I don’t know if it is appropriate to publish my video clip since the application process is still open until January 31st.
But…
… it feels odd not to share my work, so in the spirit of transparency and documenting one’s journey and process, in the hope someone else might learn from it… or get inspired.. here is a rough draft of my application video.
I still need to edit and cut it down to about half the size. The video was created in iMovie08.
A few weeks ago, I reviewed the Flip Camcorder and was really impressed with the easiness of being able to simple record video clips, then "flip" out the USB and connect to the PC. The build in Flip Camcorder software made it extremely easy to edit individual movie clips, cut, add music and then save to your computer or directly upload to YouTube to share online.
I had several requests to try the Flip out with a MAC.
I went to our backyard and recorded two short video clips. The first Problem was evident immediately. My MacBook is thinner than the Flip Camcorder, which makes it impossible to plug it into the USB ports that are located on the side of the MacBook. I had to place the MacBook on my lap and support the Flip Camcorder with my knees. This seemed to be a very unstable connection, since the laptop stopped recognizing the Flip several times.
I finally was able to keep a steady hand/knee and downloaded the Flip For Mac software that came with the camcorder. From the included "Read me Text" :
To use the Flip Video Program with your Macintosh computer:
Connect the Flip Video Camcorder to an available USB port on your Macintosh.
Double-click the "FLIPVIDEO" icon on your Desktop. A window should appear that displays the contents of your camcorder.
Double-click the "Mac Users" folder.
Double click the "Install Flip Video for Mac" icon. This will open a new folder called "Flip Video Program for Mac", which contains the program files.
Drag the "Flip Video Program for Mac" folder to your Desktop.
Double-click the folder to open it, and double-click the "Flip Video for Mac" icon to start the Flip Video Program.
When the Flip Video Program is started for the first time, a window will appear requesting your acceptance of the license agreement, and the automatic installation of video compatibility software that allows your computer to play your videos. Click the "I Agree" button and wait for the installation to complete. Upon completion, follow the instructions to exit the program and restart it.
You are now ready to use the Flip Video Program to play back, save, share, edit and make movies of your videos. Please note that the camcorder must remain connected to your computer for you to use the program with your videos.
The next time you want to use the program, you may simply connect your camcorder and then launch the program you have already installed by double-clicking the "Flip Video for Mac" icon. You do not need to install the program each time you want to use it.
After going through all the steps, the software installed easily. I was able to open up the program and immediately saw my two video clips in the window.
Clicked on Make a Movie, where I knew (from playing with it on the PC) I would be able to add the clips together, clip the beginning or end of the clips, add music, etc. I selected both clips, then "Begin".
Unfortunately, once I arrived on the next screen, it seemed pretty empty to me, compared to the PC version. No editing, no music, no combining the clips, merely a "Back" button. Maybe I missed something crucial, but what was very intuitive on the PC, seemed a problem on the MAC.
So I used the "Back" button, since I could do not much else and chose to save the movie to my computer. That went without a hitch. The program created a "My Flip Video Library" folder under my Documents.
Next problem was that it saved the clips as an .avi file. iMovie will not open the .avi file. When I tried to open it through my Quicktime player, it showed only a white screen. So, I went back to the "Read Me Text"
NOTE for Users Running Macintosh Computers with Intel Core Processors: In order to play back videos within the QuickTime Player on Macintosh computers with Intel Core processors, you may need to adjust the QuickTime Player:
From the Finder menu, choose Go > Applications to open the Applications window. Click once on "QuickTime Player" to select it.
From the Finder menu, choose File > Get Info or type Command-I to open "QuickTime Player Info".
In the "General" section, select the checkbox named "Open using Rosetta".
Close "QuickTime Player Info".
Now, when you double-click the QuickTime Player, it will open with Rosetta and should play back your videos successfully. If you are still having trouble playing back your videos, you may need to install a commercially available Universal video codec, such as DivX Community Codec (www.divx.com). If you install a Universal video code such as DivX, you may then need to go back to "QuickTime Player Info" as above, and deselect the checkbox named "Open using Rosetta".
