Dean Shareski, educational technology guru and fellow Saskatchewanite, recently prepared a digital keynote for the Flat Classroom Project.
In the keynote, Dean touts the importance of design in education, especially that related to the creation of multimedia. Key points covered include planning, imagery, simplicity, constraints and significance, and Dean borrows from Dan Pink’s “Whole New Mind”, one of my favorite new reads.
The content is great, but the most important piece here is how Dean pulled it off. He walks the talk. I see so many faculty members and teachers talking about one thing, but doing another (e.g., Direct teaching about how to create a constructivist classroom). Dean has developed a well designed, well-articulated, informative, humourous and personal presentation here. For my students in ECMP 355 or involved in the Digital Internship Project, be sure to pay attention.
I had to say wow while I was watching. I loved the fact that he is putting into practice what works, what gets attention. I just wonder how long it took him to do, and how long it would take me to learn (grin). Altogether for me it was a Dean K12 conference. I loved the new direction
Jo,
Vicki and Julie sent me an email on Monday asking if I could remix my presentation for k12. At first I thought about editing that video but realized it would be too tough.
I took the original script, tried to make it more “kid friendly” and yet figure out a way to make it a bit lighter and faster paced.
I’ve used green screen before but saw an example a few weeks ago with resizing yourself. So for me it was an excuse to try out a new tool. Which although fun, was didn’t want to do it just for the sake of using a new feature. My belief around innovation likely justified that move for me.
Rewriting the script took me about 2 or 3 hours. Filming was quite quick. I only had about an hour on Thursday afternoon (after I spent the morning with Alec’s students) and filmed it then. That’s why you see me reading my script and generally poor acting…I”m no Alec Couros (see Crime Stories).
The editing took about 7 or 8 hours. I use Pinnacle Studio. I’m sure and know there are better suites but I”m used to it and haven’t bothered to learn another more powerful tool like Adobe Premiere or Avid.
The green screen technology in software is quite simple. Jo, it wouldn’t take you long to figure it out….I hope it’s still more about the composition than the tool.