It was a social media workshop for a select group of home inspectors. Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Blogtalkradio – all part of the presentations during the day – were no match for the real social marketing which took place in the hospitality tent, affectionately known as the Big Top, at night.

This video is dedicated to Ken Compton, the mayor and his wife Beth. Their Southern hospitality was visible thoroughout the weekend, despite his attempt to connect everything to business.

Although pictures tell a story, they don’t do the spirit of the weekend justice. However, you can see that everyone had a great time, and, setup Twitter and and Facebook accounts, learned about YouTube, and listened intently to my presentation on BlogTalkRadio and Cinchcast.

I produced and hosted three BlogTalkRadio shows and conducted several interviews for future use.

On behalf of all the participants, the sponsors and the speakers, I want to say, “Thanks for the Memories, Mr. Mayor!”

Animoto

Turn your photos & videos into pure amazing.
Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy.

Create your own video slide shows Complete with music and fades. One click easy…

From Super Smarter Agent Man to #rebcsd to our packed mobile sessions at our expo booth, here are a few of our favorite pictures from the week in San Diego. I made this using Animoto if anyone’s interested in an easy and free program to make 30 second slide shows.

Gick ju lätt som en plätt även det…

We’ve started a project in middle school tech classes creating educational videos for lower school students. Want to learn to tie your shoes? How about bicycle safety rules? We’ll be using Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, and Animoto with Flip video cameras to put together fun ways to teach a wide variety of topics. A couple of videos were shown as inspiration…a Dewey Decimal system rap and an Animoto video on banned books.

I know I’ll always remember the Bill on Capitol Hill and Inter-planet Janet thanks to Schoolhouse Rock (yes, I’m showing my age). Here’s hoping some of these student-produced videos will do the same for their classmates at Episcopal School. Keep an eye out on our website and Facebook and twitter links to see when the videos are ready.

Last week, I presented my group project, The Economics of Educational Technology, along with my two group members, Karen Jones and Bryan Hughes. We decided to host the module in a wiki. Please see http://economicfoundationsdlg9.wikispaces.com/ to view our content.

Some of our discussions took place using VoiceThread. A VoiceThread is a collaborative, multimedia slide show that holds images, documents, and videos and allows people to navigate pages and leave comments in 5 ways – using voice (with a mic or telephone), text, audio file, or video (via a webcam).

In addition, we used MindMeister, a collaborative online mind mapping tool. MindMeister brings the concept of mind mapping to the web, using its facilities for real-time collaboration to allow truly global brainstorming sessions. Users can create, manage and share mind maps online and access them anytime, from anywhere. In brainstorming mode, fellow MindMeisters from around the world (or just in different rooms) can simultaneously work on the same mind map and see each other’s changes as they happen.

As a culminating activity, we used animoto to summarize the major themes of the economics of educational technology. We had asked our classmates to contribute an image related to the Economics of Educational Technology. Here is our finished product:

Overall, the week went very well, with some very good discussions happening within the ETEC 511 course shell in Vista. The project itself was very interesting in terms of content and the tools we utilized in order to moderate the week.

Thank you!

Date: Thursday, January 7, 2010
Time: 10am PST
Duration: 1.5 hours
Individual Price: $59
Group Price: $249 for special login to project webinar in a conference room with unlimited attendees.

With a network of over 50 million professionals worldwide, LinkedIn has become an immensely powerful social networking website. Small businesses are increasingly participating in the LinkedIn community through LinkedIn Groups, Company Pages, and Personal Profiles. This Webinar will teach you how to successfully create, manage, and promote a LinkedInGroup for your small business, highlight best practices and demonstrate click-by-click how to manage subgroups and announcements, as well as how to inspire news, discussion, and participation in your LinkedIn Group. The webinar will also cover Company Pages and how to use your personal profile on LinkedIn to benefit your business by utilizing Network Updates, Answers, and Apps.

In addition, the webinar will demonstrate how to create and design a YouTube channel and demonstrate and demonstrate Animoto’s video creation service for small businesses. By 2013, Cisco predicts that 90% of all consumer IP traffic will be video, so make sure your small business is prepared.

The webinar will be given by Heather Mansfield, creator of the the Small Businesses Twitter Profile, Small Businesses Facebook Page, the Small Businesses MySpace, and the owner of DIOSA | Communications. Heather built her business using social media and has become a leading expert on how small businesses and nonprofit organizations can utilize these powerful new tools. As one of the first social media trainers in the United States, Heather has given over 300 webinars and trainings on how small businesses and nonprofit organizations can successfully utilize social media.

