from The Mermaid - A Story about Restoration, Lowell High School
On June 10, the California Academy of Sciences hosted the first annual KQED Science Youth Media Festival. Young filmmakers with their friends and family came from all over the area to participate in a great showcase of over 20 videos about environmental issues. The videos ranged in a variety of environmental issues like air quality, greenhouse gases, water quality, ocean acidification, conservation, food justice, and sustainability. All selected videos were granted iTunes gift cards.
The festival showcased the videos under 5 categories: Water, Air, Food, Sustainability, and Conservation.
The jurors awarded three winning videos in both the high school and middle school age groups. The winners won Apple mobile devices. Below are the winners.
Each of the video players are playlists that host 3 videos, respectively. To view the other videos in the playlist, click on the text that says "Playlist" on the bottom of the player. A window will slide up and you can see the other videos. Click on one to view.
High school winners:
Middle school winners:
Congratulations to all of the accepted entries and winners of the festival. See you next year!
Please welcome arts educator Laura Echegaray to EdSpace. She recently participated in a KQED Education workshop where we spent a day at MoAD learning about historical representation through art and film, and later created short films at KQED about missing voices or stories in history. Laura created a film about the history of Salsa music and dance, with a focus on her home country of Puerto Rico.
Please welcome History teacher Rob Curry to Ed Space. He recently participated in our workshop where we spent a day at MoAD learning about historical representation through art and film, and later worked at KQED to create short films about missing voices or stories in history. Rob created a film about Willie Mays and the baseball legend's experience with prejudice in San Francisco.
Rob Curry: "The workshop was extremely helpful in developing an appreciation for the content of the exhibits at the Museum of the African Diaspora, as well as a way of learning to help my students create digital media projects as vehicles to more fully internalize their learning, and use higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy.
At MoAD, we learned that there were three African Diasporas. The first was the spread of all humans from the common origin in east Africa. The second African Diaspora was the transatlantic slave trade. The third and on-going African Diaspora is the continued exodus of Africans throughout the world.
The museum has on display a myriad of primary documents. I was very impressed by signed early editions of Phyllis Wheatley’s book of poetry and of Frederick Douglass’ Narratives of a Slave. These original copies of early literary masterpieces are featured as photos in my 8th grade students’ text books. To actually be able to see them, up close and in person, literally sent a chill up and down my spine.
Viewing KQED Spark videos, particularly about the Kerry James Marshall murals at SFMOMA, reinforced the impact of art in conveying ideas and motions. On the 2 days of the workshop at KQED, we were guided in combining the many components (images, music, text, narration) which go into the iMovie project. Having done this previously, I still needed practice. I now feel much more confident in creating these projects with my students."
In Rob's classroom, students will collect 10-15 images related to a person from African American or Women's History who rose above challenges and obstacles. Once images are initially arranged in iMovie or Windows Movie Maker, the students who take on script writer and the image gathering roles will work together to decide the final order of images and text or title screens. They will then work with the students working as audio editors to choose music and set up plans for the narration.
Thanks to Rob Curry for his participation in our workshop. We look forward to seeing his students' media projects in the future.
In our final Teacher Tech Training for the Summer, teachers learned how to create a slideshow with sound. They created Digital Postcards, similar to Audio Postcards, but now with images to accompany the soundtrack. They used the free web application JayCut to produce their projects. For many of the participants who came to our previous workshop were able to use their audio postcards as the foundation for their project. They only needed to then search for images that matched their narration and sequence them. For those who joined us for the first time had to write a narration script and record it into JayCut -- the application allows you to record audio directly from your computer. Pretty cool.
Here are the results of our teachers. Very awesome work!
The second round of teacher tech trainings introduces educators to sound recording and design for creating audio podcasts as a tool for learning elementary science. Teachers become familiar to different elements of sound, how to record narration, search for sounds online via google searching or downloading mp3 files from YouTube, and then using Audacity as a audio sequencer.
The in-class activity was for each participant to create an "audio postcard" of a natural place that is meaningful to her or him. They were to write a script that includes narration and two sound effects to enhance the podcast.
Here are the results from our participants. Most of them are still works in progress, but you will get an sense of what each educator is aiming to highlight.
The first round of teacher tech trainings introduces educators to slideshows as a tool for learning elementary science. Teachers become familiar to different forms of slideshows from KQED's QUEST -- some that use audio vs. text. They then jump in and produce a slideshow in Google's Presentation application.
Here are the slideshows from our participants. Most of them are still works in progress, but you will get an sense of what each educator is aiming to highlight.
Animal Homes (Wendy Phillips)
A Seed is not just a Seed (Sannie Yue)
Animal Communities (Candace Bianchi)
What can effect the way a plant grows? (Marcella Jamerson)
Animal Homes (Soledad Senga)
Lunar Phases (Monina Salazar)
Discovering Science & Nature in the Classroom (Christine O'Brien)
Note: If you are having trouble viewing this slideshow, please cross-check your web browser with this Google Presentation troubleshoot page. Some web browsers are not compatible with this slideshow format.
Do Now is a weekly activity for students to respond to current issues through the use KQED's award-winning online media resources and social media tools like Twitter.
