Video Editing Tool

I just came across this video editing site: Cuts- Share your Take. It is still in beta, but looks promising for teachers, since it is entirely web based. As the site states:

“No downloading, uploading or install required.”

What is Cuts?

Cuts is a service that makes it easy to create and share your take of any online video. With our easy CutMaker, it’s only a few clicks to insert sound effects, add captions, loop the best parts, and skip the boring stuff — and in minutes you can share your creation by embedding it on your MySpace page and blog, or emailing it to your friends. All you need is the page URL of your favorite video and something to say.

To try it out, I quickly pasted a URL of a short video that I had created last year. The interface seems pretty straight forward and intuitive.

One can add Sounds, like:

• gasp
• Yes
• Applause
• Muting
• Eww
• Baby crying
• Baby laughing
• Tada
• etc.

Then there is a possibility of adding CAPTIONS. Which again let’s me think of many new ways to integrate this tool in the classroom.

• Karaokee
• Explanations of an experiment
• Emphasis of on-screen activity
• Visual of an explanation (ex. Math)
• Spelling of Homophones (ESL or foreign language)
• Journaling
• Background or additional Information of topic discussed online

With SKIP/LOOP you can hide or repeat a scene.

As with any application that aspires to be a good Web 2.0 tool, there is the option of saving the cut with tags to share with others.

So far I wish the application would also include more of the typical movie editing tools, such as transitions and effects. I am having a hard time sometimes to keep all the different tools together that I want/need to use in order to edit my movies. Can’t someone come up with one Mega web based, free (of course) video editing tool that let’s me do EVERYTHING in one place?

Other web based movie editing tools that I am planning on exploring. Any feedback and suggestions to other sites are appreciated:

• Jumpcut
• Movie Masher
• Bubble Ply Add Bubbles to any video, Post it anywhere you wish!
• EyeSpot Use the Mixer to edit and combine your videos, photos and music online. Share mixes by email, blog, download or cell phone for free!

Telling Time Video Project (Spanish)

I teach an Adult Spanish class once a week and I am extremely proud to announce the creation of the first Spanish Instructional video that the class created. The video was created with the intentions to later on use it with my elementary school students. As a result of having the task to teach others, the adults learned the concept themselves. Using technology added more fun and excitement to the entire process.

I am planning on making this video available to download for my students’ iPods.
You can convert any youtube video into the iPod format by installing a little program called iTube and then pasting the youtube URL of the video into it. Iit will then convert the video into an iPod ready format.

[kml_flashembed movie="http://youtube.com/v/ANNLHXUbKww" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

Global Work Ethic by Alan November

I am listening for a second time to Alan November‘s podcast “Global Work Ethic“. The first time this morning on my way to work and now a second time at school during down time. This morning I flagged the podcast for a few quotes from Alan, that made me want to “make” my administrators listen to this short six minute audio file.

We are not producing children who are globally competitive. What does it mean to have global work ethics?
First time in history we are faced that our students over the course of their lifetime will loose their careers many times. Educators are faced now with the challenge of instilling in their students the desire and capabilities of life long learning.

November sees three skills that are absolutely essential, but are not taught in schools.

1. Capacity and skill to deal with overwhelming amount of information.
1. Access it
2. Organize it
3. Produce it
4. Make meaning out of it
5. Add value to it
6. Publish it
2. Global Communication
1. social protocols
2. different points of view
3. skills of team work and collaboration
3. Provide students with a culture of learning that leads them to be self directive
1. self assessing
2. inter-dependent learners
3. self motivating

Classroom needs to be used as global collaboration tool, not information tool. We need to be taught how to learn, not being taught how to be taught. A shift need to occur and more and more control needs to be moved towards the learner.

Download Alan November’s Global Work Ethic Podcast from here .