To Register for this Webinar:

1. Email the name, title, business name, and email address of each person attending to: heather@diosacommunications.com

2. You will then be sent an invoice via PayPal. You can pay with Mastercard, Visa, American Express, Discover, or PayPal. Sorry… no checks.

3. Once payment is confirmed, each participant is then emailed their webinar login and conference call information.

Please Note: There are no refunds, but if your schedule changes and you can not attend the webinar, you will receive a credit for a future webinar. Please email us before the webinar to let us know that you will be unable to attend.

Also, no toll free number is provided for the audio portion of the webinar. In the case of technical difficulties, registrants will be able to participate in a future webinar.

View All Webinars

If you enjoyed the video we posted on our school Facebook page, check out Animoto.  You can upload photos and the software creates amazing videos.   The basic account is free, and limits videos to 30 seconds, but the upgraded all-access pass is reasonable.  For those of you who scrapbook, it would be a neat tool for web 2.0 versions of your photo albums!

Moustaches are crap, they really are, I don’t care if there have been some great men (and the odd woman) in history who had them….me no likey! Next picture update in a few days but here is the site again:

Movember

Turns out I’ve became an overnight internet phenomenon. I recorded the minutes silence at Sunday’s game to give the impression of what happened from within the Celtic end, and it was quite good that I did.

Turns out the foreign feed for the games either had mics turned up to the max…or were recording from outside the ground. Inside the Celtic end, it was as close to silent as you will get (even sidestepping the political reasons behind the furore) but there was singing in protest outside the stadium.

Thankfully, my video captured the silence within the stadium, so I stuck it on the internet to counteract some of the other footage kicking about. You leave it alone, next thing you know is that it has around 3,000 views and BBC Reporting Scotland is using it on the 1830 news. Cheeky gits, I should be asking for a rebate on my licence fee:

A slight edit here guys to add in a link to the BBC site where my video can be seen…I’ll leave it others to make up their own mind about it:
BBC Thieves

So that was something of interest, but there was probably more important stuff on The Gadget Show on Channel 5. For one, Suzi Perry….but she delivered a run through of five top websites that you may not know about:

You Convert It – A file conversion site.

Supercook– A recipe search engine. Hmmm, I have eggs and beans in my kitchen, tell me what to do with that supercook?

Alternative to – You tell them software packages you wish to replace and they provide you with alternatives

Joobili – If you have limited dates to travel, put them into the site and it brings back local public holidays, festivals customs, planned riots etc – so if you want to experience local flavours, this could be a decent site.

Animoto – takes your photos and videos, choose music and the site then makes a video for you.

And yes, I’ve tried it for you all, aren’t I nice?

My first try on Animoto

Interesting programme on Channel 4 – The Execution of Gary Glitter – probably not as clever as it thought it was and I suppose my first thought was “is he going to get royalty payments for his songs being used?” and then I thought “is Gary Glitter watching this?” Wow, that would mess with your mind, watching a TV show where you die in it.

More news and updates as the week unfolds!

Aquí hay unos cortos videos con una colección de fotos sobre fracturas y ortopedia. Cabe destacar que esto es para probar Animoto.

Fracturas

Ortopedia

Aquí dejo un link a un blog con información sobre fracturas, el cual me parece muy interesante: http://intellectualization.wordpress.com

Eight weeks ago I began on an adventure to explore how to bridge learning theories with technology.  Oh, how my mind has been stretched, new areas of my brain have been awakened.   I am formulating new ideas on how to guide my students on their exploration of Web 2.0.   Did you notice I used the word “guide”, I did not write “instruct”, “teach” or “tell”?  Already my style of teaching is changing, and change is difficult since humans are creatures of habit, so I must have clear goals and guidelines so my students will benefit from my new found knowledge.

Before beginning on this adventure I attempted to formulate which learning theory I followed in my instruction.   The most prominent theories I believe in are the Constructivist theory of Jerome Bruner and behaviorist learning theories (Lever-Duffy &McDonald, 2008, p.17 -19).   After completing my eight work course, my opinion has not altered but I do see the importance of offering students a variety of learning experiences that would support all learning styles and theories.  We often hear “variety is the spice of life”, perhaps “variety is the catalyst of learning”.

