This video is one I'm sure many of seen as it is destined to go viral if it already hasn't. I first saw it on twitter and since have watched it at least 7 times showing it to all members of my family who each watch with smiles and joy as they watch a little boy be a little boy who's enamored with play and science and creating an experience for others to enjoy.  I don't want you to miss it. 

Caine's Arcade from Nirvan Mullick on Vimeo.

So many lessons to be learned, so much to appreciate. The lost art of boredom, trial and error, giving to others and let's not forget the filmmaker here who tells a wonderful story and then lavishes a beautiful gift for the boy by bringing him customers and attention which culminates with, 

After the flashmob, at the end of the day as Caine and his dad drove home, Caine turned to his dad and said, “Dad, this was the best day of my whole life.”

​Yes, the best day. Seems to me we should be able to create more "best days" for the people in our lives. 

Pretty much every class over the past 9-10 times I've taught these courses I bring in someone I know doing interesting work or with a compelling idea. I have only two requirements for my guests. You have to be smart and you have to be able to stay connected and interact with my students for as long as they need. 

This term my lineup has included:

Karl Fisch

Gary Stager

Bud Hunt

Rodd Lucier

Michael Wacker

Liz Kolb 

John Spencer

If I do nothing but connect my students with these people in a meaningful way, I'll be satisfied. (BTW, you can listen to all these people's presentations here. You'll want to skip to the halfway point of each session to hear them speak.)

Yesterday I invited Ben Grey and Scott Meech to discuss the way in which they've implemented both netbooks and Ipads into their respective districts. Both have been very vocal about their decisions and I actually egged them on to make it more of a debate. While the first half was very civil and diplomatic, they did engage in some friendly banter at the end. That was just for my entertainment. At any rate, they offer great insights and since many asked about a recording, I took the time to encode it to video for you to watch. 

Creating a composition video is very rewarding for me and my family. While the photos are mine and represent the world as I saw it, it's a great way to see the past year and remember events and moments we shared and experienced together.  Many of the images have a specific story and memory. Others are representative of the beauty I see around me. Certainly the addition of HDR and other image enhancements add even more awe to the world around me.  A quick scan of the various subjects shows the following results:

• Family: 86 photos
• Videos: 44
• Friends: 40
• Dogs: 38 (of particular note, 14 of those featured Rue in some type of weird sleeping position)
• Sky: 32 (likely do do the HDR app but I seemed to be sky watching more than ever)
• Me: 30 (I need to work at getting that number down)
• Golf: 28 (I think that's down from last year. I need to play more courses)

Posting photos online continue to add so much to the experience. People have shared many of these moments with me both in person and virtually. We see the collection of these images to tell rich stories of one another and I'm happy to share some of my family and life with the world. 

Technically this video was pretty easy to create. I used iMovie instead of Final Cut Express. I simply brought in all photos I had tagged with 365/11. I cross referenced them with flickr and discovered a few errors. Unlike in past years, I didn't painstakingly go through each month to insure every day was represented. I'm sure there are a few days missing. Not because I didn't take a photo but because I didn't tag them properly. Big deal. Photos are set to 5 second and fit to frame by default. After adding music I tend to view and trim accordingly. Pictures of little meaning or content tend to get cut down to 3.5 or 4 seconds. Photos that have some story or object of significance seem better suited at times to using the Ken Burns effect. I'm not sure I always get it right but discreet pan and zoom can be effective. That's why I don't want to use it as the default. Choosing which photos need or benefit from that effect is intentional. I hope that comes through. I finish with a couple of songs from my daughter which I did in 2009 as well. I tried to make some smooth transitions between the end of songs and beginnings which required some additional adjustments.  

Anyway, it's meaningful to me. and easy enough to share with you. I'm Maybe you'll recall some of the photos, maybe not. Maybe you make an appearance in some, maybe you don't. Maybe you've got 30 minutes to watch it, maybe you don't.

This weekend I was on the lookout for moments of beauty inside our house. Having been taking a photo every single day for the past 4 years, I've developed a keener sense of beauty or mindfulness. Trying to capture moments, seeing something special in the way light hits an object or the way two people interact. It's a habit I'm glad I've been developing and will continue to pursue. 

This is what I came up with. 

It's not awesome but it's a story, our story. I can really see taking this format and tweaking it and making it one's own. Ben used his son as the theme of his video. That's a very compelling story and while it's obviously incredibly meaningful to him, he tells it in such a way that we are drawn in as well. As I watch my own, I'm not sure exactly where to critique it. Would a better camera made a difference? What shots would have been more compelling? Was there even an implied storyline? Was the music an appropriate choice? 

