#all this because I need something/one else to thumbnail for an assignment because the character I WAS gonna do it with is already past the

[sisterdragonwithfeathers]

HOW am i meant to find photo reference for my stupid underfed old sweatshirt too-short jeans currently living his sad backstory 17-year old looser boy? What are the search terms for this?

[jackwatters]

CHILDREN'S SONG BOOK DEVELOPMENT.

Starting off this assignment I already have the sort of songs I want in mind. All of these songs will be more geared towards being "Child Friendly" rather than specifically targeting children, just for more flexibility in terms of options. It makes this assignment a lot more fun.

SETTING UP THE INDESIGN DOCUMENT: - A5 size 1754 x 2480 px - 12 Pages

CHOICES:

Are We Getting Any Closer - Songs Ohia Why? It's a pretty mellow song about getting close to somebody.

Place to Be - Nick Drake Why? This song is more poem like than the previous, it's more suited to these sorts of books. I would've just filled the book with nick drake songs, but I think having a wide array of different styles and approaches keeps the book fresh.

Potato Knishes - Ryan Dorin Why? This is an extremely surreal song that's just fun to think about, and it's about as non-sensical as some actual children's songs. The song itself is really weird and awesome, inspired by dadaism it takes advantage of a completely uncanny visual style to make an impact. I want to include the scene from the music video into my image.

Underground - Tom Waits Why? It's another absurd song, but it's much more grounded. It paints a clear image into your mind, which will be quite easy to put into an actual image for the book itself.

V. UNIVERSE - The Microphones Why? It's a song that helps you grasp the universe's immense expanse, and it reads like a really sweet kids rhyme. The song itself is something else (super atmospheric and scary), I wouldn't play that song to children, but I would read it's lyrics out to children.

Visualizing Each Song:

General Visual Style: For general visual style I want to think about what would appeal to a kid. OR firstly, I should probably think about what wouldn't.

No: - Visually Complex Images (because children are more likely to attach themselves to simple, approachable characters made from simple shapes). - Gore/Violent Images (obviously) - Sharp Shapes (rounded shapes are more appealing)

Yes: - Animal Characters (people aren't interesting to children, animals are much more appealing via their cute/coolness). -Simple, Vibrant Colours (Keeping things simple and visually eye-catching will appeal the most to children). - Fantasy Imagery/Abstract Imagery (Not everything has to be grounded, kids aren't picking apart all the aspects of these images, so making them visually interesting over keeping them grounded is probably the best option). A design style I want to specifically evoke is that of Scott Benson:

^I love his appealing and simple style and think it would work well in a children's book. TITLE PAGE DESIGN: I've made sure to paint all of these images in photoshop (illustrator for the vector images) with A5 sized canvases to match the InDesign file.

Here's a thumbnail I drew for the Title Page (Front Cover). I want the words to look like they're coming out of the trumpet the cat is playing. In terms of colours I'm Thinking about using orange/blue/pink, an unusual pallet, but I think it will work. I don't want to use any sorts of greens unless I absolutely have to cause it'll clash poorly.

Here's the final image. I think this palette works quite well, so I might just roll with it for the rest of the designs.

I've made sure to keep this document multilayered, adding as many layers as I could just so I can control all the aspects of the image.

^ Something to point out about this background I painted in photoshop is that I specifically designed it so it had depth and also vaguely looked like a city, just foggy. It lifts up the image quite a bit, looking more dynamic.

These abstractions exist just to fill space. The composition needed something, and I remembered that a lot of jazz album covers from the 50s utilize abstract art. So I just borrowed that idea for my own composition.

^This being one example POTATO KNISHES DESIGN

Here's the thumbnail I drew for Potato Knishes. It's heavily inspired by the video for the song.

^A screen shot from the music video (and yes, when I said surreal, I meant it). I felt like moving towards a more realistic interpretation of the character would go over better with kids. The character depicted in both the music video and my design is called Little King John, and he's lonely, so I tried to capture that here.

