Video on you tube

Final Video

This video was challenging because all I had to work with was 1.5 hours of low-quality recorded sound, one photograph of a slide of Leonard's plane projected on a screen, and several contemporary photos of Leonard. The sound was very quiet and Leonard is slow to tell his story because he includes many sub stories and lots of detail along the way. This is part of his charm but is also what makes the challenge. I spent many hours using Audacity to carve short sounds bytes out of his long narrative with somewhat dubious results. In many cases I had to edit out his natural pauses or searching for the right word to condense the sound. I had few pictures to work with and he would take too long to tell us, for example, that the bomb was dropped on  Pearl Harbor. To make up for my lack of pictures and embed it in a larger narrative I tried to use so newsreels. Ideally the story is bracketed by the two bombings--Pearl Harbor and Hiroshima. Perhaps in the hands of an expert this would come through better.

In condensing the narrative I also had to eliminate some of the exciting stories like several close calls where Leonard had to perform emergency landings-- like the time when he had to circle then landing field while he waited for his commander returned from the bar to help. He got impatient and took an axe to the plane to hand crank the landing gear down. There was also the time when he lost an engine while transporting a combat unit. He landed them all safely, white-knuckled and drenched in sweat. He earned their respect and a zippo lighter from that unit's commander. He treasured that lighter though he did not smoke. He also was stationed m any places before the Hump and had to write numerous letters requesting a move. So many stories to tell! Some day more videos need to be made--by someone who is better at it!

Even though I had a really hard time with the videos this semester I can look back and say that I'm glad I learned about DST and how to make videos. Like most things I learn about these days though, I am perennially frustrated by the mismatch between my vision and my  lack of time to fully master the technology and the process.

Chapter 15: Important Stuff!!!

Copyright is increasingly important as more and more content becomes available on the web. Many artists, writers, musicians, and other content creators have had to come up with a plan for balancing the power of the web to publicize and disseminate works with protecting income-generating intellectual property. Even as those who create original content come to terms with this, our students are growing up creating content themselves by mashing up the works of others. I find that many younger folks have an expectation for anything and everything to be available on line and think nothing of "stealing" someone's work and labeling it as their own. Is this a new problem? Absolutely not. I remember reading many a president report, noticing a particularly well-written paragraph, and marching to the library to locate the same paragraph in the encyclopedia. What is new of course,  is the access to ever more and varied content to borrow. With many rap artists and others sampling music as the base of their new works of music we have a culture that says its ok, even cool to use the work of others. Now we have education websites inviting us to "steal these tools!" This is what makes copyright even grayer and more confusing than ever before and why this is one of Ohler's most important chapters.

I find the following most useful from chapter 15:

• Fair use--a great big help for educators. What would a history teacher do without Fair use? Under the fair use guidelines many photos and films are cleared for use in a classroom. We cited fair use when we asked for permissions to digitize the slides in our Marchand Archive for teacher use.
• Three rules of respect--citation, permission, compensation. This is mighty simple and mighty useful. Quite recently I know of someone who used someone else's work without permission and removed the citation which credited the producer of the work. To make matters worse, this person was compensated for doing this. The producer of the work was not. What do I say about this other than to be Captain Obvious myself and point out how disrespectful this was? It was also personally hurtful.I think these three little rules should be taught at a very young age.
• What Ohler pointed out about the dilemma of having students post their work online is one we will have to solve.

 If you ever have to teach your students about copyright, the Library of Congress has a self-paced online module that we use with teachers and find very useful.

 And I will leave you with this little gem about a careless stealer of other peoples' poetry which I have been thinking about a lot this week.
 

Draft Two of final 286 video assignment

Link to Draft 2

Once again, "blogger" will not cooperate by finding my you tube video. The link above will take you to it on you tube. I hope someday I will learn about why it works sometimes and not others. 

Anyway, only watch the first four minutes or so. Since all of my audio of Leonard telling his own story is poor, I am trying to use newsreel footage to tell some of it. My question now is--do I replcae the captions with--ICK--my own voice narrating--ICK--?

ICK.

If anyone actually watches this, that is the inquiry question to ponder.

Chapter 14

Media Grammar for Teachers, an important topic that could have been covered much more succinctly... nevertheless, perhaps the most important point was right at the beginning of the chapter--the way for students to be media literate is to be media creators. Ohler makes the case for students as media persuaders. I wish I would have read chapter 14 first. I see now that I have many "bumps" in my videos. Ohler then goes in to his "Captain Obvious" (C.O.) mode and becomes rather repetitvie as he lays out the following rules:

1. Watch it twice--this aligns with what is outlined in the Common Core about reading closely (read, read again, read again.) This makes a lot of sense Captain Obvious! Watching or reading more than once allows you to notice the structure of the piece.
2. Pictures should be focused, well-lit and well-composed. Avoid visual clutter!
3. Change images at the right time to support your story! No image before the narrative or folks may get confused.
4. Use camera angles to manipulate the story and therefor the viewer.
5. Audio matters. Audio must be audible (C.O.) and well-mixed
6. Have students listen to themselves to improve pacing and inflection
7. Use music to  manipulate emotions and let the music drive the story
8. Don't be transition happy--be transition effective.
9. Pay close attention to story structure and pacing (C.O.)!!!

Storyboard with Sound

 I uploaded my PowerPoint by the deadline but then Annie was kind enough to point out that I missed the memo that we needed it to be video--meaning add sound! So, now you have to endure my voice. Sorry everyone that you have to listen but thanks Annie for cluing me in. I deleted the lowly PowerPoint. But I have to say that I think the idea of using a PowerPoint to storyboard is brilliant!!!

Chapter 13

• The idea Ohler reiterates often in this chapter that you can do a lot with very little has been helping me along. When I first found out we had to create videos I was VERY intimidated by the equipment and software I thought I would need. When I borrowed the little canon from Mark my anxiety went down a bit. I thought "Oh, that's it? I can do this." Chapter 13 echoes this idea--do what you can with what you have and focus on the story. 
• Don't buy on the leading edge--good advice. I suppose this validates being a semi-luddite. I am always behind on the latest technology. I like to trudge along with what I know rather than work out problems with the newest thing. I realize that this is not an positive attribute to confess to having in an educational technology program but there it is! I think this relates to the first point--work with what you have and focus on the story telling. 
• "Audio is king" This is my next area to struggle with. I have been avoiding recording my voice (until last week) and having problems with music. I know I need a better microphone if I really want to do higher quality work. And ultimately if I want to make movies of good teaching, (which I do) I would need to address the issues with recording groups with a boom mic or a flat mic.
• After Ohler's enthusiastic discussion of garage band I was very disappointed to learn that garage band is only for mac. I have it on my iPad but I don't think that is quite the same thing. I did however download audacity and I plan to get to know how to use it this week. 
• Overall, I found the nuts and bolts of this chapter to be very helpful.