Category Archives: Video

The Power of Creativity

21st Century Skills, creativity, Media, Media Literacy, Video

Most of us have probably heard Ken Robinson talking about creativity.  Yesterday, a story on National Public Radio underscored its importance in the lives of young people.  The subject of the story was the creation of “scraper bikes” in Oakland, California.  The reporter described how the fad spread because of a YouTube video: “The video spawned what is becoming a worldwide movement, even as it changed the lives of the young men who customized the bikes and made the video.” In fact, Tyrone Stephenson, Jr., who calls himself the Scraper Bike King, credits the creation of the bikes with saving his life: “Because I was at a young age, getting into a lot of serious trouble, selling drugs and on the verge of going to jail. So my mom told me this is a way to channel anger and frustration, just focusing on something that’s creative, something that’s me, and the bikes is me.”

These are young men growing up in a tough place who have found something that makes them happy and, as Stephenson suggests, allows them to have a positive influence on their community. As an English teacher at heart, I will admit to cringing a bit at the grammar.  But as someone interested in grassroots media, I am reminded of the power of YouTube to tell the stories of ordinary people doing extraordinary things. These young men understand that power and have taken advantage of the media to tell their own stories.

Here’s the video:

Digital Storytelling

21st Century Skills, adult learning, Movies, technology, Video

I would like to start by saying that I love my job. Right now, I am preparing for a digital storytelling workshop that I’ll provide over the next two weeks. It is Windows based so I fired up the Dell laptop I’ve got and have spent the last few days playing with PhotoStory and MovieMaker.  I’ll post both video sonce they’re uploaded to YouTube.  (I’ve got them on TeacherTube but didn’t have any luck with embedding them.)  First, I’ll reflect a little bit on the process.

I should start by confessing up front that I use Mac computers exclusively and have even managed to avoid Backpack. I had done a little work with MovieMaker but had only every seen demos of PhotoStory. I was prepared to like the latter program but was sure I would be unimpressed with MovieMaker. I was wrong.

First, I should say that I did like PhotoStory. I drew from digital photos that I already had available and it took about three hours to put together a fully narrated story with a music soundtrack. The only problem I ran into was in using the built-in music creator. I really liked the idea, but it crashed my computer each and every time I tried to save the movie file. I finally resorted to a public domain song I already had and the export worked just fine. Editing was easy, and I’m very happy with the final results.

This morning, I was up early prepared to tackle MovieMaker. I drew on the only material I’ve got: my yard. I shot all the video with my Flip Camera since that’s what my workshop participants will have available. I’ve used the Flip with my macintosh and had only so so results. It seemed much easier with MovieMaker. I just imported the files I had saved from the camera, renamed them, then did some basic editing. A few titles and then I needed some music.

Vivaldi seemed like a good choice. The Mutopia Project had a midi file licensed under the BSD license. I had to convert the midi to wma and used jetAudio, from Cowon to do the conversion.

All in all, I have had a wonderful two days making stories. I put together a wiki page as well.

Using Digital Photography to Fight Torture

human rights, Photography, politics, technology, Video

A colleague posted a link to the TED 2008 video about the Worldwide Telescope. What a fabulous project!

Her video led me to the TED website. What an amazing collection of videos of smart people thinking about the issues of our world. I chose the technology topic and found this video of Peter Gabriel from TED 2006. I’ve been a Gabriel fan since his Genesis days, and he is the reason I’ve been an Amnesty International member for some 20 years. In this video, he describes his WITNESS project, which trains people to use digital cameras to document human rights abuses. The group also works to get these videos distributed and provides a hub where visitors can upload their own videos and view others. It’s a different take on how technology can change the world:

These stories always push me towards those big life questions: why me? why here? My video camera is usually right beside me on the desk, not to capture torture, but to capture birds. What a bucolic life I lead. But, I can add my voice to those who say that this is wrong and who are finding ways to use these collaborative technologies to make it impossible to hide human rights abuses.