Smart Jams Music Video Project - Outline and Video Tutorials

These are my video tutorials and outline for the Smart Jams Music Video Project. If you have any questions about this process, don't hesitate to contact me by email. I want to improve this page so many teachers and students can create a similar project.

All information about the project and our pilot can be found on my Music Creation in the Classroom page on this blog.

It will help to see and hear some examples first:

• Some examples of videos from the Smart Jams project
• Audio for all 24 songs we created

The process can vary depending on complexity, but the heart of the project involves songwriting, recording the song and then creating a full arrangement using UJam.com and GarageBand.

Step 1:  Write the lyrics

The first step is to write a short song. When we do these, they are really just choruses of about four to eight lines.

Step 2:  Record vocals

Next, make a recording of someone singing or rapping the song. We do those by playing a beat in headphones for the performer and just his or her voice is recorded. For the beat, I use Smart Drums in GarageBand for iPad. You could also use Easy Beats LE for a free option. On a computer you could use DrumBot.

To record, we use Audacity on a computer and export the track to mp3.

Tip:  Name the file with the song's tempo in it.  For example, if the beat the performer sang to was 90 beats per minute, save the file as mathsong90.mp3.  This will help greatly in later steps.

Step 3:  Adjust timing of audio recording (if necessary)

If the recording is perfect, you can probably skip these first two tutorials and go right to the UJam step below, but I have found most student recordings need some cleaning up to adjust timing.

This short tutorial shows how to transfer the file to your iPad so you can adjust timing using GarageBand for iPad.


Then this next tutorial shows how I would split the tracks into segments (sometimes as small as a syllable) and move them to adjust the timing. You can do this with GarageBand on a Mac, or any other program that allows for easy trimming and moving of audio tracks. I prefer GarageBand for iPad because I can work on the audio files whenever I get the chance.

In case you're wondering about the time it takes to fix up a file, it depends how rough it was. For short songs that were performed well, this would be done in less than two minutes, if it was necessary at all. In other cases I would work for an hour or more over a series of sessions to polish them up.

As a general rule, have students practice ahead of time as much as possible and get a good recording. Short songs are better than long ones! This process will not be able to do much to fix a really bad recording.

Step 4:  Export to mp3

Next you need to export the file in mp3 format. This will be easy if you're using most programs that work with files on a computer, since they usually export to mp3. On the iPad, I exported from GarageBand to Voice Record Pro. From there I could convert to mp3 format and email the file to myself for the next step. (Note: If your program will not export to mp3 you can also use wav format.)

Step 5:  Get two or more arrangements from UJam

This next tutorial is about what makes the project truly impressive. It shows the steps I would usually do to create at least two different background tracks with full instrumentation using UJam.com. This is an amazing online resource and with some practice I could usually put together two background tracks in about 10 minutes. The trick is to not get distracted by all the options!


One suggestion when letting the students do this part of the process: Share the audio file(s) on Google Drive and let them work on the song outside of class. That should allow them to stick to a deadline in class, knowing they can always explore other options at home.

Alternate approach:
As another option rather than UJam, just download one of our Smart Jams Song Starters from SoundCloud and improvise a melody over it. Import the Song Starter into Audacity and record your vocal track separately. Let me know if you like the Song Starter idea, but need more styles and variations.

Step 6:  Mix tracks and arrange

The final tutorial shows how I combined the background tracks from UJam with the vocal performance using GarageBand. I did this on a Mac, but you could easily do the same thing with GarageBand for iPad. Audacity would also work, though it's not as easy to adjust right to the measures and loops aren't as readily available.

Step 7: Make the video

At this point you will have a good audio version of the song.  If you want to move on to video, you can tackle that in a number of ways. Here are some general tips.

Quick videos using Video Star:
The Video Star app for iPad is a fun (and free) tool that allows you to play a song while you record video. None of the sound you make while recording will be in the video. Only the song will be heard. It's ideal if you want to lip sync, but the many effects can make an entertaining music video even if you're not singing along with every line.

To use this method, once you export the song from GarageBand, send it to iPad (even if it's already on the iPad) by email. Check your email with the iPad app. Tap and hold the attachment link for the file in the message and you should get an Open With... options. One of those should be the Video Star app. The song will open in Video Star and you can begin recording right away.

Video slideshows using the iPad or computer:
Students can make great videos combining pictures. These styles of videos usually play the pictures in different ways over background music, which in this case would be the song the students created.

iMovie is a great option on the iPad. If you don't want to buy it, Splice and Loopster are good options that will accomplish the same thing.

