Conduct some research on the web to see if you can find an educationally-meaningful video on YouTube or other website that presents video clips BUT DOES NOT INCLUDE AN EASY-TO-USE DOWNLOAD OPTION. For this assignment, try to find an example of a video or video project that accomplishes at least one of the following:
* supplements traditional educational material
* enhances student understanding of a particular idea or concept
* presents the results of a curricular exercise
* supports student communication skills
* fosters research, organization, planning, analysis, problem-solving and/or synthesis skills
* makes connections between the curriculum and the world outside the classroom
* helps promote meaningful discussion
* facilitates any other educational outcomes not already mentioned
Then try to save the video using one of the methods we discussed in class or some other method of your choosing.
After you have selected a video and saved it (or attempted to save it), post a comment under the Discussion Assignment One in which you describe the video you found, how it meets one of the goals outlined above, and discuss the process and software you used to save it and indicate if you had any problems.
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Friday, January 23, 2009
Discussion Assignment One
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8 comments:
Bruce here. The video I found is a continuous shot of a working hard drive. It shows the drive powering up, deleting a file, a cut and paste, a quick format, and then a power down. It enhances understanding of how a hard drive works, and shows the viewer how some of the sounds coming from a computer are generated. The video would stimulate more research because it does not explain in depth what is happening—it only provides simple labels to alert the viewer to what is happening; power up, deleting a file, quick format, cut/paste, and power down. The viewer sees moving parts, but no explanation is given about how the parts move, what causes them to move, or what each move accomplishes on the face of the drive. More research is needed to satisfy the curiosity generated by the video. I found the video after staying up much too late exploring YouTube Thursday night. What a blast! Having never used the site beyond an occasional link someone would send me in an email, I was completely taken in and watched clip after clip for hours. I chose several to save to a folder on my desktop and used mediaconverter.org to download the files, convert them to wmv format, and save them under “train crashes” in my CUIN 7346 file. I chose to save them all as “train crashes” because I originally set out to find a relatively well-known train crash filmed in black and white. I did not find the one I was looking for but found others before my curiosity led me to look for other topics. I downloaded several optical illusions, a lyre bird calling for a mate, Anita Renfroe doing “The Mom Song,” and others. Each time I used mediaconverter.org and had no problems saving the files. I am disappointed in the quality of all of them except the lyre bird video, which was available in high quality. It is the only one that looks good on a full screen.
While on YouTube, I decided to search for videos on the water cycle. After filtering through a couple of choices, I found a video from Bill Nye the Science Guy called Water Cycle Jump. It is a satire of Kris Kross’ 1992 song, “Jump”. I was drawn to this video because I love finding ways of using music in the classroom to supplement lessons. From my personal experience, music can successfully help drive home vocabulary and other concepts that would otherwise easily be forgotten. This video would definitely (b) enhance student understanding of the water cycle. Even if students are not familiar with the song, the hip hop beats would be pleasantly unexpected and would capture their attention.
In order to save the video, I used Media Converter to convert the video from the url on YouTube into a wmv file. The process took about 3 minutes and was very easy.
I looked on You Tube for a video called "Did You Know?" that I have been looking download for some time. I first saw this video at a tech meeting that I attended and was shocked and inspired as I watched this video. I have been wanting to share it with my team for some time but since our district blocks the use of You Tube I have not been able to do so at school. This video gives teachers a very real and frightening view of where America ranks in the world and the constant motion of society and technology that we are faced with. This is not a video that I would share with my students but rather an educational video that would be shared with colleagues. It inspires teachers (or at least those I have talked to...for some it may be more frightening than inspirational) to become better educators when it comes to technology.
I used Media Converter to obtain a copy of this video from You Tube. I did not run into any problems and was successful in downloading the file to my computer. I agree that the quality was not wonderful but it worked well enough that it was worth the time (I went and made dinner) and would be good enough to show my colleagues.
Bruce’s excellent write up reminded me a flash
animation about hard drives that Hitachi posted to the web. The project requirement that it be
difficult to copy was met two ways. First, because the video was a flash
animation (.SWF), Media converter and Zamzar would
not convert it to .AVI. So, the video had to be manually downloaded and
converted. Second, it resided on a secondary web server, so I had to identify
it through the web page’s source file. Once downloaded, it was converted using a
program called “SWF
& FLV Toolbox 3.5”. The original .SWF file was 3.62 Mb. After the
conversion to .AVI, the resulting file was 107 Mb. So,
I tried Prism Video Converter
to change the format to .WMF for better compression (smaller file). However,
the results were somewhat disappointing, so I left it in .AVI format. Then it
was uploaded to Youtube.
This project was interesting.
Finding the flash animation file and the .SWF converter was tougher than I planned and one of the other converters introduced a virus into my PC. Sure, this video is somewhat silly, but my student ‘focus groups’ reacted
positively to it, so I’m happy.
I have an idea for conglomerating pieces of popular science/science fiction films to spark the interest in students' minds about the lack of limitations science has to offer. I originally thought some parts of The Golden Compass regarding "dust" and some pieces from NOVA's "Elegant Universe" about Einstein's theories of relativity and string theories eleven dimensions. I started with that and have ventured into different realms of thought filled with flexible intentions and vulnerable hopes. I'm hoping to put something together throughout this class with the techniques we'll learn. No problems using YouTube and mediaconverter.org.
I downloaded two videos that showed a series of prints by Hokusai, one which simply showed a series of prints and another which animated the characters in the pieces. I would most likely use this as an alternative to a PowerPoint or a reproduction when introducing Japanese woodblock prints, then have students share their observations of the series. This would likely hold students' attention longer, particularly for elementary and intermediate aged children but also for older students and adults, and showing many examples would help students to make broader discoveries about Japanese woodblock prints (as opposed to looking at one or two and attempting to draw conclusions about the style). The animated film would be perfect when introducing a concept like life drawing or narrative art, and the music helps set the mood. I used the Media Converter, and it worked just fine.
I wanted to find time-lapse photography of a plant growing. There were plenty of choices. The one I tried through media converter failed because of a missing codec. However, Zamzar was able to convert it successfully. It was great to have more than one conversion option.
I found a short interview clip of Alan Moore talking about the humanistic qualities of the super hero characters in his graphic novel, Watchmen. He also reads a part of the graphic novel in the voice of Rorshach (one of the main characters in the book)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qKebCtCTbCA&feature=related
I used Media Converter to convert this clip. It was incredibly easy and I can't wait to download more clips!
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