Live High School Video Announcements

I've been working with our Communications and the Media class at our high school to produce live video announcements. We're only doing two a week right now, but we're working up to daily announcements. I love doing the announcements for so many reasons. Most importantly:

• Anyone can find a place to use their talents.
• Learning is happening on so many levels--technology, communication and collaboration skills especially. (Our studio was funded with career education funds.)
• The announcements are a great way to highlight what's working in your school.

Ever since video equipment became cheap enough for home use in the late 1980's, I've been playing around with it. This studio was my first step into professional level equipment, though, so it took me a long time to get it set up. I'm not an expert, but if you have any questions about how we do our productions, I'll be glad to go into more detail. Here are some basics.

We write our script in Google Docs and share it with all involved. When lines are sometimes changing moments before going live, it's the only way to keep the whole crew on track.

We use High School Cube to share our production with the classrooms, and really to the whole world if anyone else cares to watch. It's amazingly easy to do a live stream there using just an iPad with a WiFi connection. We've used that method, but normally we work from our studio. It took a lot of time to get that process up and running. Now that we've got a routine, though, it's proven to be very reliable. And did I mention it's free?

To get our stream to High School Cube, we use Open Broadcast Software (also free!). I learned about the software on the High School Cube site, but there were not specific directions for setting it up. It took a lot of experimenting, watching tutorials and guessing, but it's been working well for us

Our studio itself is a relatively low budget setup. (I was impressed with it, but when I told one retailer what I had to work with, he said we were really on the low end!) We have:

• Two HP computers with a lot of RAM.
• Two Panasonic AG-HPX 170 video cameras
• A Datavideo SE-2000 switcher
• CG-350 character generator software from Datavideo
• A couple Blackmagic video cards
• Corel VideoStudio 7x Pro video editing software
• Various mics, lights, cables, etc.

I'm actually not thrilled with the Datavideo switcher and character generator software. It does the job, but I had a hard time adjusting to both components and many times I feel they hold our creativity back. They were suggested to us based on our budget, so we do the best we can with them.

To show some of the work that goes on behind the scenes, I put together the following video to play on our announcements this past week. The narration was recorded on an iMac with GarageBand. The pictures and video were taken on my iPad and edited with iMovie on my iPad.

Mini-Documentary Project for High School

The past week I've been working with Melinda Newcombe, an ELA teacher at our high school. She teaches the Communications and the Media class and we decided this year to do a mini-documentary project.

Eventually students will be making short documentaries or informative videos about something in our school. More than just retelling facts, we are requiring them to tell it through a story or at least to include a story in the video.

We hope this generates a few segments we can use in our regular video announcements. I helped kick things off with a few thoughts and examples in a presentation. I also created some worksheets to aid students in planning. We are still working through the project, so I'll add notes, examples and other resources as they come.

Resources we used are below, but I want to point out first what a huge help the Stillmotion videos on storytelling have been. I used them last year in a similar unit I posted about. I refined that lesson and have used the Stillmotion videos slightly differently, but their information was foundational in our approach.

This is the presentation I used as an introduction. It mostly served to show a few clips of informative videos in different styles. The first is a video I created for our district several years ago when I was completing my master's degree. It was good for catching our students' attention with scenes familiar to most of them. The other videos are more well known, but in all cases I'm sure you could find any number of excellent clips online that will suit your needs.

Note that we are encouraging students to find a story, not just to retell some information. The description of a story (a character who wants something and overcomes conflict to get it) comes from Donald Miller's books A Million Miles in a Thousand Years and Storyline. I wrote about those ideas at length here.

Students formed groups of three or four and they used this worksheet to review the ideas and plan their videos.
     Documentary Worksheet 1

Then we showed this second video from Stillmotion. I love how the use of keywords can sharpen the focus. This worksheet followed.
     Documentary Worksheet 2

I also created this short video as an example. I was pressed for time last week, so it's rough. That's fine because it gave us something to evaluate. Most importantly, it shows realistically what we can accomplish with technology available to our students.

We will be using this planning worksheet in the upcoming week. 

     Documentary Planning Sheet

Note that this refers to some different options for technology, such as Movie Maker or iMovie on an iPad. We have some laptops available for students, but some prefer to use their own devices. This requires us to keep an open-ended approach to the technology. This, along with the infinite options for documentary topics, is a stretch for both of us teachers involved!

As I said, more details, examples and resources will come as we finish up this fun unit.

Shadow Puppet App for Digital Stories and More

I've been very impressed with the free Shadow Puppet iPad app for quick digital slideshows. In the past I've written a lot about 30Hands as my favorite tool for creating these, but I have to say Shadow Puppet is now my go-to app.

I'll post a quick example video I made below. Here are the features that impress me the most so far:

• The intuitive interface allows you to quickly arrange some photos and record narration.
• You can add titles, zoom in and pan and also draw on the screen.
• The Edu version and website has some great resources for the classroom including image search engines and lesson ideas.
• It exports to the Camera Roll so you can share it how you like, transfer to a computer and even edit it in other applications.

The only downsides I've seen so far:

• The area for the image is cropped to a square shape rather than a 4:3 or 16:9 rectangle. 
• The music plays during the recording if I use that option.
• I got confused at the end of the creation process. I wasn't sure if I was previewing the video or finishing it.
• I'm not sure if this is a problem with my YouTube app or the video created by Shadow Puppet, but when I upload it, the audio is a few seconds off from the video.

For an app that should work well with almost every grade level, those are minor quibbles.

If I'm making a quick story for our high school news or a highlight for my church Facebook page, I'll go to the more robust iMovie. For the classroom, though, Shadow Puppet is my current recommendation to students and teachers. Download the Edu version now and give it a try!

miGoogle presentation for Comics and Creativity Games with Google Tools

This week I had to privilege of presenting at the miGoogle conference in Brighton, Michigan, along with dozens of great educators from around the state.

