Messing around on the weekend I remembered in the dark recesses, seeing something about converting movies to Flash. There are some good reasons for trying to do this including to minimise file size and to make the file more accessible. Photo Story also exports in Windows Movie Maker files and require the latest version of the program and the necessary codecs etc which some people might not have. A quick search and I came across a couple of possibilities including a product from the Australian SWISH company. Checking out the examples from the site however I must admit that I was a little disappointed with the quality. Maybe a straight conversion is not the way to go yet, or maybe there are better options out there amongst the other products?
On the way to check out our old house that is being demolished I remembered, hey most of the simpler transitions that are part of P/Story, (plus more if you want to work on them), can also be done directly in Flash. The pics can also be dumped into Flash as can the audio be imported. Maybe I should be doing the stories straight into Flash. (During the weekend one of my grade 3’s made a Flash animation at home with his dad which he has put up on the web so we put it up on the IWB to show off.).
Friday is the computer lab day when we can do the whole class instruction time. This week I thought I should get the students started at least on the Photo Story 3 stories. Hitting the keyboards, the children were soon cropping and rotating the pics from their publisher made storybook pages using Irfanview.
Equally as quickly they soon had them inserted into P/Story and were beginning the transitions, (that is for the ones who remembered to scan all the pages and get them in the correct order). As always most of us started in the same screen but soon we were all over the program. Once again however the students in the know came to the fore and were soon assisting and teaching and learning from each other.
For me this was once again a valuable lesson applicable to any area of the curriculum that if the students are really interested and want to do something, (e.g. learn P/Story because they can see something in it), they will problem solve their way around things. I really enjoy the learning community that working with the ICT has actively promoted. As a result, in a little over an hour, (we stole a little more lab time later in the day), well more than 2/3rds of the class were up to being ready to narrate their presentations. I can’t wait for next week, now all I have to do is to figure out how to get the feeds onto iTunes and the like.
This term we are doing work on life in the past compared to life today with a particular focus on transport, communication and land use. As part of the work our students are being asked to interview their parents and grandparents about their childhood. The students can record this information in any way they wish. As we have the iPods the children have been given the opportunity to take them home to use to interview their subjects. The first student Josh bought his interviews back today and I have downloaded them to the computer and they are excellent. Josh has done a fine job and we were able to listen to them on the speakers to highlight just how Josh listened actively and responded with fine supplementary questions. Four more students have taken them home over the weekend.
As part of our arrangement with the Channel 31 TV segment, (see below), a couple of students from the class were deputised to interview the crew from the station. Having finished our part of the segment, the girls went off to use part of their recess to quiz Graeme and his partner. The interview went very well with Graeme being an excellent subject and at the end of the day I went to download the segment.
In the light of the lost principal interview, I am learning, (well almost sometimes I remember), NEVER trust technology and get multiple versions of anything that is remotely important. Of course the “little guys” in the computer once again decided to have fun at my expense. Of course the iPod all of a sudden wouldn’t be recognised on the Mac, (I had thought the Mac had been the most secure in the past so I had best use it).
After a hasty disconnect I went to the PC and again the iPod showed up but according to the menu there were no Voice Memos on it, (fortunately the iPod showed that there was indeed an interview still on it). Equally as fortunately I have a parent of one of my students who is a computer tech and after I related the problem, Josh volunteered that his dad had a “supercomputer” that could get anything digital off of anything else.
Accordingly I sent the iPod home with Josh and the next day we had the interview back, thanks to Josh’s dad. The suggestion was that I didn’t have the latest iPod software on the machine however I thought I had done that. Maybe with eight iPods this was one that I had missed??
Channel 31 is a local Melbourne Community Television station. Today Channel 31 came to Bellaire to do a story on ICT at our school. They were originally coming to focus on the SmartBoards we have however after a quick chat they decided to expand the story to take in the iPods and blog and wikis. The two Channel 31 reps, (an older couple), stayed about 2 hours and we did an interview segment with our principal and then came to talk to me. After this they then spoke to some of my students who showed off Garage Band, one of our wikis, the SmartBoard and the iPods. Overall I was most impressed with how my children were able to explain about what they are doing. The program will be aired as “Geelong Beat” at 6:30 on Wednesday July 19th.
