Simple Video Production with Windows Movie Maker

IMPORT CLIPS
In this step you tell Movie Maker the location of the video clips that you will use to make the movie.

1. Open Windows Movie Maker (start, programs, windows movie maker)
2. Click “Import Video” under movie tasks to left
3. Use the drop down menu to browse to location of video clips (this will often be the Y: drive, look for “jontemplates on ‘acsfs2′ (Y:)”
4. Uncheck the box that says “create clips for video files”
5. Select clips (you can select several at the same time)
6. Click import
7. Wait, then move on to Sequence

SEQUENCE CLIPS
In this step you get your video clips in the right order.

1. Identify location of clips. Change Collections in the toolbar to see all your video clips
2. Preview clips in play back window to right
3. Drag and drop clips to storyboard; move to correct order
4. Save frequently
5. Preview storyboard in playback window
6. Once you get all your clips in order move on to effects, transitions and titles

SAVE MOVIE
Once your movie is ready you have one more step, Finish the Movie. This is kind of like the publishing step in the writing process; you make a final nice copy to share with other people. In this step Windows Movie Maker is going to collected all your pieces of video and any effects or titles and combine it all into one nice tidy file.

1. Make sure you have save the project before going on, this step crashes the computer sometimes
2. Click “Save to my computer” under Finish Movie to left
3. Type a name for the finished movie file (it does not have to be the complete title, it can be short)
4. Click browse
5. Navigate to “My Documents” and put the movie somewhere inside
6. Click OK
7. Click next
8. WAIT, this one may take a while
9. Done!

How to Record Sound Effects from a Website with Audacity

Start by planning. What sound effects will you need? It may help to list search terms you will use to find sound effects:

These directions will only work when you do NOT have the USB headset plugged in.

1. open audacity, minimize

2. go to the “free sound project” website http://www.freesound.org/index.php

3. search for a sound (use the search box, listen so results with triangle)

4. once you locate a sound you want to record, bring audacity back up

5. mute all tracks

6. change recording source from “microphone” to “wave out” or “wave out mix” (this is in the toolbar, just below and to right of the play, record, etc)

7. press record

8. bring up the freesound page, press play

9. let audacity record the sound, you may want to record it several times to make sure you get a good copy

10. use copy and paste to move the sound to the correct part of the recording

Global Scholars Resources on Learn NC

LearnNC has put out another collection of lesson plans that will work well for Global Scholars. These lessons can be found here: http://blogs.learnnc.org/blog/2009/01/21/new-world-cultures-lesson-plans-incorporating-multimedia/

There are 4 lessons on this page, 3 of which fit elementary curriculum very well:

• Comparing pottery traditions from around the world
• “Motor Car and Galimoto” An intercultural lesson in pragmatism, creativity, and perseverance, in which students read about a young boy in Malawi, Africa, and his quest to gather wire in order to make a toy car
• Studying ecosystems in the mountains in Nepal

LearnNC has an ever growing collection of  lesson plans that incorporate rich multimedia from around the world. Right now they have 19 lessons with more on the way. You will find the lessons here: http://www.learnnc.org/search?project_ID=20&ed_type=lesson+plan,teacher%27s+guide.

The lessons all make use of LearnNCs rich collection of multimedia from around the world which can be found here: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4162.

21 Classes for Student Blogging

I have started using 21classes for student blogging. It has some features that I really like. If you have seen it before,
take another look, it is now much better than when I first saw it.

http://21classes.com/

Things I like about 21Classes:

• Good privacy settings
• Easy to use – less features than some blog tools but what is there is easy for students
• No student email required
• Simple account creation
• Some customization allowed
• Allows some HTML, including embedding images and videos
• All student blogs are connected through the teacher’s blog
• Teacher’s blog is “portal to classroom blog community”
• It is easy for student to find and comment on one anothers’ blogs

Things I don’t like about 21 Classes:

• Lack of features
• Not as attractive as some
• Free accounts only get 2 megs of storage

Inauguration Resources

Tuesday, Jan. 20, 2009 is Presidential Inauguration Day. This is a particularly historic inauguration. Are your students interested in all the attention President-elect Barack Obama has been getting? Are they interested in learning more about presidents, inauguration and government?

Here are some resources to use in the classroom for showing the historical importance of the inauguration.

From Scholastic – http://www2.scholastic.com/browse/article.jsp?id=3750809 This lesson plan is designed to To help students understand the President’s responsibilities and encourage interest in civic participation. It includes a review of the oath of office, poetry, and inaugural address writing.

