Here is a list of recommended places to convert WMV to MOV files:

http://www.zamzar.com

Format Factory- http://www.formatoz.com/

http://www.dvdvideosoft.com/free-dvd-video-software.htm

Here is an interesting website to help those of you who are in charge of collecting and publishing sports video for your campus.

http://www.dsvusa.com/

If you have any other suggestions for assistance with sports video, please post.

Recently, I came across Avidemux, a free video editing software that performs simple video editing functions. You can check it out at http://avidemux.sourceforge.net/

 

 Do you know of any other open source or free video editing software that would be good to teach students about the basics of video editing?

I have lectured to my video students in the past about “fair use,” however; when some of our productions were broadcasted, the issue of copyright became distorted. We had an incident where we broadcasted a student segment and were questioned by the school librarian as to whether we had violated copyright law. Even though the student had followed “fair use”  by doing their class project and had used less than 30 seconds of recorded music, the simple fact was that we had violated copyright law by broadcasting the segment on our news program. Barry Brit’s article Copyright Issues When Using Music in Videos is an excellent reference to clarification of some of the pitfalls in using music in a school news program. Our school solved the copyright issue by purchasing BackTraxx royalty-free music from DigitalJuice. Another thing that we did in order to avoid violation of the copyright law was to purchase GarageBand for our MACs. Our students actually became pretty good composers, as well as, videographers.

What policies does your campus/district have regarding the use of video in the classroom?

I ran across the Texas Education Association’s Technology Center for Educator Development website while looking for resources. The website offers links to some pretty good video resources; it also has tabs that cover other aspects of technology applications. In addition, the website offers a list of the TA(TEKS) that represent the basic fundamentals required of all students in Texas. While most core subject teachers do not review these TEKS on a regular basis, it is important to note that student success in TA(TEKS) will ultimately influence the efficiency of technology integration.

How would you integrate TA(TEKS) into class curriculum?

A great classroom project idea for video students is to have them create a vodcast. You can view some pretty good examples of Vodcast from Vodcast.TV|Education. You can watch vodcasts here on just about any subject from Spanish lessons to Chemistry 1000. The District of Palm Beach County has taken vodcasting to new realms in the area of K-12 education. Students can create small commericals or create “how to” vodcasts as mini-lessons to tweak shooting and editing skills.

Does your campus or district utilize vodcasts/podcasts? If so, how are they used?

Have you ever wanted to enter a student or group of students in an outside competition, but you didn’t have a clue where to look? Here are a few suggestions for places to enter student digital video. If you can think of any others, please share.

TCEA Student Contest- I have entered several students in this contest. I really liked this contest because you could enter students in multiple categories. For example, I had some students entering in digital video and webmastering.

Texas Media Awards- Sponsored by the Texas Library Association, these awards promote excellence in amateur media production. I didn’t have any takers on this one; however, I have had several collegues who have had students compete.

Winston Sci-Fi Short Film Competition- A Winston Science Competition sponsored by the Winston School.

Anchor’s away! The anchor desk pictured here is made out of 3/8″ plywood, 1/2″ plywood,  2″x4″ wood pieces and 8″ to 10″ diameter PVC pipe.  The 1/2″ plywood was molded and tacked to a frame made of 2 x 4’s. It was then stained a brownish color. The 3/8″ plywood was cut into a half-circle and was originally painted with a glossy black paint. During the keying process, there was green spill reflecting off of it, so the desktop was painted with a flat black paint instead. The columns on the desk are actually 8″ diameter PVC pipe that has been spray painted with a silver paint. The low-level lighting strip was acquired from Home Depot in order to illuminate the underside of the anchor desk during shooting.

 

Here is the desk from another angle. The desk is surprisingly lighweight and can be moved around the room and positioned easily behind different background. It can also easily be relocated to different areas of the campus in order to do live shoots at sporting events, etc. School Video News some good ideas also for building a news desk and a video control center.

Think Green!

When I first started with video production, I was given a room that was about 15′ X 15′. It looked like a complete disaster, and honestly I wasn’t sure how the educator before me had managed to create good videos.After previewing hours of video, I suddenly realized that he hadn’t realize used the green screen hanging on the wall to its fullest potential. Students were spending hours and hours hauling around heavy and expensive video equipment in order to give the video production a variety of settings. The green screen that was in the room was actually a rather large cloth material that had been clamped and stapled to the wall. In previous videos taken the year before, it actually looked like it did a decent job during the few times that it had been used. However, it was small and when I tried to use it with the cast, they appeared to be crammed together.

So, I investigated green screen paint. After reading Ben Syverson’s post on Home Depot green screen paint, I decided to go to work. But, of course, I had to use the approved list of paint suppliers which didn’t include Behr S-G-430 (”Sparkling Apple”). Sherwin Williams was on our approved list, so I purchased Irish Green which worked pretty good.

There were several other types of paints that I also found while researching that appeared as though they would work with a green screen environment. Mike Gutner’s article , for example, focuses on how to create a green screen from materials that you find at Walmart. And, of course, there are specialty paints available such as Roscoe video paints which are expensive and were not in my budget. After painting, however, the wall looked nice, keyed fairly well; therefore, we were able to use it in many different segments.

The purpose of this blog is to collaborate, communicate and to explore ideas and solutions revolving around the use of video in the k-12 classroom. In terms of broadcasting a fringe area can be described as an area in which the signal is distorted or unclear. The term here is being applied to the idea that many educators who use video in the classroom are “unclear” about issues such as copyright and the impact of video use on teaching and learning. Please feel free to share your experiences with using video in the classroom.