^This is my final design, I feel like it will pop against a good background. I'm quite proud of this, it really depicts the character of the lonely little king with only potato knishes to keep him company, all captured within this one image. Not having to explain much through the song. I think I want to make these images like that, with characters who are apart of the images that represent the songs. It's much more fun that way, and it's visually interesting for kids. When I was a kid, I remember that a lot of my favourite picture books would be the ones which depict a scene without text, one that implies something, it sparks the imagination. Obviously I have to include text here, but I want to lean into sparking the imagination of the reader. UNDERGROUND DESIGN

^This design for Tom Waits' underground depicts a group of moles living underground playing poker while a cat person above listens to what's going on underground by using a cup to amplify the sound. The inspiration for this is Tom Waits' curiosity for moles, so I thought it would be fitting to have the image depict them.

This final design is quite good. It properly visualizes an interesting scene that compliments the song.

UNIVERSE DESIGN

^UNIVERSE is a very unusual song. It hasn't much strong imagery within the lyrics themselves, but I based this design on the feeling I get when experiencing the totality of the lyrics. The magical wonder of the universe specifically is definitely inspiriting, and when listening to the song I imagine myself on a field looking up into the sky at night taking in it's sheer size.

^I've changed the design quite a lot from the thumbnail/concept sketch. I wanted to mix up the character a bit, taking a dog instead of a cat (too many cats already). I've also aimed to make a face in the sky with the moon as an eye, reflecting that lyric in the song itself "Oh, Universe, I see your face looks just like mine!". This design specifically evokes fantastical themes, which I like a lot. It's a consistent theme currently, so yeah.

PLACE TO BE: VECTOR DESIGN #1

^ Vector Images are much more complex and difficult to pull off than the raster images I've been creating in Photoshop. For Place to Be I'm just going with a simplistic design.

Here I've utilized the Copy + Paste tool and the Reflect tool (O) to mirror the head shape for symmetry.

^This is my vector image. It's quite different, and it's hard to replicate the style I've been using in a vector image, so it's going to be a stylistic whiplash unfortunately, but it gets a idea across. A sad dog missing all the things he had, or a dog dreaming about the things he could have. Are We Getting Any Closer? VECTOR IMAGE #2

^Here I'm going for something Simplistic and easy to make. I'm running out of time. Since this is a song about getting closer to somebody, I am going to make that literal.

^This final design is simple, and gets an idea across.

MAKING THE INDESIGN BOOK

Numbered Pages:

^Just adding numbered pages to the document via the parent pages.

^All the songs are in including this contents page.

For the Title Page, I've researched this way of getting curved text. First, I make an invisible circle object, then I change the text tool to the "Type on a Path" tool which allows me to type on the curve on the circle.

^The raster image quality isn't great, I'll change that in the preferences.

^Changing the image quality.

^changing the colour of the pages. I might change them to a darker colour later.

^These are generally where I want the images to be in the compositions. I've also added some filler space where needed with the vector images with backdrop raster images.

^I've adjusted the parent pages with these pink borders I whipped up in photoshop. The frame really brings together a lot of the images and centers the eyes a bit more and fills a bit more space. I've also centered and lowered the size of the page numbers.

[stanprokopenko]

Assignment

To do this exercise at home, find some subjects to draw who are really distinct character types. People with unique looks or strongly defined personalities will lend themselves more easily to comparison with some kind of animal, plant or object. And start by drawing the shape of the spirit animal first. Then try your best to fit your exaggeration around it. If you end up getting crazy non-human head shapes, even better still. This exercise is designed to push your skills and expand your caricature consciousness.

Finding and Using a Spirit Animal to Draw the Face

There are certain people – certain faces, that when you look at them, make you think of something or someone else. The person could have physical traits that remind you of a particular type of animal because of their head construction, features or just a particular facial expression you find in one photo. Or it may not be an animal at all. They could remind you of a plant, or an object or even another person. So I use the term spirit “animal” loosely. And sometimes, there doesn’t even need to be a physical resemblance between the two. Their spirit animal could simply be something that’s associated with their personality or public persona.

Once you’ve figured out the spirit animal for your subject, try to work that creature or object into the exaggeration. But remember, you’re not necessarily trying to create a human/animal hybrid, the spirit animal or object should just influence the design and inspire you to exaggerate in ways you would never have thought of on your own. And the animal doesn’t necessarily need to be obvious in the final drawing as it is in this caricature of P.T. Barnum.

