Blog # 7 - The Video I Plan To Make

I am still trying to find the Video I plan to make for my Final. My first video was of my JV basketball team. I don't want to be a total jock and continue that theme. I may still run with my original idea of making an Infomercial for my program (Information technology ) at the Greene County Career Center. I have had my Senior class working on my movie assignment for 4 days now. Originally they were to make my infomercial, but I relaxed my rigid standards and told them to have fun - come up with their own movie topic. I showed them a couple of the youtube movies (and of course they showed me a couple more I should not have seen in school). They have kept me extremely busy. I had them choose groups of 4-5 and each develop their own storyboards. My BPA Web Sight Design Team stayed together and are doing a movie taking their Counterstrike game characters and adapting them to the Back to The Future movie. This group has required close watching due to their willingness to slip bad language into the music tracks. They are using VideoVegas as their "Moviemaker" tool. I thought they would be the group that I would use, but a second group has just taken off and run with this. Their storyboard consists of "What Video Games Do To People". They are having so much fun doing this that all the other groups have gathered around them. They have been shooting their own video and still clips. I am very impressed with their teamwork and what they have put together so far. They need to sync in the music.
I have three other groups and one solo entrant in this class. I am anxiously awaiting the storyboards on these groups. Their projects escape me right now. I know Mr. Kayser's head is on the Incredible Hulk for one group.
This has been a great assignment so far for my seniors. They have really run with the assignment. I plan to do it again. It has intrigued me to the point that I purchased a software package to download and convert my Camcorder DVD's .VOB in mpeg or avi files for Moviemaker. I have spent the week researching different Moviemaker tools. Haven't found anything I am impressed with as yet, but will keep looking. If anyone knows of a good one leave me a comment - PLEASE......

Blogs I commented on

I commented on Dendinger1's blog about him being an Eagle Scout. I too am an Eagle Scout from way-back.

I commented on Jon's blog. We are Visual Learners for sure. I agree

Blog # 6 - The process of Creating My Video

My original decision for a video was to take on the assignment by myself (not pairing with any one else in class) and to have my Senior IT students help me to create an infomercial for my IT class at Greene County Career Center. With the weather and our BPA Regional contest and Awards banquet I had to junk this idea because we have not been in school and in the classroom but 2 days in the last 8 school days. We did not get any video shot for the infomercial so I couln't do it.
I changed and decided to do a solo project on the High School basketball team that I coach. I have 18 games worth of video to work with. Last Monday I took a lot of digital still pictures of my team. A team shot that I added a text title to, and individual shots of each player at the foul line. Had I had more time I would have actually isolated some still shots from within the video tape for each player. I found after I had taken all these shots that the Freshman player that actually took the pictures had changed a setting on my Sony Handycam so that all of my still shots were out of focus somewhat. I did not catch this until I started on my movie. I did the best I could with the auto Level setting, but the pictures are still very out of focus and gariny. With Photoshop I added a layer or two putting the players name and number as well as his year in school and the position he plays.
I learned a great deal about making a movie with this assignment. Did a lot of swearing and slamming things on my desk early. Seems I did not know how to get the video from the DVD on my Handycam into MovieMaker. The .VOB file format the Handycam uses is not supported by MovieMaker. The DAZZLE unit I had for doing this worked only for Windows 98 (when I bought it) and they wanted more money than it was worth for an XP software update. I ended up using the extremely bad Imagemaker toolset that came with the HandyCam to get the video in and then using the Imagemaker storyboard to create a movie and save it in .mpeg format to be able to load that into MovieMaker.
One area I had very little success with ( and need to find out how to do ) is adding the second narrative track when there is a music track. It would not let me narrate with music in the background. Makes for a choppy sounding video.
I am relatively pleased with my movie considering at the very last minute I changed paths and I was able to create a decent movie in a couple of days. Thank heaven I had no school this week.

Blogs I commented on This Week

Commented on Mrs. C's blog today - Tuesday Feb. 13, 2007

Commented on Ron Tucker's blog today - Tuesday Feb. 13, 2007

Commented on Chef Mike's blog today - Tuesday Feb. 13, 2007

Reading in your Classroom

I would like to share something that has been very helpful to me this year in my classroom. One of the things I have struggled with is getting mys students to read from the textbooks and to comprehend what they have read. The A+ PC Repair and Troubleshooting textbook I use with my Juniors is about 3 inches thick. There are a lot of pictures and charts, but there is also a great deal of text. For the year and a half I have been back in teaching I have found that Juniors and Seniors in my high school have very poor reading and comprehension skills. Worst than that is they just hate reading.
Greene County sent me to an in-service taught by Mark A. Forget, Ph.D. (pronounced 4-jay not forget) on Max Teaching with Reading and Writing. The MAX teaching Framework (Motivate, Acquisition, and eXtension covered a great deal of material. One of the classroom activities I gleaned from this in-service has worked pretty well for me. I use Anticipation Guides now in my class. These anticipation Guides are used to motivate the students as readers by getting them to react to a series of statements that are related to the content of the reading materials and also to the student's prior knowledge. Students are able to anticipate or react to what the reading material will be about because of the anticipation guide statements.
I received a 260 page manual by Dr. Forget in this in-service. It goes into great detail on his MAX reading / Writing strategies. There is an entire chapter on 'How to Construct Effective Anticipation Guides". A book worth getting. An in-service worth attending.
I am just really getting into using the Anticipation Guides. They do take some time to construct, but they are well worth it. One side note. Be prepared to have to stop students from straying off the topic and going down paths where you should not go. Teenagers - they do that to you.

