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Matt Monjan is our guide to using green screen today with Adobe Premiere Elements (PC) and PhotoBooth (Mac side).

• shoot
• edit
• create menus
• share

Instructions are on Matt's blog GeekyBird.com. Using PhotoBooth, make any DiscoveryStreaming video the background, then you can be in the front. PB does not use sound, so you would need to do this, then do voice in iMovie. Soon you will be able to upload this to DiscoveryMediaShare and get an embedded code to put it on your web pages or blog.

Image by krossbow via FlickrOur ESL teacher stopped by to talk about DiscoveryStreaming and showed me some wonderful ESL video sites. He uses these to teach teachers how to prepare lessons for their ESL students. There are videos on many topics, so bookmark the ones you can use with your students!

1. Colorín Colorado - webcasts that have been recorded
2. Learner.org - this link takes you to some Spanish podcasts - It is a FREE account

Don't forget that you can turn on the closed caption option in the DiscoveryEducation videos for any ESL students to practice reading English, or to find some Spanish voice over in many movies. Check the description of each video. You need to have a log in code to access these resources. Check with your media specialist or district technology director to see if your district is enrolled.

That was the DuPont Company from 1935 through 1982. We heard it all the time on television. Now you can view videos about each element on the Periodic Table. There is a special Olympic video about the elements of gold, silver and bronze. They have been created by the University of Nottingham in the United Kingdom. The videos are quite short, although I didn't watch ALL of them, and can be used for many purposes. Assign them as a homework activity or have kids create their own video about combined elements.

I have heard about all of the Ivy League or top 10 universities who have published podcasts, tours, class lectures and more in the iTunes U library. I wandered around there tonight and found some interesting programs for our school to follow. First I clicked on the iTunes U link in iTunes. Just exploring the opening page could take a day with the variety of information you could read, listen to or watch. One can't help but to see Carnegie-Mellon is at the top of the download list because of the passing of Randy Pausch. If you have been under a rock and don't know his story, download his "last lecture" here for free.

In addition, there are commencement speeches from celebrities like Oprah, studies about energy consumption, becoming a greener household, and stories about nano-technology. With the price of gas so high, people cannot travel to hear or see many cultural events. So in that case, take a virtual tour through a museum. Living close to Philadelphia, I am partial to the Art Museum. Just by typing museum into the search box, a complete list of museum tours will appear. You can go on a talking tour of the National Portrait Gallery to a Zoofari at the San Diego Zoo!

See, hear, and learn. Put it on your own child's iPod and see what they can learn. Better yet, assign it for your students as a listening exercise!

Discovery Education workshop and co sponsored by AFI (American Film Institute) was held at Bucks County IU for two days in February.

Day One: Joe Brennan from Discovery has given us a lot of information to digest about film making. There is a LARGE (88 page) document you can download from AFI website and it is a comprehensive guide to helping your students create digital video stories.

Day Two: The title link takes you to Jennifer Dorman's wiki with all of the links for digital storytelling. Suggested programs you can use just for storyboarding:


You can download and edit every DiscoveryStreaming videos, except for those which are labeled for non-editing only. You cannot talk over it, chop it up and you can see a comment that says "non-editable content" in the Media Settings window. To search for this option, go to the ADVANCED SEARCH and put a check in the category editable titles.

This is a good format to use with learning support students. You can put the video together and have them write the narration! Actually why not do that for ALL students.
You can not upload DStreaming material for pubic use on your web. Students can not upload material from DStreaming and enter it into a contest with a monetary reward.

Creative Commons
Allows you to use music, images that have been listed here. If you want to use commercial music or artwork, you need WRITTEN permission from the author to use it within the boundaries of copyright. See Jen Dorman's copyright page for specifics. Using Creative Commons teaches kids about digital ethics.

PHOTOS online

1. flickr - your accept a CC license for others to use your images as long as they are cited. Be sure to model good copyright practice when posing or downloading images. You can set up a user group and put images in that group for student's to use. Do not allow them to freely search, but put the content YOU want kids to use.
2. everystockphoto.com - there are a lot of organizations such as museums etc, that place their content online. This is licensed for you to use. You can create you own collection after you set up an account. They can collect photos and later put them into their project.
3. Library of Congress, American Memory Collection - Now located on flickr and has fallen into the public of domain. In addition to the image, the information has more information for the citation.
4. flickrstorm - you can do the search and collect the images with citations and you can download in html.
5. GoogleMaps - what ever you do, be sure to check out ALL of the Goolge Tools, enough said!
6. FotoFlfexer - photos must be imported from flickr first.
7. Use some of these image manipulation tools to create your avatar.

Chroma Key with Windows MovieMaker. There is a simple video "ChromaKey with Colin" that is a short tutorial to show how to do this process. You can use blue butcher paper or green. For a fun effect, put some of the green in front of the person. Later you can insert a ocean liner and make it appear as if they are on the deck of the ship, thus putting them actually INTO the image.