District Administration - March 2007 - (Page 64)

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Davidson: A great challenge is a teacher’s understanding of effective multimedia use. They are not resisting it, but if you never used a computer to edit videos before and you’ve been teaching for 10 years, you might feel, “Why learn new tricks?” But that’s what Discovery can do—it can provide teacher training on that level, the appropriate uses for it in the classroom, and show other teachers across the nation who are using it and saying, “Here’s how I use it and how easy it is to do it.” Every year it gets easier to teach new teachers. From the ﬁrst group [I taught] at Golden West College ﬁve “You want the ability to create content, not just passively accept content.” or six years ago to the last group, it was night and day as far as the ability of teachers to grasp the concepts and do multimedia work. California requires technology proﬁciency of its credentialed teachers, such as knowing beyond e-mail and spreadsheets. Students just coming out of high school now know how to do that. Not everyone could even click and drag ﬁve or six years ago. DA: Mashups, which are Web sites or applications that combine content from more than one source, are being used in schools today. Can you further explain 64 March 2007 Davidson: One of the things we did is that we recognized early that there was a kind of paradigm shift. You can make a good video without a video camera using mashups. There are mashup environments, DAVIDSON snaps a shot of students taking part in KOCEsuch as the authoring T V’s “Beat the Greeks” program last June. environments of Apple’s iMovie [video editing is education. So a teacher can take software], or Windows Movie Maker environmental images from Time [for digital home movies], or Adobe magazine, for example, scan them, Premiere Elements [to create and and have students in class do a video share home movies]. In a classroom, project on the environment, as an if you have a media asset like a example. Educational institutions are series of still photographs on the now beginning to apply the provisions westward expansion, for example, of fair use to video mashups. you can turn that into a video with K it Zu.org and unitedstreaming. narration and music, or video clips. com have the ability to download There are other places online where a clip, pull it into an authoring mashups can be made. environment, like iMovie, and A nd unitedstreaming.com create your own version of that allows you to put that into a video video. Rather than watch a classic production. It’s a place where ﬁ lm presentation where you sit content is freed up for editing by and watch it, you create. You can teachers and/or students. It’s a fee download the video, strip out the service so a narration, then change the order of district or a the video clips and create something, school site can like a kid’s travel ad as to where to get a license and go on vacation. “We’re cool, we’re any teacher in stellar,” can be voiced over. You’re that district or creating. And you’re using a video school can use it. There are some that’s already there. You want state licenses, such as in Kentucky, the ability to create content, not where every teacher in the state just passively accept content. It’s could use it. repurposed and thrown all together. The ﬁ rst online mashup site was KitZu.org [which was created four years ago and allows users to DA: Can you offer a few examples ﬁ nd a kit for the appropriate grade, of mashups and how they relate research a topic, and build a video to multimedia in the classroom? or media project]. Davidson: A great one was Copyr ight law allows a person on Stonehenge. This kid used a to use almost anything that is collection of several videos and legally acquired. Section 107 of allegedly ‘solved’ the mystery of the U.S. Copyright Act, section 8 Stonehenge. Essentially, the kid clause 8, places two things higher pieced together a history of the place, in importance than property rights: hypothesizing that a series of tribal one is the oppressed and the other units built it over a long period of District Administration Q&A.indd 3 2/13/07 11:26:08 AM Warning : Unknown : The session id contains invalid characters, valid characters are only a-z, A-Z and 0-9 in Unknown on line 0 Warning : Unknown : Failed to write session data files . Please verify that the current setting of session.save_path is correct /var/lib/php/session in Unknown on line 0 http://KitZu.org http://unitedstreaming.com http://KitZu.org

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of District Administration - March 2007

Contents
Editor's Letter
Update
Inside the Law
Curriculum Update
District Profile
Administrator Profile
Friday Night Fever
Creating an Effective Virtual School Program
Hunting for Talent
Multimedia Man
Do These Web Sites Work?
Finding Funds for Student Laptops
Curriculum Crassifieds
Gearing Up for Science Assessments
New Products
Computer Literature
Speaking Out
Principal Opinion
The Online Edge
Calendar of Events
Problem/Solution
Research Corner

District Administration - March 2007