Tag Archives: digital tools

BAYMN FEST 2013 -- June 1 & 2

May 2, 2013, 3:01 pm • Posted by Matthew Williams
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BAYMN FEST

On June 1 & 2, the Bay Area Youth Media Network (BAYMN) in partnership with KQED will present BAYMN FEST, a free two-day interactive showcase of media produced by young folks ages 12-24, hosted at the San Francisco Public Library. Through screenings, workshops, a transmedia gallery, a makerspace, parties and networking opportunities, BAYMN FEST will be a place for young artists to share their work, meet their peers, acquire new tools, make their voices heard—and win cool prizes and media-making tools! It is a unique opportunity for youth, educators and the general public to celebrate the work of talented young media makers. We hope you will join us and be inspired.

We received over 300 youth-produced videos through our call for entries in a variety of categories including Science, Technology, & Innovation; Arts & Expression; and Social Justice & Community Engagement; and we have put together an exciting series of shorts programs that will screen throughout the weekend.

This event is open to the public. For educators, we encourage you to schedule time for your students to come and participate… or if you are out of school for the summer, to organize a group of young folks to attend. This event will be a great opportunity for young folks to connect with their peers who are passionate about making media, and it will give you the chance as an educator to immerse yourself in the youth media movement, network with other educators and even acquire some new skills. This festival is funded by Adobe Youth Voices and The AT&T Foundation.

To attend to this event, you must RSVP here -- www.baymnfest.eventbrite.com Below is a breakdown of the festival schedule, workshop schedule, and film program. Please reserve a spot for one of our workshops by filling out this form. Be sure to reserve spots for any or all of the days. And don't forget about the BAYMN BASH reception on the evening of Saturday, June 1! And it's all FREE!

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Filed under: Bay Area Youth Media Network, Community Voices, Youth Media Festivals
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PD Module #3: Narrated Slideshows for Arts Education (self-paced)

April 29, 2013, 2:14 pm • Posted by Kristin Farr
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ArtsPDcoverimage

Nearly every student who is in school today will enter the workforce needing skills in media production. From social media to YouTube videos, many industries will require a knowledge of how to leverage online platforms. In the arts classroom, media production is a dynamic way for students to gain these technical skills, while also practicing aesthetic valuing, design thinking, communication, and creative writing. All of these skills can be cultivated through the use of media-making projects. For this reason, student media-making projects are an excellent way to introduce these 21st century proficiencies.

A good, basic-level media project to use with students is a narrated slideshow. The programs used to make one are relatively simple and students can either take their own photos or find properly licensed images on the web in addition to using their own voice to narrate the story. KQED has developed a new tool for educators to assist in the understanding of how to create a slideshow as well as the implementation of such a project in the classroom. Arts-focused slideshows can be used in visual and performing arts classes as a reporting, portfolio, or assessment tool, but they can also be used in other subjects, such as history and social studies, as a tool for understanding culture through art and artifacts.

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Filed under: Arts, Online Training Modules, Teacher Trainings
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Interactive Timelines for the Elementary Classroom

March 18, 2013, 11:38 am • Posted by Nancy Yamamoto
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Timeline from Timetoast

Timeline from Timetoast

Creating and reading a timeline is a skill introduced in elementary grades. For a second grader her first timeline might be autobiographical, which is a good way for students to begin understanding what a timeline is - a linear graphic representation of major events in chronological order. Students are exposed to more timelines as they study historical events, biographies, and cultural trends. The information can seem like a cluster of dates and facts. But delve deeper and timelines reveal relationships between sequences of events to show shifts and changes from one occurrence to the next.

Turning the timeline format from pencil to digital is easy with online timeline generators. They make learning interactive, engaging, and provide students another way to report research information.

Capzles  is a free timeline creation tool that’s fairly easy to use. It allows users to insert videos, music, blogs, photos, and documents to create a multimedia timeline or story.

