Communicate 2 – Ongoing Communication

The following is a blog for my EOTC class.  This is about ways to communicate with the parents and students regularly.

One way of communicating with the parents is providing updates to release grades through a grade portal.  At my new school I will be sending these through Infinite Campus.  With an online classes you can do this too.  Whenever I updated a lot of grades, I would always send out a message to students and parents to let them know they had been updated.  One thing to be careful about doing with these group emails is to send them via BCC because of FERPA.  I noticed that the program I was using was doing that but never understood why until now.

I do not have access to my old  emails but they looked something like this.

Dear Parents and Students,

I just finished grading the Photo Scavenger Hunt.  This was our 2nd major grade this semester.  Your updated and average and the grade for the assignment have been posted online.  

If you did not turn in this assignment your grade probable dropped significantly because there are so few grades in the grade book at this time.  Fall break is coming up and you may need to spend some of this time catching up on your work.  Your grade will go up when you turn in this assignment, so please do it soon.  

If you need any help please attend my online session on Tuesdays or email me.  

Another way of communicating with all the shareholders is by using newsletters.  This is something I have never done before but it looks like I am gong to be using . These look like a good place to brag about  what is going on in your classroom.  Here is the example I created using more.

https://www.smore.com/ncsjd-welcome-to-film-class?embed=1

 I hope you enjoyed my blog.  Let me know what you think about my newsletter.

Participate 3- Accessing Digital Learning Communities

The following blog was written as part of a class I am taking online.

The big problem/ barrier  with audio video technology resources is a lack of uniformity.  One of the best school programs I have seen in person is GHS TV at Germantown High School.   The program at the time incorporated several teachers and ran a community access TV station 12 months a year.  This is a great program to follow if you have that kind of financial support.  However just a few miles away in Memphis Tennessee, teachers were patching together consumer grade equipment.   So when you are researching material it may be hard to find a program that has similar resources.  The best thing is to find your information from other programs in your community and state.    This makes it easier to sort out this information.  I was down the road from GHS at the time so it was easy for me to distinguish the differences in our programs.

It is better now then when I started out.  I had a few websites I visited pretty regularly but that was it.  Now I participate in list serves and Facebook groups.  It is much easier to post a question then to find a source online.  You can get answers from across the county from programs that are similar.

Another barrier with online information is some of the information leaves room for discussion.  Most media specialists will tell you that it is ok to to use 30 seconds of copyrighted material in your projects.  However the Student Press Legal Center will tell you something different.    I have seen tons of conflicting information.  I have my own interpretations through my experience.  I tell my students to rely on their employer or teacher when dealing with sticky information.

I hope you enjoyed this blog. Please email me if you have any suggestions holcomb.ca@gmail.com. Follow me on twitter and subscribe to my blog for more upcoming ideas for your media classroom. Subscribe to my youtube channel for iOS tips.

Participate 2- Collecting Reputable Digital Resources

The following post is for an online class I participating in.

As part of this assignment I had to collect a list of reputable online resources.  I created this webmix using symbaloo to share these resources.  The webmix I created is for teachers and students studying  audio video and film technology.  I included professional organizations, established film and video programs, learning tools and online tutorials. This is a list I have been building on for years.  In the process, I learned some of the resources had moved and some were better.  

The tools I use the most are the Student Television Network, Rocket Jump Film School and Film Riot.  Film and video is a tricky area for students to do research.  It is best to give them this list of resources and have them stick to that.  I would define what research they should be doing and give them and require them to use these reputable sources to insure they are getting the correct information.  

If my students were collecting resources, I would give them a list of keywords to begin with:

• Media
• Journalism
• Communications 
• Cinema
• Film
• Television
• Video

I would encourage them to use the keywords to conduct boolean search.  The sites listed first should be the most reliable because they are ranked higher in the search results. They would need to look through the results to find the ones from educational sites first.  Then they would need to look at the other sites to weed out any commercial websites that would cost to get the information.  

From the remaining sites, I would look for a couple of things. Look at the websites URL, is it a secure secure site.  Does it end in edu, org or com?  Then look at the site does it have a lot of grammatical errors ( I know I have fat fingers).  Does the site include contact information for individual or organization?  Does the website include advertising for legitimate businesses?  Looking at these factors should help to elimate the sites not reputable.

I hope you enjoyed this blog. Please email me if you have any suggestions holcomb.ca@gmail.com. Follow me on twitter and subscribe to my blog for more upcoming ideas for your media classroom. Subscribe to my youtube channel for iOS tips.