I think about my own assessment skills here. I've created enough of these stories to have some sense of what works and what doesn't, and yet I lack the vocabulary or expertise to truly dissect my work in this case. I'm not sure if it's because I'm using a new format or whether art itself is too challenging to always try and deconstruct. Certainly this is the dilemma of assessment in schools when it comes to creative work. As Royan Lee says, "why grade when you can reflect?"

I frequently optimize the very essence of the banal tweet. 

So when a stranger reads that anticipating they might glean some insight or wonderful resource, they're likely a combination of disappointed, confused or annoyed. Sure, if you're following me, you might now by now this is par for the course. I will post the occasional mundane tweet but hopefully with a dash of humor or cleverness. Not always, but I try. If I bring a smile to someone once in a while, that means as much to me as sharing a great link or insightful remark. For me it's purposeful, in the same way kibitzing in a staff room or with your friends is purposeful. Some call it social grooming. 

The whole notion of the word "social" and education is difficult to grasp when your experience with learning has been anything but social and void of fun. So rather than have people scared off immediately or having them figure it out eventually, I wondered if there was some way to give people a heads up, a twitter trailer if you will, on what they'll get should they decide to follow me. 

So I created this:

Using ifttt, new followers get a direct message asking them to take 90 seconds to preview the goods. I worried a little if it would come across as spammy or invasive. I still wonder that but I've received some great feedback from people saying they really appreciated the heads up. I even had one person say that really only were interested in the educational side of things and if they found my content too out of place for them, they'd unfollow. Fair enough. 

While I could have had a link to my blog, that to me, seemed spammy. The blog isn't a great reflection of my whole self. My blog is much more about my reflection and thinking as well as dumping ground of thoughts. Twitter is the blur of personal and professional. I realize everyone uses it differently and that's fine. The fact that I used a video and people hear my voice and see my face adds another layer of connection. I much prefer people's faces in their avatars. If I've heard them speak, I read their tweets with their voices, accents and all. 

So a month into this little experiment and I'm pleased with the feedback. It's likely a trade off, with a few people put off, thinking it's a little narcissistic, and maybe it is. But the pay off of potentially more informed and even more connected folks is worth it to me. 

Kind of reminds me of lots of learning we do. Sometimes good enough is good enough. Say that in schools and someone is bound to scream "Blasphemy!" Shouldn't we always ask our students to excel, to do their best, to aim high? I don't think so. Some of you are reading that right now in horror. I don't think it's that bad. Not every learning is about passion. I'm not passionate about guitar. I like it. I'm glad I learned something about it and will continue to play but for right now, it's good enough. We need to give ourselves permission to tell that to kids sometimes. Not every assignment, every subject needs to involve what we call "their best". For teachers, "their best" is simply about giving it more time. I gave as much time as I wanted to this project. With the time I had I explored many ways to learn. I acknowledge in many episodes I may not have chosen the best, most efficient path to learning. But I was okay with that. That's part of learning too. I think when we ask students to do their best we ought to qualify that to reference time. With the time we have we don't want to waste it but in many cases, teachers are upset because students didn't give something more time. Consider that our students' time and attention is being sought from at least 5 different teachers/subjects, not to mention extracurricular and interests and duties outside of school. 

We all make choices of how and where we'll give our attention. Instead of lamenting about not giving something more time, perhaps we need to accept that sometimes good enough is good enough. And perhaps we need to give our students license to do so as well. 

So with that here's the last episode. It's good enough. 

I learned about Dan McLaughlin about 6 months ago and have been following his progress to become a top level golfer. Dan never played 18 holes of golf before this. He doesn't consider himself particularly athletic so this is a huge learning curve. My own passion for the game makes this fascinating for me but even if you don't care for the game, you have to admit this is interesting. He's about a fifth of the way through his journey. It's going to take 5 years and for Dan he equates it with Graduate studies. His blog and website answer the basic questions about why, the money and the journey to date. I'd suggest you watch this video for some more background.

The great thing about social media is the ability you have to connect with people. Duh. Given my personal learning project and my students, I thought it would be great to hear from someone who is really venturing out. So I simply tweeted him asking if he'd be willing to chat with me for a few minutes. He agreed. There's a brief moment where Dan's video freezes but the audio stays in tact throughout the interview. Here's our 20 minute conversation. 