Over the hols after a couple of hiccups during last term and other factors, I was finally able to get our second class podcast uploaded and installed in a dedicated blog, the MiddleP Blog. The children were very interested to listen to the program and as again were very supportive of the presenters.
I finally got the time to install the iLife suite onto the Mac mini today and after hanging about for what seemed forever for the Updates to come down, (how many megabytes worth of updates can you have, thank goodness for a very big download and broadband connection, someone on dialup would never live through this).
Once installed though the new Garage Band looked very nice indeed. Looking around though I couldn’t find the import button to import the iPod tracks. A quick look through HELP, (I hate going there….), and I foudn out that all you have to do is drag things onto the track timeline. Now that is simple I thought and it was, sort off. The track was there and easily manipulable but when I played it I thought chipmunks had invaded. Obviously the time is different from the iPod record rate to Garage Band. I have tried a couple of things to try and rectify the problem all to no good effect. Hmmm back to the Audacity again.
Speaking of the afore mentioned program, even that let me down as I was compiling our latest podcast file. On the Mac I got almost to the end of the file conversion to mp3 and it spat the dummy. The program ended almost mid sentence. Trying to ressurect the file things got no better and in the end I decided to transfer the files to the PC. More problems ensued in this transfer before I finally succeeded. After another set of edits, which I had already gone through on the Mac, I finally had the program complete. Now to upload it.
As it was the hols I decided to actually trial something before inflicting it on my poor long suffering students. I took the scans from Pete’s book on pigeons and loaded them into Photo Story 3. No problems there. Next it was on to the vocal track.
Hmmm seems you can actually record straight into P/Story!! Ah yes but you can also import a track as music or vocals and ignore the straight record. Getting the iPod out I read the pages in my best narrator style. Now to upload. Oh dear the format straight from the iPod isn’t recognised by P/Story. OK I will put the iPod sound into Audacity and convert it to mp3, (this is already starting to be a bit complicated…..). Never mind persistence is important.
Okay now the P/Story has accepted my mp3 files however the sound is rather tinny and I can’t seem to tweak it any way to make it warmer. When I try to record straight into P/Story however my vocal is back to the natural warm narrative I normally speak in???
Ah but when I go to publish the final story alas only the first imported track plays and the rest of the show has this hissing sound in the background. Maybe I have moved through too many steps and given the difference in sound quality anyway maybe I will just have to get the students to record straight into Photo Story and forget about the iPods. Strike one against the iPods.
As part of their written work, my students have used Microsoft Publisher to turn some of their writing into what we call little books. (You can find a tutorial and Publisher 2003 masters for doing this on Simply Science if you are interested.) Once finished the children can print off multiple copies of their books for giving out to anyone they like. To spread the message wider though I thought, why not turn the books into online narrated books. Microsoft Photostory seems like one way to do this so I am getting the students to scan in their pages and then manipulate the pics using Irfanview before putting them into Photostory. Photostory does have the capability of recording straight into the program directly however because of the problems with classroom noise mentioned before I am going to try using the iPod to lay down the vocal track. That way we can also edit the vocals before including them into Photostory. To put the track in though you will need to use the music option to import.
Via an email list I was alerted to a presentation being made by the good folks from Apple around the theme of podcasting. Of course I had to get along to check out what was on offer. The event as it turns out was oversubscribed, a message there about the place of podcasting these days no doubt. It was really a bit of a soft sell and exhibition of the capabilities of the iLife 06 suite of programs. The presenters did an excellent job of showing off just how seamless putting together a basic podcast and indeed enhanced and other podcasts. It’s a bit of a pity that you have to purchase the necessary upgrades, (which I will do next week). Ah well I need a tax deduction.