If you are using a Mac, use iMovie to combine the pictures. For a PC, try Movie Maker or WeVideo. In all of these cases, you can easily add text and effects to the pictures as well.

If you want to edit the pictures ahead of time, I can't say enough good about Pixlr. It has a website (use the Express version), iPad app and Android app.

Another option is to create a full video made up of video clips, pictures, effects and text. This can become very time consuming and the details are well beyond the scope of this outline. I may add some more tips or another post about this process. For now, I will just suggest using iMovie on a Mac (which is what I used for almost all the Smart Jams examples) or Corel VideoStudio (which I used for The Area and Perimeter Song and The Quadratic Formula Song).

If you have questions or comments about the process, please include them below so I can improve this series of tutorials.

Favorite Free Apps for Video Slideshows, Tutorials and Frustrating Tech in School

This past week was our district technology professional development.  It's my one big show of the year.  The  topic I was given was project based learning, but I used it as a backdrop to challenge everyone to try something new, creative and passionate in their classrooms.

To provide a concrete example we kicked the session off with Tech's a Maybe, a rewritten version of the popular song.  If I get a chance to finalize it, I'll post a recording here.  

I put together a few tutorials and examples based on iPad apps and other processes I use to create narrated video slideshows.  They're posted on the site I created for the district PD, but here are the links by page:

• Examples free apps for video slideshows* - One example was created with Pixntell and the other was with Videolicious.
• iPad tutorials for free apps for video slideshows - How to make a quick narrated slideshow with Pixntell and Videolicious.  There are also tutorials for transferring files using Google Drive and one for Educreations (a good free app for flipped teaching video lessons).
• Tutorials for creating narrated slideshows on a PC - These tutorials are for older versions of PowerPoint and Photo Story, but that's what most lab computers still use in our district.

*A couple notes about pros and cons of these free apps from the tutorial page:

Pixntell is limited to five slides and there are no bells and whistles, but it is a very simple app for making a narrated slideshow.

Videolicious makes a nice looking slideshow that includes pictures, narration and music.  You can even add video clips, though it is not addressed in this tutorial.  

The potential negatives are your video will be limited to one minute and you give up some control on the panning and zooming.  

GIMP Tutorials - Lessons for photo editing in high school and middle school

I have been very busy in and out of the classroom so far this new school year.  My favorite part has been the time I've spent with Digital Media courses at our high school and middle school.  Somehow they managed to schedule both classes at the same time of the day!  Since I can't physically be at both of them I have been using video tutorials as one way to assist the classroom teacher and instruct the students.

First, here are the related lessons.

Below you'll find the tutorials for GIMP, a free image editing program.  I hope these could be useful to anyone who might be "flipping" a tech course or possibly for an online course.

Update 10/4/2013:  I posted the most popular tutorials on YouTube and have them in this Playlist now.

• Introduction to GIMP - Brief explanation of what the program is like, how to navigate the multiple windows and how to open files
• Saving files in GIMP - Some of this is specific to our network, but I talk about saving as jpeg.
• Paint Brush and Clone Tools - I explain how to use the Paint Brush as a line tool and how to erase parts of pictures using the Clone Tool.
• Drawing with the Selection Tools - GIMP doesn't have a tool to draw shapes, for example, but this shows how it can be used to accomplish the same thing.
• Using Layers in GIMP - This is probably the best feature of GIMP and the one students have the hardest time with. 
• Using the Text Tool in GIMP - Text in GIMP is pretty easy, but students need to understand Layers first.
• Combining Images in GIMP - This shows how to take parts of one image and paste it into another for simple special effects.
• Neon Logo Tutorial - My version of a popular logo effect that I learned from a couple YouTube tutorials

And here's a quick talk about learning software in general.  I address the difference between learning the software and learning how to learn new software.

Explain Everything - iPad app for flipped teaching

I have posted previously about some free iPad apps that can be used for flipped teaching.  I recently broke down and paid the $2.99 to buy Explain Everything.  I was told it is the ultimate app for video tutorials, supplying all the things that those free ones were lacking.

From what I've seen so far, that's been mostly accurate.  I really like the laser pointer feature and the entire app is intuitive and easy to use.  I am glad I purchased it and I'm sure I will use it more than I do the free ones as I get more comfortable working around the couple quirks.