I followed the instructions, but got stuck, when trying to find the "QuickTime Player Info". Maybe it s not my night tonight, but that option was simply not there. When using the Command-I function I got the Apple Quicktime Inspector. Under Preferences I found a general tab, but nowhere a checkbox with "Open using Rosetta" So I am pretty much stuck.
I guess I could go use a conversion program, such as Zamzar.com to convert the . avi to a .mov file and then edit in iMovie…. BUT it was supposed to be intuitive, easy and FAST.
Maybe it is user error on my part…
So, I plugged the Flip camcorder into my desktop PC and a couple of minutes later, the clips were downloaded from the camcorder to the Flip software, put together, music added and saved as a .wmv file to my computer.
Another few moments later, I uploaded to my Flickr account and then embedded the code into this post. The entire process did not take more than 5 minutes on the PC.
I am still a relative newbie to the MAC (converted almost a year ago to a Macbook). So if you are a MAC pro, don’t even read further. If you are a newbie yourself, you might be interested in the following shortcuts that I learned of :
FN-Delete
will allow you to delete from your cursor on forward. I missed that function from the PC (backspace vs. delete)
CTRL and two finger mousepad scrolling
will allow you to zoom into a specific area on your screen. (Thanks @GingerTPLC on Twitter for this tip)
Command +
will make your text larger
Command -
will make your text smaller
Command -R
Refreshes the page
When I learn of a shortcut, I usually make myself a note and stick it to the computer screen. I force myself to use the new shortcut every day if I want to start internalizing it.
What kind of shortcuts do you use on a regular basis? Can you contribute some cool new ones to my list?
Search Langwitches
Subscribe to Langwitches via Email
Archives
Choose a Category
Social Profiles
In Need of Professional Development?
Contact Silvia Rosenthal Tolisano for customized workshops, coaching and presentations.
Video Conference sessions available.
Tweet Andrea Hernandez, known as edtechworkshop in the blogger- and Twittersphere has written a thought provoking blogpost about Where’s The Authentic Audience? She takes a closer look at the buzz word circulating among blogging educators and classrooms and asks tough questions. What happens when there is no audience coming to …
Tweet I invite few guest bloggers to share posts on Langwitches. This makes it especially rewarding to be able to present to my readers an incredible young lady. Zoe is growing by leaps and bounds as a blog writer and commenter. She is a fourth grader at the Martin J. …
Tweet The following is a collaborative guest post by Michael Fisher and Jeanne Tribuzzi , of the Curriculum 21 Faculty. The companion LIVEBINDER OF INTERACTIVE TOOLS IS HERE. Expecting students to read deeply and draw meaningful conclusions is at the heart of the Common Core ELA standards. Students are asked …
Tweet Our 4th and 5th grade students(9-10 year olds) have been working with Mike Fisher, co-author of Upgrading your Curriculum and author of children’s poems. The goal of their collaboration is to create an eBook of Mike’s poems with students’ illustrations. Once produced, students will work on marketing, advertising and …
Tweet During last year’s edJEWcon conference (a Teaching & Learning Institute for Jewish Educators, which I help organize with Andrea Hernandez and Jon Mitzmacher), we invited our Middle School students to attend our keynote session with Heidi Hayes Jacobs. We all watched magic happen, when students (without being asked) created …
Tweet You have all been there… Professional Development days at your school… Administration usually choose a topic, design the activities and/or bring in a speaker. Most likely, they will be slides with bullet points…listening…turn to your partners…learning about a new initiative your school will take part in…etc. As more and …
Tweet In a unit on Transportation, our Kindergarteners read a large picture book “On the Move!” by Donna Latham Students got so interested into learning about different ways people around the globe got around. They were even ready to take a trip to Venice, Italy to ride in a Vaporetto. …
Tweet Students need our guidance to use virtual platforms for ACADEMIC purposes. We can’t rely on their “so called” native status to know how and what to do. Just a few years ago, no one had heard of “backchanneling”, nowadays, it has become main stream (although most people might not …
Tweet Our 4th and 5th grade students(9-10 year olds) have been working with Mike Fisher, co-author of Upgrading your Curriculum and author of children’s poems. The goal of their collaboration is to create an eBook of Mike’s poems with students’ illustrations. Once produced, students will work on marketing, advertising and …