Timetoast allows users to create a timeline in minutes. The look of the digital timeline is similar to a traditional drawn timeline - the layout is simple. Images and text can accompany each mark on the timeline. This allows users to include more information for explanations. The format can also be converted from timeline to a text version - dividing the information as a table.

Tips for starting a timeline:

  • Choose an event, process, or trend that has a strong chronological sequence.
  • Gather research information.
  • Write a short description of each event.
  • Include occurrences leading up to significant events.
  • Find images to match the descriptions.
Filed under: Digital Tools, K-5 Science, New Ideas with Digital Tools
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The New Research Paper is a Remixed Video

February 21, 2013, 12:27 pm • Posted by Matthew Williams
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Remix

Imagine you are an 11th grade student taking American History today. Your teacher walks into the classroom and asks you to create a video that discusses the significance of the Space Race between the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, but you can only use found footage on YouTube for the project. Does that sound nuts?

Many red alarms may sound off in your head.... Our school doesn't allow YouTube or isn't that in violation of copyright? or how are my students going to create a video for school? or what learning value would this offer my students? or what Standards address this assignment?

These are all very important questions that educators should ask. There are probably a ton more. In short, the answer is that, this can happen and it will be of tremendous importance to your students' learning.

The video below addresses the value added when producing remix videos. It discusses the affordances of creating personal digital stories using found media and how it can help to reinforce online research skills, understanding of fair use and copyright law, along with visual rhetoric and digital literacy (which comes with traditional forms of digital storytelling as well). The video provides insight on how the production process of making a video can incorporate all these skills and literacies. Although, the video explores the process of producing a personal story with political implications, you will be able to make the connection to how this process can directly link to larger topics that would be covered in core content areas - like American History.

Note: Student projects about the Space Race will soon follow.

Filed under: Digital Tools, New Ideas with Digital Tools
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BAYMN FEST -- Call for Entries!!

February 1, 2013, 11:20 am • Posted by Matthew Williams
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BAYMN FEST

Call for Entries are now open for BAYMN FEST!

The Bay Area Youth Media Network (BAYMN) is now accepting submissions for BAYMN FEST, its first annual youth media festival, taking place June 1–2, 2013 at the San Francisco Public Library. Youth 12-24 are invited to submit their videos in one of the following categories:

Science, Technology & Innovation
Arts & Expression
Social Justice & Community Engagement
Miscellany

 
BAYMN FEST is an interactive showcase of media produced by youth ages 12–24. Sponsored by Adobe Youth Voices and the AT&T Foundation, this two-day event will be a unique opportunity for youth, educators and the general public to celebrate the work of talented young media makers. Through screenings, workshops, a transmedia gallery and networking opportunities, BAYMN FEST will be a place for young artists to share their work, meet their peers, acquire new tools, make their voices heard—and win cash prizes and media-making tools! All entries will be judged by a mix of youth, media arts educators, and media professionals.

Prizes will be awarded to all filmmakers whose entries are accepted to the Festival. Additional cash awards and media making tools (such as GoPro cameras and Adobe design and editing software) will be presented during the Festival to award winners selected by a jury in each of the above submission categories.

Deadline for submission: April 1, 2013

Included in this post is info on How to Enter, Submission Guidelines, and the Online Entry Form.

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Filed under: Bay Area Youth Media Network, Youth Media Festivals
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Media Ripping Tools 1: Easy YouTube Video Downloader

October 26, 2012, 8:31 am • Posted by Matthew Williams
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Remixing video has become a popular cultural movement. We see it all over the internet where people re-purpose video to convey an alternative message. The Mister Rogers remix entitled Garden of Your Mind, produced by PBS Digital Studios takes hundreds of clips from dozens of episodes to create an inspirational song about learning. The audio of his voice is put through an auto-tuner to make it sound like he's singing.

