Movies Movies Movies

This past week, we have been making 30 second commercials in class. Who knew that it would take so long to make 30 seconds look good? I was put in charge of editing, which I have some limited knowledge of thanks to my brother Austin and his amazing stop motion skills. We had to make a commercial about a product, and in this case, my group used Jet Puff Marshmallow Fluff. This particular can was super old and had developed a yellow puddle of jelly type substance at the bottom because of its many years of unuse.

Making videos is super fun, and a challenge, but can be a really good way for students to find a new medium to explore education. For instance, my brother Austin, does a lot of videos for school projects because that is how he likes to express himself, and they are super amazing, and something that really interests him. I think bringing different mediums into the classroom is a good idea, and can really help students find fun and different ways to express what they have learned.

I also feel like it would be cool to have a video at the beginning of some units to get the kids interested in what they are going to learn. I feel like this would be extremely helpful in areas such as language arts and social studies. Everybody likes to watch videos, and I think that it is a good way for students to collaborate.

If your school has the resources, it would be fun to have the students get into groups and make video projects for different units. Once again, this would get them working in a team in a different type of medium and it would be a great way to have fun.

I like videos, even though it takes forever to make one, in the end its all worth it.

Putting the Picture Together

The last week in class we did a lot of work with photoshop. I have definitely have worked with photoship before, especially in high school back when I was on a newspaper and had to do layout.
The assignment in our class was to take a picture off the internet, scan a photo, and take a photo of our own and put them together into one believable picture. I took a background picture off flickr.com of a park bench with a statue on it. I perched a friend of mine on top of the statue by take a picture, cutting it out on photoshop and putting it in. I finished off by scanning a bird and put it in there, as well as some text.
I think that it's really helpful for students to have basic knowledge of photoshop, and it would be a fun way to put pictures of your class in history, or inside a book. it could really brighten up the room and keep it interesting. I think that it would be a good way of getting kids excited and really using technology to my advantage.