Wednesday, June 20, 2007

Film Fests and Online Video


In Will Richardson's TIE session entitled Podcast, Vodcast, Screencast Nation we learned about using tons of FREE web resources for creating and sharing content on the web. For those of us who are involved with digital video production in the classroom, check out some stellar examples of student filmmaking at the ICAN film fest in San Fernando, California. The group writes on its site, "Digital storytelling is our way of promoting the arts, celebrating our culture, and improving our communications with you: the world." That's what all this is about - empowering our students to be contributors to the global community.


One great tool is the YouTube Remixer, which allows a YouTube user to edit and add titles and effects to his/her YouTube films. Very cool, very fun, and very practical. The editing is all done online without the need for any fancy video editing software, and the final version of the video can then be uploaded directly in YouTube.


Here's another fun, free, and extremely useful tool: Windows Media Encoder. Use this to convert any A/V input for your computer to a windows media file, or simply use it to create screencasts. The screencast will prove to be a very powerful tool in your classroom. Use it to deliver instructions or to provide interactive feedback to students on their work. Watch my example of how I use IE7 daily at work.

To learn more about the many tools available out there, check out Will Richardson's Wiki.

1 comment:

Emily Taylor said...

Wow, John! The iCan film fest site is incredible. I've just watched a few of the films posted there and was vastly impressed. Each of the films I watched had a powerful message and was very artistic and well-made. The creativity and imagination of the students shone clearly through their films. This was an inspirational site, thank you for sharing it with us! I plan on watching more and getting more ideas about how to make digital storytelling as meaningful as possible for my students. Do you know of other student film fests in the world?