Isn't learning and the internet pretty awesome? 

Where's the joy? I'm a bit disappointed to see a lack of joy in my own student's learning projects. It could be my fault, I'm not sure. But for me I find great joy in this learning. I picked my project and love the process. I wish that for my students. Why isn't there joy? Maybe my forcing them to pick something to learn isn't very joyful. Then again, they're going to spending much of their life helping others to learn, I would hope they could find joy in their own learning.  Anyway, thanks for watching, I hope you can at least laugh at me or hopefully laugh with me as I learn. 

Here's five more of my students. Ask them about joy or anything. 5 minutes to encourage a future teacher would likely be a good investment of your time and theirs. 

Adam…learning to climb

Colby….relearning piano

Kaylen…learning to speak French

Justin…learning Python, the programming language

I’m on a mission.

In case you haven’t noticed, high schools often represent the most traditional, stagnant educational spaces. The very structure of that world from the segregated subjects, focus on content, credit acquisition, departmental/state testing all join forces to make change difficult.

In our school district, our High School Learning Support Team is tasked with supporting our high schools in a variety of ways. In particular we face many teachers struggling with student engagement. We have great conversations about the changes that could help these teachers and classrooms move forward but recognize that us simply telling them how they might change may not be the most well received approach. They need to see others in action, thinking differently and making a difference in student’s lives.

They are out there. Sometimes they aren’t easy to find but they’re there. Teachers and schools who stare those structures in the face and decide to challenge them. They do so only because they know its best for kids. It’s much easier to continue on, not make waves and seek compliance. In some cases, their efforts are celebrated and even supported by leadership and in other cases, they do so in hopes no one finds out. In other cases they don’t even realize what they are doing but just do innovative things instinctively. These are the positive deviants.

The Power of Positive Deviance is about finding people and ideas that are making a difference but are happening without an awareness of what they’re doing different from their peers.

As a leader in a school district I do believe much of this exists internally but I also am interested in discovering these folks no matter where they reside. For High Schools here are a couple of great examples of deviance.

The Classics Academy

Here’s the 15 minute documentary of their program.

The Innovation Lab

This was an experiment that I heard about before but spend several hours on the weekend examining their work. Monika Hardy and team are doing some fascinating things. It’s a multi-faceted approach to personal and passion based learning built around the idea that “nothing is for everyone”. There’s some really thoughtful work that’s gone into this and they are in their 2nd year of implementation. The documentation of this is outstanding. Videos, writing, presentations and student work is all available. I’d encourage folks to spend some time exploring. Share this with others. 

The Independent Project

Just watch the video and discuss.

Project Based Learning in Prairie South 

In my own district we’ve got some teachers making some inroads in attacking the system. This video is a couple of years old but these same teachers are continuing their work and I may need to make another video showcasing their work.

While in the true sense of the word “deviance” these may not be pure examples. These teachers aren’t doing things in private and they’ve done a fair bit of thinking before jumping in. However in the larger context of traditional education, they indeed represent the deviants. Lest you missed the link to technology, these efforts wouldn't be possible without it. In many cases their links are explicit:

Technology is a vital part of The Academy. Students and teachers bring in personal devices or borrow iPads provided by the school. The iPads enrich the educational experience and prepare the seniors for their entry into college. Latin teacher Mr. Gutkowski said, “The instant access to the Internet revolutionizes the way information is used in class.” The essential use of technology, within MHS, also allows for interesting classroom discussions, quick note-taking and the ability to access information from the Internet thereby enhancing overall classroom dialogue.

Who are the deviants in your school or district? Find them and help tell their stories.

Here's another 5 of my students that could use your encouragement. Whether you are an expert in any of these, leave a comment…better yet, leave them a great question. 

Mofizur….learning to cook

Linsey…learning Wii game Super Smash Bros.

Trina….developing webquests

Stacey…learning sign language

Rebecca….learning to draw

This video showcases a new little strumming drill I learned as well as highlight some others diving into a musical learning project. 

• Shannon Smith
• Alan Levine
• Bryan Jackson

If you want to participate in helping others with their learning project, considering gifting one or more of my students with a little comment, whether or not you're an expert in any of these fields, a kind word of encouragement can go miles in helping them realize that learning in public is a good thing. 