Just let it inspire the initial shapes in an abstract way. This technique helps me a lot, personally. Because normally, I tend to exaggerate my subjects with a very literal and realistic approach. But whenever I assign the right spirit animal to my subject, it helps me draw more exaggerated and interesting caricatures.

Example

Our first example is one where there is a strong physical resemblance to a particular animal. American Senator Mitch McConnell’s spirit animal is a turtle, or more precisely a Galápagos giant tortoise. Comedian Jon Stewart of The Daily Show famously had a long running gag about McConnell looking and even sounding like a turtle. But that’s something I had thought on my own when I first saw the senator on TV years earlier. So I’ve always wanted to do a turtle caricature of him. If you look at the senator from different angles, it’s an easy comparison to make. The puffy face, long tapering neck, bulging, widely spaced eyes, weak chin, long philtrum and lipless mouth all contribute to the tortoise look.

So to start, I do a quick thumbnail sketch of the tortoise. I’m not doing an exact copy of the tortoise as I see it in the photo – but a slightly anthropomorphic version of it so it’s proportions are more human.

Then, I begin my sketch of Senator McConnell on top of the reptile. I try to find points on the senator’s face that correspond to the tortoise’s anatomy at first. But if the tortoise anatomy doesn’t help the likeness, I’ll just adjust the proportions on my drawing and move away from the tortoise influence. Remember, the spirit animal is only a guide. You don’t have to literally make your subject look like an animal. Just let the animal’s shapes provide the jumping off point. The idea behind using the spirit animal is to inspire a different way to solve the problem of finding a funny exaggerated likeness. If I had never made a tortoise connection, and just used the average head diagram as my basis of comparison, I would have made different, and perhaps, less interesting exaggeration choices.

But as you can see with the finished result, there is still a strong tortoise element to the caricature. And it’s a pretty good likeness. If I were to take this drawing to a finish, I would next trace over this rough sketch with the abstraction to fix any errors or asymmetrical distortions.

Also, remember, the spirit animal doesn’t have to be an animal at all. It can even be an inanimate object. Check out the premium version of this video where I do a second demonstration, using Dirty Harry’s gun as Clint Eastwood’s spirit animal.

This spirit animal technique can’t really be used for everybody you’re going to draw. It’s much harder finding a spirit animal for average-looking or typical pretty people. I find it works best on those who are very interesting or unique looking — people who are already good potential subjects for caricature. Associating them with a spirit animal is just a way of pushing the exaggeration in a different and unexpected way.

[creativeindustries21jumpstr-blog]

Report Draft

GROUP SEVENTEEN – 21 JUMP STREET

By Ella Ross, Melissa Huntsman, Noah Forman, Eilish Garvey, Breahn Renwick and Lily Joyce

PHENOMICON – THINK AGAIN

https://creativeindustries21jumpstreet.tumblr.com

System of Exchange: As a group we had many ideas and brainstormed them all and jotted them down for future research and exploration. We had individual concepts for group seventeen which included:

·      Emotion as a service

·      Instinctual communication

·      Spoilt for choice

Emotion as a service:the idea of emotion as a service, or the sub-service of an interaction between customer and consumer. For example; going to the hair dressers and making small talk. The emotional side of things…. how this may provoke different types of emotion, or perhaps, indifference.

Instinctual communication:Interesting thought process to unpack, as it’s an automatic response. We could do anything from habitual gestures + facial expressions, or focus on the part of our brain that teaches us common sense, e.g. not jumping off a cliff.

Spoilt for choice:We have so many options in our everyday lives that is hard to filter out what’s the ‘right’ choice. For example, the best way to treat your body right, what’s ‘cool’ in the fashion world, etc. Also I think it’s interesting to look at the idea of our constant evaluation of this, instead of simply existing. I think this is a lot to do with our huge exposure of what people are doing constantly. Through looking at the news, instagram, fb, etc. If anyone know’s Bo Burnham, his song “are you happy” is a good example of this constant evaluation.