In the past I have utilized concept maps for my younger students, but I had not continued the practice with my older students.  I have since reevaluated my thoughts and reintroduced concept maps for my older students who are using them to organize their research information.   According to Marzano the use of graphic organizers has one of the highest impacts on student achievement, so my students will initially complete graphic organizers I create and progress to making their own graphic organizers utilizing Kidspiration, Inspiration and Microsoft Word.   I also plan to share my new found knowledge of summarizing and note taking utilizing Microsoft Word.  The students will be able to use their on-line textbooks and summarize and take notes on various sections of the book.   The students armed with this summary information will be responsible for sharing the information with their peers in a jigsaw lesson.

I would like to incorporate blogs, wikis and voice threads into my classroom in the future.  Currently I am checking to see if this is allowed by my district, if this is against district policy, they can use a blog and wiki application inside of the districts web-based course management system.  This system allows students and teacher to collaborate easily on-line but the limitation is it limits “who” can interact with students.  The good news is the students will understand the use of blogs and wikis in the world; perhaps students with computers at home will explore the uses of these applications at home under their parent’s supervision.  I would love to share my limited knowledge of Voice Threads, so I may have to meet with district level administration to gain permission to utilize this application in my classroom.

Technology is continuously advancing and offering new opportunities for students to collaborate with others from around the globe, what does that mean to educators?  Does the advancement of technology make setting long term goals more difficult for educators?   As I sit contemplating my long term goals I am perplexed.   A long term goal could be to integrate concept maps and summarizing skills into my research projects in my classroom with a Powerpoint presentation, three weeks ago that would have been a long term goal for me, but not today.  I still like the concept map and summarizing skills idea however I would like to utilize the Voice Thread of Prezi application, or perhaps, Animoto or some other “hot new or old application” I do not know about.

For now a long term educational goal for me would be to continue to add to my blog and interact with other “bloggers” about the advancement of technology in the world of education and apply what I learn to my classroom.   Another long term goal would be to introduce my students to the read/write web through blogs, wikis, voice threads, Prezi, or Xtranormal.   One goal I know I must possess is to always be learning and seeking new knowledge in all aspects of my life, that goal will allow me to inspire my students to continue to learn.

Lever-Duffy,Judy and McDonald, J. B. (2008). Theoretical Foundations. In J. Lever-Duffy, & J. B. McDonald, Theoretical Foundations. Boston: Pearson Education, Inc.

Pitler, H., Hubbell, E., Kuhn, M., & Malenoski, K. (2007). Using technology with classroom instruction that works. Alexandria, VA: ASCD

Motorola Looks to Unify 3-D TV Experience; company talks up set-top boxes that could convert 3-D TV video into any 3-D format. (Multichannel News)

CE Manufacturer Earnings; Sony got roughed up with a net loss of 26.3 billion yen ($289 million) as opposed to a 20.8 billion yen ($228 million) profit for the same quarter last year. (Variety) Samsung, on the other hand, posted its best quarterly net profit ever, with 3.72 trillion won ($3.14 billion). (The New York Times)

CableLabs Wants Standards for TV Everywhere; R&D consortium issues request for information to define elements for a common technical approach to authentication plans. (Multichannel News)

comScore Laying Off 8 Percent of Workforce; measurement firm shifting resources to support Media Metrix 360. (paidContent)

Animoto Partners with LIFE.com; users can incorporate more than 100 images into their videos including photos of Marilyn Monroe and and the first lunar landing. (emailed release)

This is my first fusion product, All the images and the video shot on Canon 5DII.    I downloaded an Animoto and cut it up and mixed with Video.  It was edited it in Pinnacle Studio 14, a good PC software, that likes the 5dII files without conversion.  This is a big file, uploaded to Vimeo.

Another company that produces slide shows with audio ability is Animoto. While it does cost to make full length videos, you can try it out for free by making 30sec shorts like I did.

For some reason, I was unable to get it to view simply by embedding the actual Animoto video, so I tried uploading to YouTube instead (which, sadly, degraded the quality) which I was able to embed.

However, if you still would like to see the original (and much better quality) version, please click here.

AJ

So, I have FINALLY gotten around to sharing my Manchester Pride pictures!

I spent so long working on videos for them on several different platforms when I got back, I completely forgot to share them… then got sick of the sight of them, and now have remembered to post heh. I may post some of the originals up too at some point as they’re of high image quality – hurrah.

Loved the parade this year; enjoy!

(P.S. The animoto player takes a little while to load, please bear with it! Also, full screen is, naturally, the best way to view!)

(P.P.S. B*ll*cks… I had shared already after all!)