​Dan…learning to make sushi

Danielle…learning to sew

Jeneane….learning sign language

Jennie…learning to read Chinese

Josh.…learning graphic design

Watching my students struggle through this in varying projects, I likely have to revise the project but I truly believe in this process. If you're so inclined, leaving a comment or two on their blogs would be great. I'll highlight 5 of them today and share another 5 next week.

• Cole….learning Japanese
• Nicole…learning crochet
• Hillary…learning meditation
• Edgar….learning Assassin's Creed
• Courtney….learning to draw

​Any comments for them would be truly appreciated.

These updates really serve two purposes. One is for me. Like the before picture when you go on a diet, these videos will one day serve to remind me just how brutal I once was. I have no illusions of grandeur but continue to desire to be able to play for personal enjoyment. In that sense, I've already achieved it to a small degree. Documenting my learning via video is a useful and easy way to track progress. Outside of jotting down a few ideas to reflect upon, it's totally impromptu. I know, it's hard to tell.

Lesson 1
Lesson 2
Lesson 3

The second purpose is for modeling. I'm hopefully showing my students that learning is hard but fun and that being a reflective practitioner is something that will serve them well as they progress in their careers as life long learners. And teachers too. 

I suppose there's a third purpose or outcome here is to demonstrate that by sharing your learning you open up the opportunity for others to join with you and teach. That people would take time to watch me struggle and offer support and advice is an illustration of using technology in transformational ways and is amazing. And when I say amazing, I mean amazing. 

So here I am, still looking for support and moving forward.

As you may know if you frequent here regularly, I'm learning to play the guitar. In the list of "awesome things that have happened to me because I post stuff online" this ranks right up there. Brandt Schneider a music teacher from Connecticut is having his class teach me. That's right, my own personal instructors. Here they are:

Brandt's faced a few issues getting the entire site public but I've been able to watch a few of their videos and it's been outstanding. I look forward to learning more with them and will certainly tell their story in more detail later.  File that under "awesome". 

The song I'm trying to learn is "Heart of Gold" by Neil Young. it's actually a law that every Canadian learning guitar has to learn that song. I was watching a young Neil performing the song from 1971 on youtube and listened to they way he set up the song. 

I don't know as much about the man as I'd like and for whatever reason went to the Charlie Rose site to see if he'd been interviewed. Sure enough there was an interview from 2008 where Young talks about his writing process. I found that fascinating as he seems able to churn out songs in a very short period of time. Contrary to many writers who labor for a long time as they craft a song, Young seems to live off the inspiration and energy of the moment. 

As I continued to listen he began talking about his desire to do something about his convictions about peace and for him in comes in developing a vehicle that uses alternative fuels. Listen to the way he describes collaboration and the power of the internet.

Now I really want to learn to play "Heart of Gold". I love a good rabbit hole. 

Okay, so that makes should make you think.

Here's what I'm thinking. I wrote this piece for the Huffington Post last year and so you don't' have to read the whole thing here's where that post relates to the video above.

Our current system and structure fights personalized learning with nearly every new policy and protocol it can generate. The system craves standardization while we desperately need customization. These competing ideals butt heads constantly and for those teachers who do believe in personalizing learning, they live in perpetual frustration……While I'm busy advocating for changes that might support an education that fuels and fosters students' passions, I worry that we lose sight of what a liberal education is all about. They don't know what they don't know. Providing students with broad experiences that invites them to develop a variety of skills, understand and appreciate diverse perspectives and potentially uncover hidden talents and interests speaks to a fairly well accepted purpose of school.

Just like google and facebook, progressive education seeks to find what students are interested in and facilitate learning that acknowledges their passion. I don't think Google or Facebook has nefarious intentions other than to make your experience "better" and to make a little money along the way.  I'm not particularly interested in arguing that point here but certainly upon first glance we'd see what they do as useful and good. The tension between feeding you and your passions and exposing you to ideas and things that you either don't like or have never even heard of is increasing. I think the secret lies in empowering individuals and leaders to at least be aware of the dangers of being intentional of avoiding routines and comfort on occasion. 

There's really a great deal to think about here and you likely have some thoughts of your own. Enlighten me. Thank you. 

I'm not sure why I'm calling these lessons, since they really aren't anything more than me reflecting and updating my progress. I don't think it shows much on the video but I feel decent about my progress. Certainly it's not like the rapid and immediate feedback of a video game but I'm hearing songs in my head. I really have to focus on chord transitions as you can tell. Of course as I watch guitarists do their thing I keep thinking "How in the world?". The more I learn, the more I understand and appreciate their skill and craft. It's the same way I look at professional golfers. And yet, like golf, every once in a while you play the chord perfectly and you're encouraged. 