This was made by professional producers, but remix culture is really a DIY movement and the tools are available for pretty much anyone who has a computer and internet connection. One relatively new tool that allows you to edit videos from YouTube is Easy YouTube Video Downloader, a free add-on from Mozilla that allows you to download videos from YouTube. It's an add-on which means that it creates an interactive button underneath the YouTube player to let a user download any video on YouTube. Once the video is downloaded, you can import it into a video editing program like iMovie or Windows Movie Maker to edit.

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Filed under: Video Educasts
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Back to School with PBS LearningMedia

August 30, 2012, 8:56 am • Posted by Almetria Vaba
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“Digital media is a way to reach students. This is what they live, eat, and breathe... digital media everyday…so I already have an audience before I even start.”- Michelle Pickett, 5th Grade ELA Teacher

PBS LearningMedia, a free digital media service from PBS, is helping teachers connect the dots between students' lives and classroom learning. Hear more of what teachers are saying about the service in this short video.

And learn more about educating with PBS LearningMedia by attending a free webinar training. Webinars take place online the third Thursday of the month @ 4:30pm.  Registration Required

 

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In the Classroom: Live Oak Elementary School Students Produce Audio Podcasts

August 17, 2012, 8:14 am • Posted by Matthew Williams
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At teacher training workshops, the question always comes up, "What grade can you begin to teach students how to produce their own digital media?" Of course, this is a loaded question as there are several different types of media, each with its own set of learning curves. But, in general, I default to fourth grade as my response.

This past Spring, my perception shifted.

Monina Salazar, a 3rd Grade teacher at Live Oak Elementary School in San Ramon has raised the stakes and lowered what I thought was the age requirement for students to produce rich audio podcasts.

In this video, Monina describes how she teaches her students to create audio podcasts about biomes that explain a variety of ecosystems, referencing the climatic conditions along with the types of plants and animals that live there.

In her class, her students produced three different audio podcast assignments. They go through the process of researching and reading about specific biomes, writing a script that incorporates relevant sound effects and perhaps music to convey a sense of place and mood, research the internet for these sounds, and then they record their voice and edit and layer all of the sounds using Audacity.

Monina also reflects about the value added for integrating technology and multimedia, specifically media project assignments, into her teaching practice.

Monina's students use other great media formats for their projects like Google Presentation as well as develop individual websites that function as e-portfolios. To view some of this great work, go to her class website.

Last Fall, Monina attended KQED Education's Teacher Tech Training where she learned the basics of how to produce narrated slideshows for elementary school science, led by Nancy Yamamoto. Click on the link above to view some of the teachers' projects from the workshop.

Do you know young students producing great podcasts or other rich media? Please share with us!

Filed under: In the Classroom, K-5 Science
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Digital Portraits and Cindy Sherman

August 13, 2012, 12:13 pm • Posted by Kristin Farr
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KQED Arts Education and a group of local educators just completed our second annual "Digital Portraits" course for educators. Last year, we studied California artist Robert Arneson's approach portraiture and created short, autobiographical films (Check out last year's assignment and two of the films in the Edspace archive).

This summer, the artist we looked to for inspiration was none other than Cindy Sherman, who has a retrospective on view at SFMOMA through October 2012. Sherman has been called one of the most important artists of our time and was featured on Art:21. She is known for using herself as a model to create photographic portraits of women who do not represent the artist, but personas and characters she creates.
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Filed under: Arts, Teacher Trainings
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Windows Movie Maker Educast Series

July 16, 2012, 2:00 pm • Posted by Matthew Williams
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The following videos are a 9 part series on how to use Windows Movie Maker. Movie Maker is a proprietary video editing software application which allows Windows operating system users to edit their own videos.

There are nine videos in this series although you can only see one player. The single player hosts all nine videos (thank you YouTube playlist). The series starts with Part 1: Basic Overview. To access the other eight videos, you must click on the text that says "Playlist" located at the bottom left of the player. You can then choose from the selection of other videos.

Note: This video educast series covers the first version of Movie Maker, not Windows Live Movie Maker.

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Filed under: Video Educasts
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