Archive for category film making

Minibeasts – Ants at the watering hole

Here’s a video I put together showing ants working together. I think it would be a good resource for the KS1 topic of Minibeasts. Let me know what you think and if you need the photos you can find them on my flickr page.

Audio from Garageband, iLife’09


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Photo Story3 – simply brilliant

I’ve come across many free online tools and many free installable tools in my teaching career. Some are uninstalled as soon as possible, others are used for a while then lie dormant. Photo Story3 is neither of those. It is simply brilliant and let me show you why.

I demonstrated this tool to my class yesterday (y3/y4), for the first time. I provided them with a step by step guide how to use it to create a very simple, audio-free story and let them play and learn for themselves. Questions were raised, answers were given by myself and others who had found out how to do it themselves. Photostory really is that simple.

So today I set up a shared folder of images for the class to use to make a Science story about Light and Shadow. The room was buzzing with activity. The class were completely involved in the task and learning form each other. I facilitated where I was needed and got the opportunity to push children by introducing effects that could be used in their stories.

Everyone was involved, everyone was creating and everyone was learning. If a tool can provide that then I want to use it. Photo Story3 is simply brilliant.

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Green screen on Windows Movie Maker

Movie making ©big-film flickr

Last night I attended the very successful #TMETRU09 online flash meeting which was also been shown on JustinTV and followed on Twitter using the same hashtag. Read about it here

My presentation (blogged about by Kathy Schrock)was the use of Green screen in iMovie’09 which led to many people enquiring about a similar effect in Windows for Movie Maker. Doug Belshaw posted a link in the FlashMeeting and also explained to have a look through Google to find how; so I did.

Here’s the easiest to follow guide I have found and also a YouTube video demonstrating the principle. I’ll definitely give it a go and let you know how it works. By the way, from what I gather it’s best to use a well lit blue screen and not a green screen on MovieMaker.

Steps to take to get Chroma Key (Green screen effect) in Windows Movie Maker

Many, many thanks to Doug and Dai for making the whole event possible.

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#TMETRU09 – Using a green screen effect in iMovie 09

Teachmeet’s are a fantastic opportunity for those that know about using tech in education to demonstrate their uses to others. The EdTechRoundUp TeachMeet edition (#TMETRU09) is special in that it will be entirely online – through a flash meeting and video presentations that will be streamed on justintv.

My presentation is about using the green screen effect in iMovie09 for a Mac. Unfortunately this may mean that many other teachers may not be able to use this as they don’t have a Mac. But for those that do I’m sure you will find my presentation useful and perhaps give you ideas how to use it with your class.  It’s a mere 2 minutes. Let me know what you think.

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