So, keep those cards and letters and comments coming, any suggestions on specifics to work on? 

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/evilmutent/384401502 by Hugochisholm

As per usual, when I come up with an idea, I don't always have it all mapped out and don't foresee potential pitfalls. One student suggested she wanted to get in better physical shape. We had a brief discussion about how that may not fit with the spirit of the project as it needs to have a fair degree of cognitive processing and reflection. We discussed that learning a skill or discipline like yoga may be a better fit as it requires you to think and learn as opposed to simply creating a habit. I'm not sure I offered her the right language but I know I need to be more clear about what I mean by learning. Given this is the first go, I hope to repeat the process again with students and will undoubtedly learn lessons.

My own learning is being documented via video. Students can choose any means by which to reflect. I hope the reflections include personal struggles and triumphs but also examination of the experience itself as  a student. Thinking about learning. 

Here's me after 2 weeks of learning the guitar. 

As you can see, I've got a long ways to go but that's okay, I like learning stuff, being doing it since 1964, (see what did there?)

It's been said and discussed often here and many places that a real shift for educators is moving from teacher to learner. Not so much moving, we still need teachers, expertise matters but until we see ourselves as learners and intentionally show are students we can't be the educator our students need us to be. 

Last week I began my ECMP 355 course with largely freshman pre-service teachers. My usual introduction to my course reminds them that they are the winners of education. They were successful students because they were largely compliant and knew how to survive and thrive in a system that values a "mind your own business" style of learning. Do what you're told, when you're told to, and you'll be fine. Learning isn't very self directed in this system. Students wait to be told what to learn.

I'm trying to get them to consider something new. I truly believe that the best coaches in sports aren't usually the best athletes. They are often the bench players, backups and lesser known players who end up becoming the best coaches because they truly understand and can break down the subtleties  of the game.  Understanding not only how you learn but being able to articulate it and express it is a skill I'm not convinced all our teachers have. 

Last year i read Ewan's post about a 100 hour challenge. I tucked that post away because I knew I'd come back to it. So with that idea in mind, I'm asking my students to take 25-50 hours and learn something new. While Ewan's goals were somewhat different, I want my students to explore a few things.

1. Learn a skill, concept or idea you know very little or nothing about but that you're interested in learning

2. Document the learning. Write about it, video tape, audio record, whatever.

3. Consider all the sources you use to learn. Collect those resources. 

4. Take a early baseline snapshot of your understand at the beginning and another one at the end. Compare and analyze. 

That's it. As the quote above says, make your learning transparent.  I've never done a project like this with students before. it's not really about technology and yet it will be as students share their learning and consider people who can be their teachers. I feel like I need to participate in this as well. So I decided that I'd like to learn to play the guitar. I love music, have some musical background but have never learned to play the guitar. Starting with my daughter as one of my teachers, I completed my first lesson.

I'm really looking forward to my own learning but also watching others learn as well. If you have any ideas on how to make this idea/project better, let me know.

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/langwitches/3500044331

When you take 35 minutes of interviews and try to condense it to around 5 minutes, you risk leaving out key ideas or making ideas flow. I used snippets from her blog to frame the video and then allowed her and her students to speak more directly about their experiences.  There may be some who see her as being critical but her critique is much more about a faulty system and paradigm than about teachers.  I hope this video can be used to elicit some discussion. 

On a side note, the reason it has (revised) in the title because my first cut was over 8 minutes and needed some cleaning up. Thanks to Ben Grey and a few others who offered some detailed and important feedback I was able to get it to this point. I can say enough about the need and power of feedback, particularly when tackling a project like this that takes several hours to create. 

Last year I challenged myself to name all my photos of the day with a one word title and not repeating a word in the process. That was somewhat difficult but kept things interesting. The use of the daily shoot has been very useful for some, but I only use it sparingly since my priority is capturing our lives. For whatever reason, I decided that for 2010, I would attach a song to every photo of the day. That was not only challenging but time consuming and maybe even bordering on stupid. The stupid part comes from the fact that I know that at the end of the year, I take my photos and compile them into a video. (see 2008 and 2009) The video is something as a family we treasure more than any year end newsletter or summary could ever provide. The mix of significant, trivial and eventful photos truly give a sense of a year. The storytelling is indeed personal and leads to more stories that exist behind many images. In the past I've simply brought the images into imovie and added a soundtrack. Still it was a fair bit of work but nothing like I went through this year. I knew this as I began in January and intended to create a monthly video which I did for the first three months. Then I fizzled out and relinquished using a good part of my Christmas vacation to work on the project. 

