Technology Update 10 November 2005

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We have been discussing more types of hardware as they become relevant to the units that we are studying. We have gone through a mini audio unit to familiarize the students with two key applications for creating our podcast; Audacity and Garageband. Audacity is a free download and is compatible with Apples and PC's. Garageband is an Apple specific application but there is a free alternative for the PC called ACID. Feel free to download these applications at home to get more experience using them, or see me and I will make a copy you can take home to install.

Our podcast is up and running. Anyone with iTunes on their computer can easily subscribe to the feed and get automatic downloads of the latest shows. You can also use any RSS feed reader to do the same. Alternatively, you can just visit our website to listen as each new show becomes available. Shows are released weekly on weeks that we are in session.

We are currently working on a video unit. We started off with stop motion to introduce the idea that video is just a bunch of still frames played in sequence very quickly to give the appearance of motion. Thanks to Tabor for coming in to do a demo of stop motion using LEGOs. Next students had a chance to create their own stop motions, more specifically, claymations by using blobs of fun dough and slowly forming them into different objects and actions. Check out the Student Work section of the website to see some of the shorts they came up with. This work has required work using three more applications; iPhoto, iTunes, and iMovie. iTunes is a free application available for both Apples and PC's. iPhoto and iMovie are Apple specific, but again there are free counterparts for the PC. Although the PC applications may not have identical ease of use or functionality, they will accomplish the required tasks. These applications are Movie Maker (comes with XP) and Picasa (made by Google). We just completed 30 second commercials welcoming travelers to fictitious towns to get a basic understanding of the editing tools available and to introduce the idea that most video is created to fit within a certain time window. Students are now recording original content to create commercials selling a product. This is to allow students to explore using the video equipment and to realize the number of scenes and angles and preparation that goes into creating a short spot.