Participate 1 – Joining a DLC

This my 2nd post for my online class.  Although it is a little off topic for me, I hope it offers my readers something they can use.  The product I am creating as part of this class should offer something for my readers. If this article does not interest you skip to the bottom and look for Film and TV webmix and click on it.  I am sure you find this is a valuable resource.

The first thing I immediately did was do a Google search to to find out the difference between a digital learning community and personal learning network.  According to the websites I visited, a digital learning community or dlc for short is socializing with others to share knowledge about a subject.  A personal learning network or pln is personalized to you.   So your pln may be composed of several different subjects.  My pln is composed of journalism, film and technology resources.

I was a little surprised to discover I have been doing this for years in my own personalized way.  I have been participating in RTNF Listserv for years.  I have followed several schools that had exemplary video programs via their webpages. I am a member of a Facebook group for Broadcast Video Teachers.  I started a Google plus group for my school and fellow film and video teachers.  Plus I have been participating in a few different twitter chats.

The digital learning community I have learned the most from lately is the Facebook group for Georgia  Broadcast teachers. It is great because I can post a question in the morning and usually by lunch someone has answered my question.  Most of the teachers in this group are the only one in the building and possibly the district who teaches their class.  It is great being able to hear feedback and share answers with others.  The most difficult thing about this group is you need to know someone to join it.  It isn’t really for students but for their teachers.

I am using the iOS and the desktop version of this Symbaloo.  Using the desktop versions gives me a lot more options.   Using the iOS version gives me the convenience of using the software anywhere.  I think it may be best to set up Symbaloo on a desktop.  Once I have a fully functioning web mix I have created, it  will be able to easily use from my iPad or other mobile device.

I took all of the resources from above and created a WebMix.  This includes tutorials that I use in my class, school websites, youtube channels and professional organizations.  My goal was to create something I would use and other teacher in my subject area could use.  Students might find some of it useful.  I would probably adapt it for student use.

Film and TV Classroom Webmix

I hope you enjoyed this blog. Please email me if you have any suggestions holcomb.ca@gmail.com.  Follow me on twitter and subscribe to my blog for more upcoming ideas for your media classroom.  Subscribe to my youtube channel for iOS tips.

Film and Video Book for Classroom Teachers

A few years ago,  I was part of a small video production company.  We were trying to find our niche.  We all enjoyed making films, but we knew we were not going to be the next Warner Brothers Pictures.  We all agreed that running our production company would allow us to make films even if that was not the focus of our business.  We produced some commercials, recorded some live events and made some instructional videos.

Fast forward a few years later

We were all working other demanding jobs.  We had a couple of projects we needed to do but not the time to work on them.  We all agreed it was time to dissolve the business part, although we would try and collaborate on some projects together for fun.  In the end, I asked to keep the website up and in hopes that business would grow and we had an entertainment blog that was getting major traffic until this last summer.

This last year, I have began to revive some of our projects for fun and hopefully for profit.  The first of these projects was our instructional video series Tap That. This was video series to help people use their iOS devices.  So far I have made a few videos and am working on updating the format.

Another project that we worked on was an interactive ebook for film and video production. The goal was to align it to match the state standards for Georgia. Since we were dealing with digital distribution it would be easy to create multiple versions to match each state.  I had a 90 page draft, I was working on when the standards were updated.  I  worked on recreating an outline to match the new standards.  I was primarily in charge of creating the content since I had years of experience teaching.  Before I could get a new draft finished, I had a trip to attend the Student Television Network Convention.  We scrambled and I was able to put together on a chapter on camera composition in a PDF format.

When I attended the convention, I shared a link with the teachers I knew.  I also posted links to social media.  The link was for a form.  If you shared your name and email address, you received a link to download the pdf.  It was our plan to send the teachers an email with a discount code when the full book was released.  Our plan was to keep the book cheap since it was digital media and teacher might be paying for this out of their own pocket.  The last time I looked we had 200+ downloads.

Sometime in the middle of the spring, the website was up for renewal.  I missed this because this because I was not in charge of the website.  It went down and with some help migrated the material to a free site.  I am not sure if the link for the PDF or the form still exist.  I still have all the material and several drafts of the PDF.  I am going to  create a new form and put the PDF back online.

So what is next?

I am working on new outlines and would like to break this down into series of several short ebooks.   The ebooks will be aimed more at teaching video production.   This time it will be in the Kindle format so that it can be read on more devices.  I am going to be looking for a couple people to proofread my material.  I usually write late at night and I type slower then I think.   Since this is going to be a solo effort,  any feedback would be great.  A new website would be great.

If you could subscribe to this blog, share it with others and comment I would appreciate it. This way you can copy of the PDF when it becomes available.

Thanks,  I hope to hear from you soon.