NOT MY LAST VIDEO!!!

Absent Student Video from Wendy Chapman on Vimeo.

My video this week is a tongue in cheek intro to what I hope will be at least a weekly entry into a class blog that I will be adopting for the 2013- 2014 school year. I have a giant daily calendar that takes up my one and only white board in my class, I have a box that I place any daily work for each day of the week, and I spend a considerable amount of time explaining the use of these items to my students in case they miss class. Students will still come up to me at the start of class and ask "Did we do anything" when they miss. I can use this as an intro to any labs that I film for student makeup.


This is is the first time I actually used my students (family doesn't count) in the making of a video.I have sat for weeks watching other people in the class doing this and seeing how the students seem to enjoy the experience. I can now say that my first student inclusion video was fun for me and from what I observed, for my students also. I will be the first to admit that I have control issues and I truly admire those who are able give up that control and let the students own their learning, and it is for that reason that I plan to make the use of video making an assessment tool in my classroom. As I have already indicated in a previous blog, I want my students to create videos that will be the culminating product for a unit. I want this to be done at least twice in the year so that the students might be able to participate in some of the critiquing techniques that we used in this class and use those critiques like we did to improve their products. I think that going over some of the video making techniques would not be a waste of time, but in the interest of time in the science class I may make it part of the enrichment class that we teach in middle school. The communication of one or multiple science concepts in an effective manner would require students to develop a multi-step plan and then to execute that plan. A rubric as well as peer assessment could be used to evaluate the final products.




We all learned that their are many ways to plan and create a video. Details we didn't think about sometimes caused us to abandon ideas, but a team of videographers may have helped us to find solutions we could not find on our own or remember how to do techniques that we were shown in class. It may be a good idea for future classes to allow at least the possibility of collaboration on videos.


Finally I'm just wondering if any of us will be able to just watch a tv show or a movie ever again without noting the special shots like point of view or over the shoulder or use of transitions, etc... or more importantly will we be able to watch those presentations without annoying those around us as we point out what we've come to learn.

Haiku from Wendy Chapman on Vimeo.

Lol. Haiku gone awry. Dead mouse found in my driveway a week ago has been plaguing my family everytime we exit our vehicles and enter the house. Instead of removing it, I decided to film it and include it in my haiku this week. I tried to do a touchy-feely spring theme but, it didn't quite work out. I really like the clock clip even thought the clock is laying in the grass because it didn't work. I wish I had held the flower shot a little longer or inserted another clip of it to drag it out longer, and I definitely wish I had a better transition to the dead mouse and had gotten closer to the maggots.

Before I started this class it was with the intention of using this new skill to create videos that I could use in "flipping" a lesson. I had visions of videotaping instructions or background information that would allow students to prepare for upcoming labs projects. As the class progressed, I saw how I could use the videos to support those students who had missed labs and reinforce the lab experience for other students as they participated in the making of the "lab makeup videos" These of course could be posted to a class blog for students who missed them and also for students who would need to review the lab before a test. Now after viewing the video that I have included in this weeks lab, I can see how I could use video making to engage my students at a level I have never before thought possible. Making the class project the generation of a video along the lines of the one created by the history teachers where the information is integrated in a meaingful way with today's music and dance would be an optimum learning experience. Breaking the video up so that different groups worked on different aspects of the concept presented would allow for the type of critiquing that we have been doing in class. I wouldn't do it for every unit but I will do it for more than one so that the critiquing can be something students can use to view thier growth in this area of skills.

Spring Break from Wendy Chapman on Vimeo.

I had a terrible time trying to think of something for the prompt and I had twice as long to think. I finally went with the "Spring Break" theme and had a lot of fun with the idea of our spring break in the snow here in Cabell county. I saw a lot of people on facebook calling for a do over, but spring is a mind set. You can make your own funshine. I was able to separate my sound this week. Yeah!!!! So my voiced directions weren"t being heard. I also noticed that I am in the habit of rotating the camera in the same direction and need to rotate from the left to right too.

Point of View from Wendy Chapman on Vimeo.

I had this idea for my point of view video on Friday, but I didn't realize that only being able to shoot at school was going to put me in a time crunch. It would have been less stressful to have picked something out of school to have the weekend to work on or it would have been less stressful to just be able to let that first idea go but alas I could not. It did give me some time to think about possible shots I would need and I did do some storyboarding in my head. I think the execution is still lacking because I can't figure out how to fade to black at the end, and my song is just cut off. I can still hear me talking during the video and some other noise I wish wasn't there. However I did import some music and by sheer dumb luck the music ends in a decent place for the story, and I did get to use the cool overlay or masking technique we were shown from last week. Other lessons I learned this week; save as you go along because the first time you import music your computer may do something funky and relpace all your clips with black and white lines (I still don't know what happened) and when you delete the lines, you delete your clips and have to start all over again and it might be late at night and you might not have any chocolate in the house and you might yell at your family, but they might love you anyway. Good luck with that. I also got to make and use the pencil-cam (see picture above).

