make citation slides.  I told them I’d transfer their works cited  pages to the film.  It should be ready to go Thursday for our showing.  It seems like we are going to have quite a few people to watch!  Authentic audiences galore!

For almost 3 hours after school, on a beautiful spring Friday (and might I add that it was the first sun we’ve seen in weeks), there were ten 10th graders up in my room working on last minute edits for their documentary film segments.  And no one complained.

The discussions were about how to pare down the 30 minutes of film down to 5 and how to find music that wasn’t copyright protected.  One group used my old Mac (I’m never giving it up) and used GarageBand to create their own music.  It actually sounds pretty good!

Jill’s group had a discussion about the ethics of cutting out the phrase “if global warming is real” for part of their  segment.  After about 15 minutes of going back and forth, they decided that it would be misrepresenting their interviewee if they edited that part out, so they left it in.  I was proud of them for their conclusion, and of  myself for letting them reach it by themselves.

Jenny’s group had 2 expert interviews and really had to work to cut everything down.  They kept announcing “We’re down to 17 minutes” then “Oh no!  We forgot about Kent–now we’re back up to 37!” and then finally “Five  minutes!” They’ve really had to decide what is important and essential to their argument in order to keep the segment at 5 minutes.  It will be interesting if I can see if any of these skills transfers to their writing.  But who knows. . . it’s so difficult to account for what influences what.

Kelsey’s group finished early–they were doing their narration, so I didn’t see much of them.   They had to find a quiet place downstairs–in my room it was a bit raucous with all of the editing and composing and discussion going on.

The other two groups had put time in earlier in the week.  I assume they are ready to go.

Our preview screening will take place on Monday–and then after that, it’s opening night (or at least opening morning).  Jill made an invitation.  The kids are supposed to post the information so that their local blog readers might attend if they wish.  We already have one  RSVP!  I guess I better clean for company

On Monday we are going to screen the segments and the class will critique each one. We have one more late night tomorrow–I’m not sure how many kids will stay. Today when I was walking around, I could see that the segments were coming together.

Some of my favorite quotes from the day:

• Do we really have to cut it down to 5 minutes–our segment could be 20 minutes, easy.
• Oh, I guess we should include our research.
• You have a great voice for the narration.
• Do I really sound like that?
• I hate my voice.
• Are you going to make us a DVD of this when we finish?
• You mean I get to take this home!
• Mr. Craddick’s interview has soooooo much information–he’s so smart.
• I can’t find any good music on these sites–do you have any more ideas?
• Can I just create my own music?

The kids are in the final stages of editing. One technical question that we didn’t quite figure out was if in Adobe Premiere Elements you can use the audio from a video clip while putting another image over it–a cutaway. I’m sure there is software that allows you to rip out the .mp3 file (0r however it is saved) from the video file, but I was hoping there was an easy way to do it. I’ll need to continue to research (and if by chance anyone runs across this blog and knows the answer, I’d take help, too!)

I just posted this as a comment on Britt’s blog (from Virginia Commonwealth University), but thought I’d put it on my own as well–writing a comment helped me solidify my own ideas.

The idea behind the purpose and audience of a blog is one I wrestle with briefly–and then move on because I feel impelled to write or I will forget what I was thinking.

My blog has multiple purposes and audiences, but I have just left it under one umbrella for my own sanity.

1) I write for my students to show them models of how to blog, how to summarize and respond to research, and post screencasts for “how to’s”–mostly technical stuff.

2) I write for my students’ parents to explain my rationale and keep them informed.

3) I write for my colleagues (known and unknown) who might be interested in adapting the project.

4) But it seems mostly I write for myself to get down the teaching reflections that sometimes find their way to a post-it note (and sometimes not). I’m trying to be deliberate in my reflections.

5) And the added bonus is when someone I don’t know does read my blog and adds insight that I would never have had if I had just written in my journal.

So while I don’t expect to become a world famous writer, it’s nice to know there is the possibility of a wider readership than just me. And with that wider readership, the possibility for collaboration.

I thought it would be cool to put a ClustrMap on my page, but my theme makes all of my pages go over into the sidebar when I put the map widget in the sidebar.  It also is sort of ugly in the footer–I wonder what code is messing up.  I plead ignorance.But, it will be cool for the kids to see–I’ll suggest that they add a Map Widget to their blogs so they can see who is clicking around and reading.  Maybe it will inspire them to comment on more blogs and have a little dot on St. Louis appear somewhere across the world.

I just like to create a sense of urgency.

I just read an interesting report about an article in Nature that said there was a global cooling.   The angle was a worry that if there was a cooling happening (caused by natural  changes in ocean currents) over the next 7-8 years, then governments would not feel the urgency to curb greenhouse gases which are causing harm in some ways.

Today our editing went much better–all cords were available, all film got uploaded, no computers froze.  All in all, a successful day.  I’m trying to make sure that everyone is able to edit something and that our computer geniuses are not taking over the entire process.

The blogs are good, but the kids have lost track of what they have to do on a daily basis–perhaps they have written blogs and not published them.  When I gave out grades, many people were surprised by how much was NOT there.  They were supposed to have a total of 11 sources, and many did not have enough.  I’m hoping when they check they’ll be able to find everything.

We need to figure out a title–I think I’ll send an e-mail with a survey link so we can get that decided over the weekend.

I need to make screencasts for editing clips and adding voice-overs.

I started to notice that the kids are getting comments from people I don’t know. So I checked my Google Analytics and found that we are getting hits from Canada, Australia, and New Zealand. I have to believe that these are students whose teachers also signed up for the 31-day challenge. I’ll get my students’ responses to being international phenoms when we have class today.

I also commented on some blogs out there is cyber-space yesterday and am trying to use CoComment–not sure I completely understand how it works, but I do know that the tags are working :-). Baby steps.