Say it With Video – Narrate your pictures with text to tell a story. Send a message to a loved one. Create event invitations. Unlimited potential.

Animoto automatically produces beautifully orchestrated, completely unique video pieces from your photos, video clips and music. Fast, free and shockingly easy.

Animoto.com is a web application that creates MTV-style videos with the click of a button.

Users simply choose a song and images. Animoto then automatically generates a unique video for them. No two videos are ever the same.

Many of the post-production techniques that the founders used while working as producers for MTV, Comedy Central & ABC are used in Animoto’s patent-pending Cinematic Artificial Intelligence developed to think like an actual editor and director. The resulting video is produced in a widescreen format, containing the visual energy of a music video and the emotional impact of a movie trailer.

The heart of Animoto is its newly developed patent-pending Cinematic A.I. technology that thinks like an actual director and editor. The technology takes into account every nuance of a song – the genre, song structure, energy, rhythm, instrumentation, and vocals. Whether it’s punk, pop, hip-hop or a classical Mozart piece, every Animoto video is totally customized.

Animoto is inspired by the digital camera revolution where taking dozens, even hundreds of pictures at a time gives people the ability to think more like a video producer capturing an entire experience, not just individual moments. As users are discovering the limits of traditional photo services, the guys at Animoto are innovating new ways for people to share their stories and express themselves through media.

iPhone & Facebook Users – Got an iPhone? Use Facebook? We’ve got apps for both! Make videos in whatever environment works best for you.

Things to be aware of with Animoto

It’s very important to read the Terms of Service (TOS) for Animoto. Here are some things I learned when I looked into it:

1) You cannot use the free version for anything commercial – such as promoting your website or services

2) If you subscribe to the commercial version for $249 a year, you can make videos promoting your own services but you cannot use it to make videos for clients

3) If your yearly subscription lapses, you are no longer allowed to show the videos that you made while under license. That strikes me as overly restrictive. Can you imagine having to remove all those videos from video sharing sites? What an administrative nightmare.

So basically, if you want to use Animoto just to make personal videos that serve no commercial purpose – then you can use the free version. If you want to make videos that promote your business, you must purchase the commercial license. If you want to make videos for clients, you are out of luck (I suppose you could do it if each client purchased a commercial license).

What’s the difference between the free and paid Animoto?

In addition to the ability to make videos that promote your own business, there are some other differences between the consumer (free) and the commercial (paid) Animoto accounts:

1. For the commercial package, Animoto obtained a special license that allows commercial account users to use the tracks offered in the package as the soundtrack to their business videos. Traditionally, getting this sort of music licensing is very difficult to obtain, even sometimes for large companies that are producing commercials for TV.

2. The Animoto-branding is much less blatant (especially toward the end of the video). To see an example, play the main video on this page (the video with the chef’s image).

3. There are no watermark logos in the bottom-right and no link-back buttons to the Animoto site (but rather a more subtle “Powered by Animoto” logo off to the bottom right).

4. Commercial account holders get an unlimited amount of DVD-quality download (normally $5 a download for consumers).

5. Commercial users can slow down videos to half the speed at which they normally render (or twice as fast).

6. Commercial account holders get to put “call back” buttons at the end of the video, linking the viewer to your company’s website.

How to Create a Video in Animoto

* Sign up for a free account
* Choose to do a short 30-sec video or a full length video
* Choose to upload images from your computer
* Or pick one of the following services: Flickr, Facebook, Picasa, Photobucket, etc.
* I chose Flickr & chose a set from my Flickr account after authorizing Animoto to access Flickr
* Then wait a few mins when Animoto gets your images and processes them
* Once it grabs your images you can choose to keep them all or delete the ones you don’t want
* Then choose a song from their collection or upload your own.
* Then finalize your video with a title and description and let Animoto works it’s magic.
* Email the video, download it or even embed in a webpage to share in with others.

It’s October! Tonight is Curriculum Night, so I’m here preparing the last minute stuff for the parents. I have some great work to choose from to display in the gym, which makes life very easy for me!

Check out the 4th and 5th grade inspiration projects that I posted on Picasa.

Also check out the 6th grade TuxPaint projects that I posted on animoto. They are also hanging around the lab today!

Today the first and second graders made habitat pictures on TuxPaint. Next week 2nd grade must get back on First in Math and I promised them some time on photobooth. First grade will play with pattern blocks next week on a very cool site.

–

Originally posted on fsh.wetpaint.com. Moved to wordpress.com on October 21, 2009.