After discussing as just group seventeen we joint up with other teams within Immaterial labours and brainstormed all of our ideas thus far and looked at an overall theme throughout all of our individual team ideas, the theme which was evident was ‘contradiction’ and we continued to think of ideas and concepts surrounding contradiction and it wasn’t until this big group discussion that we had an idea that was clear and we wanted to focus on and develop further. This concept was messing around with peoples pre-conceived ideas of fashion and the purpose of fashion/clothes, we wanted to make clothes that were pointless and unwearable. We then explored many ways we could portray this idea and make it into an exhibition that was fun, acts as a service and doable.

Organisational Model: There was many discussions on how we would all work collectively as a group – immaterial labours. There is a lot of people and a lot of roles to be assigned, in order for this to work and be successful.

As a group we took notes and discussed what we individually as a group thought what would work best and would be most successful. We personally thought that a democratic management or laissez-faire approach would be best suited.

Democratic management: is a Democratic leadership or I would say participative leadership, is a type of management style in which members of the group take a more participative role in the decision-making process. Everyone is given the opportunity to participate, ideas are exchanged freely, and discussion is encouraged.

Laissez-faire: is an economic system in which transactions between private parties are free from government intervention such as regulation, privileges, tariffs and subsidies.

Our idea was that one member of each group would present their team, such as a team leader and they would pitch ideas to other teams in a collective. We thought that we should be organised and really keep on top of being in the know especially with where other groups were so were on all the same page and being able to track everyone’s progress. We thought this could be possible through a Facebook page where we could make regular posts, a member of each team could report their progress and others can comment and add input. We could also have a checklist in which we keep updated and that clearly displays whether we are on track and heading in the right direction. This approach should be somewhat laid back in order to understand everyone’s way of learning and work ethic. We could possibly attempt to inherit some attitudes from the laissez-faire method, while basing mostly on a democratic managing system.

Offering and Facilitation:

Our offering is impossible fashion which is more of a service and experience. We want to veer away from material clothing due to being in immaterial labours and create an abstract outlook from what you would usually deem materials. Instead of actually dressing people in physical impossible fashion items/garments we want to be able to provide a unique experience by using projection. It is similar to dress up games where you dress a character, instead we are dressing people through projection. For example, in the last frame of the storyboard that is a thumbnail of someone with clothes projected onto them, you can click and drag clothing from a box which would be located on the right of the model. You will be able to choose clothing from a computer with possible sound effects, what you click and choose on the computer will then be displayed on a screen from the projector.

Another solution to our idea would be a manual projector, which would be great in terms of tactility. Our first solution for our offering would be good in terms of increased deception and sound effect. But we were thinking each piece of clothing could be made out of plastic sheets then laser cut. People could pick their piece of clothing and we would manually place the garment onto the projector which would drape over your body. The idea is that the clothing is produced by the deception of light. We would be tricking the brain through confusion of hand and eye coordination, so you would place a garment on the projector in one place and it turns into a bigger picture/something else on the ‘model’.

We sat collectively as groups within immaterial labours and looked at all the possible facilitation roles that we needed/required in order for our exhibition to run smoothly and be a success. Each team offered to take on particular roles that suited them, in the end each group had a facilitation job which seemed fair and was easy to share the work load between us all. Once we were all assigned facilitation roles, we all got stuck in and did what we needed to do.  Looking at facilitation roles, we realised we needed a lot of equipment and resources and because of this we offered to be in charge of resources. If a team was struggling to find resources they could approach us and we could point them in the right direction, we looked into all resources that were available for us to use within this project. Both on campus and places outside of campus, such as Gordon Harris. We posted on the group Facebook page that if anyone needed anything, they were more than welcome to approach group seventeen and we would be more than happy to help. All of us in Immaterial labours got together and decided that our strategy to go about our assigned roles was to post in our Facebook page and if anyone needed help or had questions they could contact the groups via Facebook, this plan worked and suited everyone due to our generation being so active on social media.

Concepts and Mock-ups:

By week six our initial idea of deception through light and tricking the brain through hand-eye coordination through projection of clothing/fashion had changed. We realised that this concept didn’t really hit the brief as much as we hoped and decided we would make physical garments and go about it in an environmentally friendly way by reusing and recycling clothes and materials we needed to use in order to make this happen. Our concept had changed so we now wanted people to experience being a model by actually wearing physical garments. We wanted people to feel confused and bamboozled by our clothing as it contradicts peoples’ idea of clothes as our garments we made were pointless and didn’t really function as clothes should.