So after approximately 24 hours of work, it's complete. 

A couple of footnotes:

• There are not exactly 365 photos. I cross check my flickr photos and iphoto library and invariably miss a day or so a month, and some months have an extra photo. As you can see it's not as precise as one would assume. I think I have about 359 photos. The past 2 years I spent time making sure I hadn't missed. 
• I unintentionally used the same song twice on 2 occasions. 
• Many of the songs won't make sense. Some of the songs are inside jokes/stories or just lame efforts as I ran out of creative juices. 
• I use Audacity to cut the songs, imovie to create the monthly videos and Final Cut Express to compile it. I did use FCE to edit February and so you may see a few different motion paths. 
• I used my iphone more than ever this year. Particularly after I upgraded to the iphone 4, it does an excellent job. When I discovered HDR, i went a little nuts for a while. Thus the higher number of sky/landscape images this year. 
• Continuing my association with others doing the same project is essential. i love seeing their photos from both a technical standpoint as well as a personal one. I even created a twitter account to feed all their photos there. I never post to it, only subscribe and have my contacts feed into it. 

I don't expect anyone to take 45 minutes and essentially watch a home movie but perhaps there's some inspiration, creativity you can use in the future even if you just watch parts of it. It's quite a visual and auditory onslaught I must admit. Not sure it's very artful but certainly unique. 

 I'm never likely to do this again but it did provide some creative juice for me throughout the year. I'm still thinking about a theme for 2011. Guaranteed it won't be this taxing. 

And now you know.

After watching this video, I must say I question what we emphasize in our schools. 

I have to guess that if we empowered our students to be healthy, active citizens, the benefits to learning would be huge. I actually don't we have to guess, it's pretty much been proven over and over. I fear it's literally going to take kids dying from heart disease and obesity to make us change. That's a little sad.

Photos

I use iphoto to organize and edit photos. For the photo a day project, I use the 365/10 tag and create a Smart Album to find them easier. I also upload to Flickr and the tags are retained. I don't worry too much about adding them to the set in flickr but I do that manually inside flickr. I wonder if I could eliminate a step there. Fortunately when I access the photos in iMovie, they are in chronological order so I can grab them all at once and drag them in. Currently I cross check the number of photos in my flickr set and inside iphoto to insure I haven't missed a day or forgot to tag them properly. Usually about once a month I do this and so far I'm bang on. As far as editing, I realize Aperture is much more powerful but I've been satisfied with basic touchups using iPhoto.

Audio

To find a song title for each photo is not really a big deal. I typically have one come to mind right away. Once in a while I leave it for a day until one comes to mind or I've farmed out the task to my twitter followers and they usually find something really good. Once I come up with the song I check youtube for it. Youtube is a great place to find music. I'll add the hyperlink to my flickr description. If I don't already have the song, I'll use this site to download the song. I don't keep the song but take it to Audacity and find 6-10 seconds of the song to use in my year end montage. I'm not sure of copyright infringement but I may well be violating it. Clipping the songs takes a fair bit of time since I don't do that everyday. Thus far I'll I've done it about 4-5 times where I'll clip a batch of songs in the evenings.

The real time consuming part comes from creating the soundtrack. At first I tried using iMovie to edit the audio song by song. This wasn't very good as I needed to crossfade the songs and iMovie isn't very good with multiple audio tracks. I switched to Final Cut but the challenge comes with the photos as it's more time consuming to add any type of pan and zoom to images. I decided to use Audacity to create a soundtrack. Bringing in each song clip and lining them up allowed me a high level of control. 

The soundtrack is indeed the most important element of this project and adjusting image duration would be much easier than trying to tweak the music. I exported it out as a mixed down mp3 file. I'm going to try and create 12 files, one for each month. Having 30 tracks in Audacity is a bit taxing on my computer so I think it's best to create a monthly video and bring them together.

Video

As I mentioned, I wavered back and both between imovie and Final Cut. While I'm getting more comfortable with FC, iMovie handles images really well. I first changed the project preferences to have each image 8 seconds in duration which is about the average length of each. The longest I have in my March video was 13 seconds and the shortest about 5. I also turned off the Ken Burns effect and simply used it for a few photos rather than every one. 

