Here’s a video explaining the rule of thirds.
Practice by looking at a few shots on television. You’ll see that most of the time, the eyes are on one of the two upper intersections. Keep this in mind when composing your shots. Also, with motion or if the character is facing the side, put 2/3 of the shot in front of them.
Last week a neighboring teacher asked me a tech question which I serendipitously found the answer to just the day before! The question was: “Is there any way to download YouTube videos for my class?” Like so many other districts, our filter blocks the most popular video site on the web.
So how do you download YouTube videos for class? Simple – RealPlayer. With RealPlayer 10 or higher (version 11 is available as of the date of this post), there is a built-in feature that allows you to download YouTube videos to your PC. When you download RealPlayer there is a feature that you can set to allow you to download YouTube videos. There’s a trick though – you have to select the feature when you install the player. Just make sure the button is checked. Once you’ve downloaded the player, everytime you watch a YouTube video, a small button will appear above the video allowing you to download it (see pic below). The files are downloaded to your computer as .flv files to any location you select. They can then be played back on RealPlayer (or another flv player) without streaming from the internet.
At home, I download YouTube videos onto a USB drive then bring the drive to school where I can play them back for my students. While I still prefer other media players for things like music & internet radio, this new feature makes RealPlayer worth adding to your suite of free programs.
The catch: using the above method does require a media player on your classroom computer that can handle flv files, so that you can playback the downloaded YouTube videos from your USB drive. I have a copy of RealPlayer installed on my school laptop for this but there are other options. FLV Player from download.com allows you to move a slider to control playback, or if you’re using Mac, Wimpyplayer is a free cross-platform player.
My favorite use of this has been to download people’s home videos of high school basketball games where players get injured. No, I don’t find pleasure in the suffering of others – I teach sports medicine, so we use video to analyze the physical forces that cause injury. Showing kids how an injury occurs is more valuable than telling them. But for some kids, the more gross the injury (and there are plenty on YouTube) the more they love it.
Leave it to an artist to extend the creative use of web. Check out this great story about Phil Hansen 
(as told by famed journalist Kevin Sites). Hansen creates unique and innovative projects that are sometimes interactive with his internet audience. In a project titled ‘A Moment’ (see the video list in the middle) Hansen sat in a garage for 6 days and encouraged people to call and email him with moments that changed their lives. In an inspiringly creative use of web 2.0, he received thousands of calls/emails and used these personal moments to create a large, rotating self-portrait. Via Hansen’s webcam those people watched their personal stories get transformed into an amazing work of art. Talk about connecting in a meaningful way with a global community! Interestingly, the only educational background Hansen credits is his high school art teacher. Imagine what our kids will do tomorrow with the ideas they get in class today . . .
To see this story and other interesting People on the Web, go to:
http://potw.news.yahoo.com/ - Weird Art.
This year I am committed to the task of using a wiki with my students. I have already setup one wiki (using wikispaces) and have also started searching around pbwiki. While I know how they work and have played with a few of the features on my new wiki, I’m still uncertain about their potential in the classroom and how to effectively guide students in their use as a learning tool. Some sites have been helpful, but if anyone has a particular suggestion, add a comment.
Hi, my name is Brett. Here I go into. Stepping in to the blogoshere feels a bit like the first day of teaching. There are those jitters “will people think I’m weird, did I prepare all I needed to? will they appreciate what I have to say?” So before jumping into the blog and just start typing away, I did what any good educational technologist and/or teacher should do – I came up with some goals (OK, objectives sounds more educational). To read them, go to the About page to see what they are. Mainly, there’s a lot of us out there discussing educational technology and how it can make our students achieve more. While I’m not the smartest, ie. I don’t have the answers to that, I do see this is a vital question. I hope to contribute something valuable to this important discussion. Thanks for joining me