Hotchalk has a collection of videos from 25 past presidential inaugural addresses here: http://www.hotchalk.com/mydesk/index.php/editorial/130-special-features/526-25-inaugural-addresses

Time For Kids has an article on past inaugurations: http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/teachers/wr/article/0,27972,93530,00.html . As well as a recent edition dedicated to Barack Obama http://www.timeforkids.com/TFK/teachers/wr/0,27955,081114,00.html

C-SPAN has a compare and contrast lesson idea based on a collection of inaugural addresses from George Washington, Abraham Lincoln, Franklin D. Roosevelt, John F. Kennedy, and  George W. Bush. The lesson is aimed at middle or high school students, but could be adapted for younger students. http://www.c-span.org/classroom/govt/inauguration.asp

Brief rundown of what the inauguration is, what happens on a timeline, etc. can be found here: http://www.elcivics.com/presidential-inauguration.html. This page includes a link to a “Barack Obama Timeline Worksheet” reading comprehension activity.

Here is a SMART Board Notebook file that covers the steps to the presidential election and the inauguration. It includes the oath of office and the vocabulary in the oath. http://theinnovativeeducator.wikispaces.com/file/view/Inauguration+Day+.notebook

Learn NC has a collection of Inauguration resources here: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/4900

Library of Congress American Memory Project collection – this site has a vast collection of historical images and documents. Here are some of their resources relating to past inaugurations. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/piwi00.html this page has images from the inaugurations of  George Washington, James Buchanan, Abraham Lincoln, and Woodrow Wilson. http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/pihtml/pinotable.html is a list of notable events sourounding past inaugurations.

The District of Columbia’s site dedicated to the inauguration: http://inauguration.dc.gov/index.asp. You will find information about the actual event in D.C. here.

Public School Insights website has a big listing of inauguration related materials, http://www.publicschoolinsights.org/inauguration, including lesson plans and writing contests.

Want to be President for a Day? Try this from PBSKids http://pbskids.org/democracy/presforaday it lets you see the kinds of things a president does and how busy the job is.

Virtual Tour of the Whitehouse: http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/whtour/

Kiva for Global Scholars

Kiva – Loans that Change Lives [http://www.kiva.org/] is a micro-lending website. On the site you can browse through a listing of entrepreneurs to find someone that needs a small loan to break out of poverty. In their words:

We Let You Loan to the Working Poor

Kiva’s mission is to connect people through lending for the sake of alleviating poverty.

Kiva is the world’s first person-to-person micro-lending website, empowering individuals to lend directly to unique entrepreneurs in the developing world.

Kiva is a great way to find a Global Scholar service learning project. You can find someone half way around the world  and loan them money. The website has pictures of the entrepreneurs as well as descriptions of their project or business. As they repay the loan you get updates on their business. When the loan is re-payed you can donate the money to Kiva, withdraw it, or loan it back out.

Groups of poeple can come together to make teams on Kiva. There is already an educator team at http://www.kiva.org/community/viewTeam?team_id=2992.

If a few classes at a school wanted to sponsor a loan you could make a school team.

Visual Poetry

PicLits Beach Haiku

PicLits [http://www.piclits.com/compose_dragdrop.aspx] is a beautiful new web site that could support poetry, creative writing, or really any descriptive writing.

PicLits.com is a creative writing site that matches beautiful images with carefully selected keywords in order to inspire you. The object is to put the right words in the right place and the right order to capture the essence, story, and meaning of the picture.

There is a vast library of compelling images that you can browse through. Find one that moves you and write about it. This could be a great way to teach poems, haiku, etc.

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Office 2007 Resources

Office 2007 offers many improvements to make your work easier, faster, and more efficient. You just have to put in some time and energy to learn how to get the most out of the improvements.

Ofice Button

One of the biggest changes is the file menu. It is gone. Well not really gone, but replaced with the Office Button. You will find save, print, open and many of the other file menu tools under the Office button. Things are rearranged a bit, for example if you are looking for page set up (to switch from portrait to landscape) you go Office button > Print preview > Page layout. Or you can use the Page Layout ribbon.

Read more the Office button in Microsoft’s article “What happened to the File menu?“

Office 2007 Ribbon

The ribbon system is another major interface change. Many common tasks that used to be on various toolbars are now more easily accessed through tabbed ribbons. Read more about the ribbon system in Microsoft’s article “Use the Ribbon“.

Many people find Office 2007 intuitive to use. Spend a few minutes getting oriented with the Office button and the the ribbon system and then get busy. Try to insert and format a table in word or make graph in excel. It will take a few extra minutes to find things but it will be worth it. People that have been using 2007 for a while say they find things to be more logical and that they are more productive once they learn their way around.