My topic was a very simple one--how to make comics by combining real life pictures with a few tools from Google Drawings or Slides.

Here's the website with all my resources, including:

• My presentation slides
• An example comic we started during the session
• Related tutorials
• Our sample project, including how to turn the comics into ebooks and videos
• Information on my creativity games

I shared many of these resources throughout other posts on this blog, but this one place to find them all as well as additional things I shared only at the conference.

If you want to see the sample comic we started during the session, it's here:

Tips for Classroom Video Projects

This is an updated list from a popular post I wrote last year. It's my attempt to compile the tips I find myself repeating to teachers and students whenever I help with classroom video projects.

I have enjoyed making movies and videos all my life and certainly one of the most rewarding parts of my job is getting to share the experience with students who are new to the process. Videos are a great way to showcase learning and I've been having a blast this year as many more teachers in my district are assigning video projects. I updated my previous list and regularly send this to teachers before we work together.

I'll probably keep adding to and refining this over time. If you have any comments or other suggestions, please share them.

If it would be helpful to have this as a single document, I have a Google Docs version here.

For Teachers

Set expectations at the start for requirements and the project timeline. I suggest a one page assignment sheet that answers these questions:

• What course content is required in the video?
• How much creative freedom will students have? For example, can they be serious or silly? Possibly list options for types of videos, such as skits, documentary style, newsroom style, etc.
• How long do you want the videos to be?
• When will each phase of the video (planning, recording and editing) be due?
• Where will these be recorded?
• How will it be graded? If you have a rubric, include it, or at least the criteria, on this sheet.
• What will they have to turn in (if anything) at each phase and how will they submit it?

Keep realistic, tight deadlines. Set the time you want students to use for planning, recording and editing and stick to it no matter what. Many students will take far longer if they are allowed to. Let them know they must work outside of class if it’s going to take longer.

Share the work when students are done. Share the best videos as much as possible. Post them to your own blog or website and any school public pages, etc. Of course, be sure you have permission to share images and video of the students before you post anything publicly.

Read over the list of student tips below and be sure students are aware of the ones you consider important for the current project.

For Students

Be realistic when planning. Unless you’ve created videos before, don’t plan special effects or anything that will require advanced editing.

Use one camera if at all possible. Using multiple cameras makes it harder to get all your videos in one place and file compatibility can be more of an issue. Even better, if you use an iPhone, iPod or iPad, edit right on the device with iMovie. **Note: Record photos and video to the Camera Roll, directly into the iMovie app.

Don’t plan to use music you can’t easily access and legally download at school. Part of any tech project is to learn the rules of copyright and fair use. It is not legal to use someone else’s song in your videos unless they have given permission. Here’s my favorite site for downloading free music. The composer gives permission for any use as long as you credit him in the video as he explains on his site.      
                           http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-free/

When it’s time to edit, bring any USB cables that work with your camera so it’s easy to transfer files. When all else fails, it’s possible to upload your videos to Google Drive, then download them to the computer you are using for editing. This will take awhile if you have long videos, though, so cables are best.

Plan in detail. It's more fun to start recording, but poor planning will result in either lots of frustrating editing or a poor final video. Good planning includes a detailed script for all dialogue or narration and a storyboard showing the basic camera views for each shot.

Make sure you are recording files you can edit later. This means you have to record with a camera, phone or other device that creates a file format compatible with your editing software. I recommend doing a quick test with your equipment first. Record a short clip and try to edit it with your editing software.

Hold your camera, phone or device in the landscape position. Not only is this a pet peeve of mine, if you get this wrong it immediately makes your video look amateur. Shoot with YouTube and the big screen in mind so your possibilities are not limited. The graphic below is one I made based on one I found from another teacher on Twitter. I don't know if this site is the original source of the image, but I found it here.

Think about what the viewer is seeing and break up the scene accordingly. Does it make sense to stand back with the camera and just record the whole scene as if it were a skit? Or would different camera angles throughout make it more interesting? Would close-ups of certain action help tell a better story? Is there anything in the background that will distract the viewer from what is most important?

Listen before recording. Is there background noise or bad acoustics that echo when actors talk or make other sounds? Choose a quiet location.

Listen carefully when you are recording too. Be aware that a distracting noise (squeaky chairs, doors closing, etc.) while someone is saying a line can't be removed later. We often block these things out easily when listening to someone in real life, but when watching a video they are impossible to ignore.

Speak clearly when being recorded. Probably everyone involved in the video knows the script and knows what is being said, so everyone understands the lines. The viewers don't have that advantage. Pay attention to how fast you talk, how loud it is and whether or not the words are distinct.

Record too much rather than not enough. Start recording several seconds before action will start. If someone will say, "Action," or otherwise alert everyone to start, be sure they wait at least a second after the camera has started before they cue the actors. It is so easy to trim a few seconds off the start or end of a clip in editing. Compare that to the case when the camera person turns off the camera immediately after the last line or the actors start talking as soon as the camera starts. Those make for bad edits later.

If you have the time, get two good takes of each shot. You can overdo this, but generally if everyone finally gets a good performance once, the next one will be even better. During editing it can help a lot to have a couple choices for the take that will end up in the final video..

When acting a scene, don't look at the camera or the people behind the camera. It is very common for actors to look to the person working the camera as if to say, "Did we get it right?" Those looks can ruin an otherwise great take and sometimes you won't notice them until editing later.

To sum it up, remember you will have a much better final video if you…

• Plan carefully.
• Pay attention when recording.
• Always consider what the viewer will see and hear.