Here are the pros and cons I see at this point:

Pros:

• Presentations can be shown live or narrated then exported as a video to the Camera Roll (or to other usual locations).
• Laser Pointer allows for pointing out areas of the screen during recording or presenting.
• Web browsers can display online content.  (I didn't use this much yet, but it looks like a great feature if it works even with complex websites.)
• Can import pictures or even entire presentations (PowerPoint is an option) from Dropbox or Evernote.  (I haven't experimented with importing from Evernote and see my note below about Dropbox.)

Cons:

• It's not free.
• I can't get it to import anything from Dropbox!  It might be me, but so far I can't even get one picture to import correctly.
• When re-sizing objects it is too easy to rotate them at the same time.  It would be good to have a snap feature at every 90 degrees for objects.  I simply gave up trying to straighten a couple rectangular images perfectly .
• Like all the free apps I mentioned previously, there's still no way (that I can see) to undo or edit part of the audio recording.  Since you can export to the Camera Roll, though, it's easy enough to edit the mistakes out in iMovie or another editor.  That's what I did in the sample below.
• Note on 9/4/12:  Noooo!  It did the same thing I ran into with other slide creation apps.  Today I put together four slides for a presentation.  Before I had a chance to record I had to do something else, but I left Explain Everything open.  When I came back to the iPad and turned it on I tried to edit it and the app shut down immediately.  I lost all my work.  Educreations used to do this to me and I made a note about it in that review.  It could be attributed to any number of factors beyond the app itself, but I wanted to pass it along.

Here's my first attempt at a video tutorial using the app. It explains how to use the Say Anything flipchart in the classroom. For purposes of this overview of Explain Everything, you'll see all the important features of this app in the first two or three slides.

Sophia.org - Online Lessons for flipped teaching or just learning on your own

I was surprised that no one at a recent flipped teaching workshop had heard of Sophia.org.  I came across the site at least a year ago and I've put a few lessons there myself.  I hope to do more in the weeks ahead.

Sophia is a combination of a social network and a lesson repository.  The learning "packets" are categorized and rated by users, so ideally you'd be able to search for any topic and find a variety lessons for it.

I suggest any teachers who are flipping their classroom should put their lessons on Sophia in addition to where they post them for their classes.  It could be a great place to develop a following or to get feedback from other teachers and learners.

My few tutorials are posted on this page at the site.  I tried to break free from the very academic lessons I was finding by posting my lessons from here on how to make games.

When I first stumbled on Sophia I thought it sounded exactly like the vision of learning described in Disrupting Class.  I loved the book and was excited to see the predictions in it coming to life.  I soon learned it was created by one of the authors of that book, making it a little less surprising.  I have remained hopeful nonetheless.  (Though I'm never motivated by accumulating little icons.)  The fact that no one had heard of it at the workshop wasn't encouraging, but I still think it has potential and I will continue to support it.

Check it out first by searching for something you'd like to learn.  I would love to hear if you find it useful.  Next, think of how you could present your favorite thing to teach.

Three Free iPad Apps for Flipping the Classroom or Just Teaching

I mentioned the strengths of teaching with video in my previous post.  More than just as a tool for teachers, though, many are finding the benefits of having students create video tutorials.  Here are three free apps worth checking out if you want to explore this on an iPad.  I am including just a few thoughts on each.

ShowMe -
There's only one "slide", so to do multiple slides you have to set up the screen, record, pause, clear and set up the next screen.  If you want to undo something you say, you're out of luck for the most part.  There's no way to undo just the audio.  It has a good community for sharing the lessons though.

Educreations -
I like how you can set up you slides ahead of time for presentations in this one, but like ShowMe, there's no way to just undo the audio.  I lost a 12 slide setup twice because of this and eventually decided it's not meant to be PowerPoint.  These can be shared online, but last I checked you shared only with users who signed up in your "school" community.  I didn't see a way to share with the world at large.

Screen Chomp -
This is by TechSmith, makers of Camtasia.  That's my screen capture software of choice, so I was really looking forward to using this app.  It has a fun look that should appeal to younger students.  There's also a way to share them online and you can scroll the screen too using two fingers.  The scrolling makes up for the fact that it doesn't do multiple slides.  The drawbacks are that you can only import one picture and one again, serious audio mistakes are going to require a complete do-over of the whole presentation.  As the TechSmith site states, this is going to be good for bite-sized lessons, sort of like Jing for the iPad.