Office 2007 Training Resources

Microsoft Office Word 2007 Quick Start Guide [http://www.customguide.com/pdf/word-quick-reference-2007.pdf] – This 2 page PDF would be useful as a hard copy sitting by your computer as you get used to the new Word, lots of information in a small package.

Microsoft Office Training Courses [http://office.microsoft.com/en-us/training/HA102255331033.aspx] – learn from the source, these are the official training courses from Microsoft, organized by application. These are very thorough and comprehensive, jump to the section you need.

Office 2007 How-Tos on the How-To Geek [http://www.howtogeek.com/tag/microsoft-office/] – This is a list of “How to” do specific tasks such as “Add Background Color To Word 2007 Documents” and “Add Background Pictures To Excel 2007 Worksheets“

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Lost Colony Resources

Roanoke Island is best known for its historical significance as the site of Sir Walter Raleigh’s attempt to establish a permanent English settlement with his Roanoke Colony in the late 16th century. The fate of the final group of colonists has yet to be ascertained, leading to the continuing interest in what became known as the “Lost Colony” for over 400 years.

-wikipedia Roanoke entry

LearnNC, as always, has an excellent collection of Lost Colony resources: http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/161 which includes the following list of resources, among others:

• Roanoke Island This is an informative web page about Roanoke Island, with links to pages about the Lost Colony and Sir Walter Raleigh.
• The Roanoke Voyages: A Mystery Story For Young People A detailed story written for kids about the Lost Colony. It is suitable for grades 4-6.
• More about the Lost Colony Detailed information from the North Carolina State Library.

The National Park Service has a mini-site called The Roanoke Voyages – A Mystery Story For Young People at http://www.nps.gov/archive/fora/voyage.htm that would be interesting reading.

How Do You Lose a Colony – this is a thorough and informative site that covers background information, people involved, theories, web links, and a resources page. This would be a good resource for students to use for research. [http://library.thinkquest.org/J002559/]

The nature of the mystery lends itself to having students act as investigators that come up with ideas of what happened. Students could review existing theories of what happened on Roanoke and then explain what they think happened.

A timeline is a good product idea, students could sequence events involved. There are excel templates that make timelines and there are free online timeline makers as well.

There are several webquests about the Lost Colonly out on the web. These are a good source of both project ideas, resources, and links. Here are a few to look at:

• http://oncampus.richmond.edu/academics/education/projects/webquests/roanoke/
• http://www.mcs.k12.nc.us/wq/rcooper/colony/task.htm

Thanksgiving

Turkey Time – here are a few great resources for Thanksgiving

Scholastic Thanksgiving [http://www.scholastic.com/scholastic_thanksgiving/] – Very complete and thorough site covering pilgrims, voyage, ships, native peoples, daily life, the actual Thanksgiving Feast, and more all on one interactive site that talks to you. This is an excellent resource. Learn about the First Thanksgiving on your SMART Board with note taking, L and ? post-its, features of non-fiction text, summarizing, etc comprehension lesson. The daily life section has a “compare and contrast” area that would work well with Venn Diagrams.

History of Thanksgiving [http://www.history.com/video.do?name=culture&bcpid=1681694254&bclid=1672079702&bctid=1586348651] – 3 minute video about the history of Thanksgiving that provides a concise overview.

Silly Turkey

Silly Turkey on Starfall [http://www.starfall.com/n/holiday /turkey/play.htm?f] – Early Readers will enjoy helping this turkey get silly.

LearnNC American Indian resource collection [http://www.learnnc.org/lp/pages/2778] – Resources for teaching about American Indians with a focus on North Carolina.

SMART Board Notebook file “Thanksgiving Word Fun” [http://www.education.smarttech.com/NR/rdonlyres/9D4D4EAA-332C-4A8E-BA95-A558E277B0BB/0/ThanksgivingDayWordFunUS.notebook]

Need more resources? try Thanksgiving at Pete’s PowerPoint Station [http://holidays.pppst.com/thanksgiving.html] – many teacher created PowerPoint presentations about Thanksgiving. Be sure to scroll down to the links…

Just for fun

Turkey Puzzle [http://www.billybear4kids.com/jigsaw-puzzles/animated/online/ThanksgivingTurkey.html]

More Puzzles [http://www.apples4theteacher.com/holidays/thanksgiving/jigsaw-puzzles/pilgrim-indian.html]

Turkeys Anagram game [http://www.akidsheart.com/animals/birds/turkeyangol.htm]

And a couple more games from Kaboose [http://holidays.kaboose.com/thanks-games.html]

Special thanks to Anne Marie from Talking SMART Boards