That's a quick overview of the workflow. It took a bit of trial and error to get it right. The audio was definitely the most time consuming. To create that March soundtrack took me 3-4 hours alone. I'm going to try and do a bit more before the end of the year to avoid an overwhelming amount of work. I'm pretty pleased with the results. Any tips you have to improve this are welcome.

I’m not convinced the idea of short tutorials works in all disciplines but certainly it does for Math and Science. As much as this body of work is impressive for the content, I’m more impressed by the passion and joy Sal gains from helping others learn. In addition the form factor here is worth exploring.  If you skipped the video go back and watch it and perhaps you can answer the following:

What are the implications here? Could a student learn Algebra with this without attending a high school class? What does it make us rethink when it comes to school and learning?

From a storytelling perspective, I struggled with this one. I have about 90 minutes of footage including about 65 minutes of interviews. Trying to edit that down to something that captures the essence of a story without leaving out any key ideas is challenging. I also had difficulty finding a style that would work.

As you can see, I decided to write a short narrative to provide some background at the beginning and also included another short description in between. After spending the hours I did on this over a 4 month period, it’s hard to tell if you’ve communicated the message you intended. I hope I have.

This video is of a local women who has terminal cancer. It’s challenging and a little nerve racking to be working with such a sensitive subject. The intent is obviously to tell her story in a clear and concise way and at the same time evoke the emotion that will get people to open up their wallets.

I Have Cancer from shareski on Vimeo.

I thought I’d take some time to reveal some of the reasoning and thought behind my production/design choices. I’ve always believed and have been taught that nothing should be random so hopefully I can address those choices.

Trimming

The raw interview was about 12 minutes. I had a goal of getting the interview under 5 minutes. Determing what to cut was difficult. This is where you need an unbias eye to see if you’ve captured a coherent story. I had my wife watch the first cut to see if the story was clear. This is crucial since it’s often hard to remove yourself from the knowledge you have of the entire footage.

Camera Positions

When doing interviews I prefer to have the camera slightly off centre. The interviewer in this case is sitting slightly to the left of the camera. It’s actually farther off centered that I prefer but without moving too much furniture around, it’s the best I could do. I shot the main footage with a Sony HD camera. The second camera is simply my Canon SD 780 still camera that shoots in HD. The use of a second camera is always a plus and in this case I think it helps the viewer see the setting of the interview and get a sense of being present. The split screen view makes that clear.

Transitions

The transitions between shots using the flowers and backyard footage has two purposes. First you see the subject and interviewer in a casual setting which provides context and background information to the interview. I rarely show the interviewer since they aren’t really part of the story. In this case I wanted to reveal a sense of friendship. Although you never see the interviewer ask a question, I’m hoping the transition video makes that clear. I switch to using the flowers in transitions to represent the beauty of life. The whole idea of a transition between scences is done to allow the viewer time to feel the impact and emotion of the story. It seems that for me the greater the emotion, the longer the transitions. In this case I would have lengthened the transitions even more in some cases but wanted the entire project to be under 5 minutes so I had to trim some of them.

Audio

I can’t stress enough the importance of a microphone for interviews. I have a bluetooth, wireless mic that works wonders in all sorts of environments. The air conditioner was humming in the background but the quality of this mic eliminated external sounds. This also allows me to easily add background audio withouth having to a lot of tweaking. The music, which I found on Jamendo (my new favourite Creative Commons source) is used to provide a delicate, soft backdrop to the story. I sampled dozens of instrumental music but was thinking piano as the core instrument. Music can certainly be overdone and I sampled until I found the one that best fit the piece.

Special Effects

5 minutes of "talking head’ can be a bit much. I’ve rarely seen it done effectively. If I’d had more time or had more ownership of the project, I would have liked more "b-roll" footage. In order to provide interest I used the dual camera and split screens. Again, these are done with purpose. The viewer gets a sense of place and hopefully adds to the intimacy. I used a bit of slow motion on the pan of the family photos. This was done as much to cover up the use of a handheld pan. There are a number of interesting filters in Final Cut Express which may have been interesting but time and the fact they have to be rendered each time to view them made that less desirable. I will need to explore them more to understand how they might enhance future projects.

The story is still the key. However these other elements represent the design and as I’ve mentioned many times, cannot be separated from the final product. I hope these insights are useful and certainly am open to critique of my choices. I just wanted to be transparent and explicit with how and why I did what I did.