My Video is hurting!

I am now in complete PANIC mode for my first movie assignment due this Thursday. I had planned on my senior IT students doing this as a classroom assignment. We have not been in school but three days since and one of those days I had to take sophomore students that may join my program to a Tech prep Awareness Day at Sinclair College in Dayton. We missed Monday with our re-scheduled BPA Awards ceremony where we traveled to Sidney High School. I missed that as well taking my wife to have a medical procedure done where she was knocked out.

I think I will be switching to doing one on my Basketball team since I have a ton of video already shot for the games we have played.

My Thoughts on the Breast Cancer Video

The video that Fawn showed us by Lindsey Cooper titled "Surviving the Journey" really hit home for me. Brought tears to my eyes. I have survived this scenario twice in my life with two loved ones that are very, very close to me. First, My mother (Viola Berger Kayser - see picture at right) had a radical mastectomy almost 28 years ago. At that time the surgery and the treatments for this horrible disease were no where near what they are today. The survivor rate was not a very good percent. My mother has survived and beaten Breast Cancer and I am happy to say she will celebrate her 90th birthday on March 27th. I was in my late twenties when mom had her surgery. What a devastating time that was for me. In those days when you had breast cancer you usually died. What a blessing that I still have my mother in my life.

The Second person dear to me, Melissa Fortener McGlaughlin, is the daughter of my roommate from Wilmington College. I had the pleasure of driving this beautiful baby home from the hospital in January of 1978 - the year of the blizzard. Her father's car was frozen in the parking lot and I was home for a snow day as a teacher at Valley View. I watched Melissa grow up to be a beautiful young lady. Four years ago Melissa found out she not only had breast cancer, but she found out the same time she was pregnant. Surgery and Chemo had to wait for this baby to be born. Unfortunately, the baby was born premature and lived only a couple of hours. What a tragic blow to Melissa and her family. Melissa had the mastectomy surgery and they found the cancer to be in her lymph nodes several layers deep. Not the best news to get when waking up from the surgery. Chemo followed. She beat this cancer this time! Just six months ago she found out the cancer was back. She went the chemo / radiation route again and I think she has beaten this horrible disease down one more time. What a strong young lady. She is my Hero! She proves the adage that "Attitude is Everything".

More later - I am tearing up just thinking about "Mo" (as she is known to her friends). I will include a link to her blog on Cancer awareness as well.

Here is the Link to Mo's blog on breast cancer: http://fortscancersux.blogspot.com/. Please take the time to go to it. Melissa and her family do a tremendous amount of work to help fight this disease.

I have been so amazed and so impressed with the attitude that this young lady has displayed in fighting this terrible disease. Imagine at age 23 or 24 being told you have a disease that will most likely end your life. Most people would go into a "Whoa is me" mode. Melissa never batted an eye. She came out fighting. She has been the most positive and upbeat person about this. Her attitude was "I won't let this beat me". Wow - the power of the mind. The power of prayer. Please add Melissa to your prayers. She is and always will be in mine.

I hope Melissa has the same longevity that my mother has had. Twenty eight years as a breast cancer survivor. WOW! Two women that are important in my life and I am happy to say both are doing just fine.

Blog I commented on today.

I commented on grizzle

Blog # 5 What do Graphic Design & Page Layout have to do with contemporary literacy & learning?

This is a great topic. In this day and age of computers and technology the ability for students and teachers to be able to graphically design a web page or a newsletter or even a Word document is a very essential skill they must master. We are now a society that no longer spends time reading the written word. As the old saying goes - A picture is worth a thousand words, you can express more in one page using graphics, fonts, colors, and more than you could describe in several pages of words. From the literacy standpoint, being able to draw a thought or concept together to have the user get the point is a skill that can be mastered using good page layout or design methods and concepts. I have noticed that in my classroom I have many more visual learners than all the other types of learners. These students will pick up on a concept if it is properly depicted. The fewer words and more pictures usually means these students will grasp the concept more easily than if they have to read several pages of text (text used to explain what the pictures, diagrams, or graphs are showing ). However, I have noticed that you cannot just throw a bunch of diagrams and pictures on paper and have the concept get through to all students. This is where the page layout and graphic design skills come into play. The information you need to get across still needs to be organized into a page layout that is aesthetically appealing to the reader and makes the topic easily discernible. Graphic design is very important in that you can overwhelm a reader with too many pictures or diagrams, poor color selections, and by making a very busy or overworked design.
Most students I talk with have had classes in the use of Microsoft Word and PowerPoint presentation software packages by the time they enter their freshman year of high school. With the Internet all around them and computers everywhere they are exposed to the max with tools that they can use to make use of graphic design and page layout techniques. These tools are the beginning for a lot of students to take off and use their imaginations and creativity.
In summary, I feel that page layout and graphic design are as important today in literacy and learning as mastering the English language and grammar were to my generation.