Nostalgia Video from Wendy Chapman on Vimeo.
This week my daughter turned 14 years old.  I am so proud of the young woman she is turning into, but part of me really misses that little girl.  I had so much fun putting her in those frilly dresses.  My mom made the lavender one in the video for her first Easter. My mom also made the Raggedy Ann and Andy dolls in the video except for the face and my dad emroidered the faces.  There were lots of doll babies, and baby beds, and baby buggies in the house for years, but they have slowly disappeared and been replaced by new interests.  Only a few special ones like Raggedy Ann and Andy remain.   I hope to pass all of these things to a granddaughter someday so that my daughter can enjoy them again as she shares them with her little girl. 

Reflections

1/125 f11 ISO 100

 

I could not resist taking a photo of one of the greatest examples of reflection known to humans.  Most of my first attempts at photographing the moon were blurry blobs of light.  After a little research on the internet, I found some solid settings.  I still couldn't capture objects surrounding me to use as size references because the camera made the moon the light blob again when I did that.  The site I looked at said that the only way to capture the moon in this detail with a more earthly foreground was to take two photos and overlay them somehow in photoshop.  I don't know if lightroom has this capability but the ones they showed were cool and I might like to try it.  I did use my tripod and my macro lens set for infinity when taking these photos, I took a lot of them, and my neck and shoulders hurt from the odd angle I was bent in trying to get the shot.

 

Moon Blob

 

1/60 f/16 ISO 1600

 

I dropped a mirror on the ground that was covered with leaves and twigs and was able to see the reflection of the sky and trees above.  I like the texture and the differences of colors.  Need to turn the picture because tree images in mirror look upside down.

 

Silouhettes

ISO 1600 f5.6 1/60sec

This skeleton image is taken in my classroom with only the light from the blinds to highlight the silouhette of skeleton.  I liked the way the light striped the blinds.  I darkened the skeleton in light room to emphasize the silouhette.  I couldn't figure out how to export both the before and after images from lightroom.  The videos really helped though because I had forgotten everything. I wish I knew how to get rid of that bar shadow on the blinds.   I had more fun with the next image because I wasn't trying to make it right.  I was just having fun making it the way I wanted it.

I took this image in front of my smartboard at school.  With a little editing and cropping in lightroom I am approaching what I believe to be a classic cameo silouhette.  Cool!!

                                                             ISO 1600 f4.5 1/60 sec

Passion for Red

My husband bought these strawberries from a lady who sells them out of the back of her vehicle at his workplace.  They were beautiful and smelled so good.  I worked with them for a while trying different photo ideas.  I finally went with this one because I like the way the snake comes out of the darker side of the picture.  I also like the hint of evil lurking in something that looks so delicious.  My photo shoot was brought to an abrupt halt because my family wanted to eat my subjects.  I did cheat when taking the picture and set my camera on P to look at the auto settings before I went back to manual and adjusted my settings. It is still frustrating to me that I can't really see camera shake until I download to computer.  I think I have some decent pictures until I see what I did on computer. 

It was just too tempting not to take advantage of that great snow and use it for my "smile assignment".  My home is surrounded by huge hemlocks that look even more beautiful when flocked by snow.  The second round of snow was reportedly good for building snowmen, but I couldn't get it to stick together so this snow critter showed up in the branches of a tree with a little help from me.  I think he's cute but the lighting probably deserved a little more attention.  I know he shouldn't be in the center and I took more of him in other places, but I like this one best. 

Overexposed in the snow

Took the first picture on P, came back and watched the video on shutter speed because I knew I needed to control light---put the camera on TV changed shutter speed to 1/1000 and see improvement.

Tracks from E. Mud River Bridge

Mud River

I think I am supposed to write in some numbers.  The info reads 1/100 7.1 in the upper left corner, 101-0086 in the upper right corner,  and 73/147 in lower left corner.  I have no idea what these numbers mean. The first time I looked at this photo on the computer, it appeared blury.  In fact all of my photos appeared blury and I thought that I had wasted a lot of time that day.  I went out again and took some more photos and when I loaded them on computer to look at the new photos and all of the previous photos appeared much clearer.  I have no idea what I did to make them appear blury.

 I took this photo while standing on a bridge located at the intersection of James River Turnpike and West Mud River Road that spans the Mud River in Milton, WV.  I liked that the horizon was reflected in the water.  It was cloudy that day, but the clouds seemed to have filtered the light so that the images in the water were much clearer than on a sunny day.  I know this because thnking the picture was blury, I went back a second day to try and recapture the image but the sun was out and made images in water not as defined.