Tweet Our 4th and 5th grade students(9-10 year olds) have been working with Mike Fisher, co-author of Upgrading your Curriculum and author of children’s poems. The goal of their collaboration is to create an eBook of Mike’s poems with students’ illustrations. Once produced, students will work on marketing, advertising and …
Tweet This is Part Two of Assessment in the Modern Classroom. Read Part One here. Assessing students’ writing, thinking level , understanding, learning connections via a Twitter stream, did not end the assessment upgrade for this particular learning opportunity. During the same Skype call, we paid special attention to how …
Tweet I can die happy now I have seen learning in the 21st Century modern classroom! The learning just oozes through the cracks of the physical classroom walls. Learning is amplified by the amount of people who are collaborating, participating, communicating and creating. The learning is NOT about the technology …
Tweet In a unit on Transportation, our Kindergarteners read a large picture book “On the Move!” by Donna Latham Students got so interested into learning about different ways people around the globe got around. They were even ready to take a trip to Venice, Italy to ride in a Vaporetto. …
Tweet During my visit this past January to the Graded School, in São Paulo, Brazil, I met Jamie Tuttle Middle School Guidance Counselor. He told me about an incident at their International School and the response as a community: We found our world map defaced with several derogatory and racist …
Tweet I have been following the “Where the Hell is Matt” videos since 2006. I always thought the video is a great hook for students into geography. There are three versions available with a clear evolution of Matt growing as he travels around the world. From dancing in isolation in …
Tweet There are many, many pockets of excellence in classroom/student blogging out there. These blogs are driven, coached and nurtured by educators who “get it”. They get how blogging makes a difference in student learning, supports 21st century modern learning skills and literacies and at the same time basic reading …
Tweet Hyperlinks make the World Wide Web what it is. If links did not exist, EVERY web page would be a stand alone. Let’s take a close look at these “clickable thingies” I like the metaphor of thinking of hyperlinks as the “wormholes”, that transport us from one section of …
Tweet I believe we are on our way of taking a modern classroom learning opportunity and upgrading assessment forms to match new skills and new literacies while not forgetting traditionally assessed ones. We took a classroom Twitter feed (Part One) , looked at the conversation skills students exhibited during the Skype …
Tweet The picture above makes me smile… I see a group of Kindergarteners thinking, wondering, discussing, testing things out, collaborating, being proud of their independence as they are working with iPads. It was the first time, we “let go” with the iPads. Previously, we had iPad Centers, working with 3-4 …
Tweet “Amplification” in education is a concept, I am deeply committed to. In a recent post, Upgrade & Amplification Exercise and Checklist, I try to break down the process of amplification and make it more transparent for educators. What I did not explicitly include was the component of another language …
Tweet Recently, I tried to explain to a teacher from another school how we are trying to use iPads BEYOND apps. We have over 100 apps on our school iPads and introduce our students according to age level to a variety of them, but the focus of the use of …
Tweet Matt Gomez shared a post today with a screenshot of his storytelling iPad app folder. I wanted to reciprocate and share mine. Storytelling I Folder StoryBuddy StoryBuilder StoryPagesHD Toontastic Tappy Memories StoryBoards Premium StoryMaker HD StoryPatch In a World … Drama Build a Story PhotoPuppets HD Epic Citadel Sock …
Tweet I recently found a video of 1st graders using the iPad to visualize a poem that their teacher read to them. After students drew what they imagined, they got into pairs and explained their drawings to a partner. The teacher also circulated to listen and to ask deeper questions …
Tweet Kindergarten time is storytelling time: Listening to stories, telling stories, acting stories out, learning how to read your own stories and creating your own stories! Learning about a holiday, like Thanksgiving in the USA, is the perfect time to cloak the historical origin into a fascinating story for five …
Social Profiles