Ideas and Thoughts from an EdTech

Here’s a great story and idea passed on to me by friend Jim.

The Simple Truth of Service Movie

I usually post something about mothers and fathers, here’s a remix of one I did last year. Most of the photos are of ones I’ve taken or friends. Using pertinent, powerful quotes, quality images and fitting music is a simple recipe for effective digital storytelling.

[tags]fathersday,digitalstories[/tags]

My wife is big fan of reality tv. I know, I can hear it already: “It’s not reality”, “I don’t watch a lot of tv”, “blah, blah, blah”….. I actually like a few as well.

This summer Fox has unveiled, On The Lot, a Mark Burnett production to give aspiring filmmakers a chance to strut their stuff and have a chance to earn a 1 million dollar development deal with Dreamworks.

There are great lessons to be learned for digital storytelling. In Monday’s episode, 18 contestants had to produce 1 minute comedies. Each was critiqued and contestants were provided feedback on their work. The show helps you see the challenge behind good storytelling. As an observer, you get insight into the qualities of good film making. Viewers can also submit videos for review.

Here’s one great example:

With summer coming and the television lineup dwindling, this might be something worth checking out.

Here’s my mother’s day tribute.

I’ll likely use this in church on Sunday.

[tags]mothersday,mothers,video,shareski[/tags]

24 hours of Flickr inspired me to recreate a previous post I did over 2 years ago. That post featured a photo every hour on the hour. Here are just some samples of my day…I have till May 21st to submit one photo to be considered for the 24 hours of Flickr book. Which one would you submit?

The List

Cleaning Gutters

Washing Windows

Help from Martha

Mowing the Lawn

Watching Golf

Board Game with Family

[tags]flickr, 24hoursofflickr[/tags]

If you want to show kids the power of editing and music in storytelling, show them this remix of Dumb and Dumber as a horror movie. This would be a great assignment for students to remix video to change the genre.

This song’s likely very familar to anyone from Saskatchewan. Here someone adds it to their rather uneventful drive down Main Street in Moose Jaw. I think it says something about people who can laugh at themselves. Not sure what but it says something.

[tags]moosejaw[/tags]

I love NFL Films. They can make the most boring, insignificant game seem like an epic battle. With great cinematography, authoratative voice overs (Gene Hackman, Alec Baldwin, Lawrence Fishborne, to name a few) using well crafted scripts and adding the perfect sound track, to me it’s storytelling at its best. Even if you’re not a football fan, you have to marvel at the mastery of their form.

Recently the produced America’s Game, chronicling the past 40 Super Bowl Champions. I didn’t miss one episode. Yes, I’m a huge football fan but when you look at the craft of storytelling, it just doesn’t get any better. I love the emotion of the individuals recalling events that happened years ago. In many ways the elements of these stories are quite reproducible. No fancy graphics or effects. Just a great story. I guess winning 92 Emmy’s should tell you something about quality.

If you’re a football fan but do not get the NFL Network, you might have missed this. I’d suggest buying the DVDs or buying them off itunes for $1.99 an episode. If nothing else, kids need to see examples like this to see what digital stories can be.

[tags]digitalstories,NFL,AmericasGame,NFLfilms[/tags]