Schools are text snobs. Most people reading this are text snobs. Our institutions are built around the written word. That in itself is not bad and we owe much of our culture, knowledge and understanding to the written word. It’s not our fault, we’ve been living in a world that up until a few years ago, only offered us to easily produce content via the written word. But like the revolution of the printing press, we are in the midst of a revolution of a digital nature that’s allowing us to easily create and consume context in many different forms, specifically audio, video and imagery.

So what are our schools doing to address this? I’d say for the most part very little. I must say I’m please to note that many curricula, are beginning to address this gap. In fact my own Saskatchewan Curriculum identifies these six strands as the cornerstone of the English Language Arts Curriculum: Reading, Writing, Speaking, Listening and Viewing and Representing. All are considered equal but take a wild guess as to which ones receive the bulk of the attention? No doubt that many standardized tests and assessments focus solely on reading and writing and thus perpetuate the lack of attention on the other four. But even those who are building vast digital footprints and experience the power of publishing and connecting are doing so mostly via text. Believe me, I don’t want to discount its importance and value. Writing and the written word will always hold a prominent place in our understanding and experience of life but I’m concerned over the limited use of video, audio and even imagery among teachers and leaders in our schools and in particular those who have created and are developing an online presence.

(This post continues with the following video)

(And now some audio)

In general, schools have placed writing ahead of other forms of expression. Writing is what is measured and what is valued. As we consider the changing of the guard of modern communication.  The recent marketing ploy by the Australian government to find someone to be the caretaker of an island illustrates the shifting of communication skills. Instead of simply asking applicants to write an essay, they were to submit a video to sell themselves. Consider this quote by Stephen Downes.

OK, these are videos for that contest to live on an Australian island (the contest was probably the public relations coup of the year). They are, of course, creative and imaginative and effective. Now for the kicker: ten years ago, not one student in a hundred, nay, one in a thousand, could have produced videos like this. It’s a whole new skill, a vital and important skill, and one utterly necessary not simply from the perspective of creating but also of comprehending video communication today. Some people out there

Marco Torres get a great deal of credit and is seen as an extraordinary educator. Not that he isn’t but part of the reason Torres gets the attention is the fact that very few teachers/schools allow students to create and express themselves with video. I’d love for this to change. We need more Marco Torres’. The challenge is that most teachers who have developed their online presence is largely because of their ability to write. This continues the bias towards text over other mediums. We need kids that can write, tell a story, engage in a coherent, interesting conversation and tell stories with still and moving images. Shouldn’t we be modeling this? Who’s going to teach them?

The concept of student involved assessment is hard to deny as a powerful learning practice. Students taking care of their own learning and being able to use meta-cognition to dissect understanding and progress and seek ideas and support to learn more. The work of Rick Stiggins and others provides extensive research into this practice as the most important component leading to student achievement.

Whether or not you’ve done any study of this concept, this video does more than about anything I’ve seen recently to support this notion. (via Will Richardson)

I apologize if youtube is blocked at your school but allow me to offer some insights as to why this is a great example of student involved assessment at its best.

First the young boy demonstrates what he already knows. Using a simple video camera he models and speaks to his current level of understanding. Second he identifies what he doesn’t know, not simply by saying he doesn’t know but by offering some suggestions about what might be wrong but questioning his methodology. And here’s where it gets interesting. Instead of him floundering around with the people in his local vicinity who may not be able to help him he reaches out. Reading the comments below the video you’ll see at this writing 10 comments that are very likely going to allow him to learn more. Lest you think this is some obscure example, the first time I viewed this there were only just over 100 views. That’s pittance in youtube terms. Anyone can get 100 views but that’s all it took for learning to happen.

I do know that a teacher helped him learn this. I don’t if that "teacher" works in a school but he definitely was taught. It’s not simply a matter of posting a video and awaiting responses, this video was tagged and categorized very well. Without this understanding, it’s unlikely that he would get 10 quality answers. It’s not at all surprising to me that people are willing to share their knowledge and help him out. I experience that everyday as part of living in a connected way via social networks.

This represents some of the best ways to help classroom teachers and students understand the power and value of technology. I realize this boy never thought much about what he was doing with technology beyond helping him figure out how to start a fire. As a teacher it would be very easy to assess his understanding but more importantly HE COULD assess his understanding and create his own path to learn more. Now, what if all kids did this?