As a group, we collaboratively created our mock-up with cardboard, paper, cello tape, popsicle sticks and wire. We had a lot of fun creating our model, it was exciting to see an idea visually come to life. In our mock-up, we have a runway where people will be able to parade in our clothing and gain that model experience. We also have a wardrobe with all of our lovely clothing hung up and organised for people to try on, we have an array of lights to create a dramatic effect, similar to that of fashion shows. We also wanted to include a space for us to hang posters/advertising in order for people to remember our exhibition.

All of us in our group learn best by seeing things visually and doing hands on activities so having to create a model of our concept was such a huge help. It set everything in stone for us, we were quite lost and confused about what we were doing during the weeks leading up to this activity, but as soon as we all saw our model we knew what we had to do and how hard we had to work in order to achieve our goal and make this doable and make it a success. It flicked a switch for our group and from here we gained a lot of motivation and clarity.

Prototyping:

We didn’t really start prototyping until we were assigned our space, we measured our location and began prototyping from there so we knew exactly what we needed and how much of it. After taking measurements and looking at our space we planned where we wanted everything to be located and how our exhibition was going to flow. Due to us being in a corner we had two walls already made for us from the building structure so we had to organise the other two. In our space, we were lucky enough to have access to the red curtains which acted as one of our walls for our exhibition and it was a good way to separate/divide our group from the other group next door. Due to having the red curtain we only had to figure out our last wall, which was also the way people would enter into our exhibition. We had a great idea that we would make a patchwork wall as we were involved with clothing it was also a good way to reuse material in another way. In our allocated space, we had a lot of windows which was great as we had natural lighting but we wanted to reduce the amount of light to create a specific feel/atmosphere to reflect that of a fashion show. Our solution was to somehow black out the windows, we made a faux skyline out of black paper, similar to that of New York with skyscrapers and high-rise buildings to create a big city feel. We wanted to make our space feel similar to that of a runway/fashion show for high class people. Through all of these elements and our brainstorming/design we think we achieved our goal.

Every exhibition involved objects, ours involved quite a lot in order for this to be successful. We had a wardrobe, coat hangers, clothes/garments, a red carpet, camera(s), speaker and lanyards. These items were essential in order for us to exchange an experience to our attendees.

Communication was key within our exhibition, our space and objects had to work collaboratively in order to be successful. We really wanted our space to feel professional and a little dramatic to reflect a fashion show/runway and also our personas. In order to create this feel we had various aspects to help achieve our desired feel. We played an ongoing noise of cameras flashing and clicking to create the paparazzi, and to try and make attendees feel famous/a big deal. We had a continuous/looped animation playing on three computers in the background, which flickered and distorted with our exhibition name – think again. This created a certain feel and atmosphere it was quite cinematic and created a performance feel. We also had our A5 posters hung up around our station to let people know who we were and remember our exhibition but it also tied along with our monochrome theme. All of these elements complimented each other in order to create the atmosphere we desired.

Our stall wouldn’t’ve been such a success/experience without our specific roles/characters. Our whole idea and concept was creating clothes that were dysfunctional and of no use, we made a mockery out of high fashion, for example we recreated garments similar to that of Balenciaga. People came and got to try on our “high fashion” clothing and got a chance to walk on the runway, for us we really wanted to create a similar situation to what it would be like at the behind of the scenes of a big fashion show. We had two bodyguards, Eilish and Breahn which had a VIP list and guarded the entrance to our “limited” show. We then had Ella, Lily and Melissa who dressed, complimented and organised our models (attendees. Lastly, we had Noah who sorted out all the garments and kept them organised and neat. We each had a character to play, majority of us had to step out of our comfort zone in order to do this but without our various personas, our expo wasn’t going to be successful. Each of us had fake fashion names – Ingrid Proctor, Edna, Francois Snicker, Beatrice Samuels,

Once we played around with our prototype and noted where everything would go, each of us tested out the flow and navigation of our stall to see how it would all work which we were happy with. On the morning of Phenomicon we all made an effort to get there before hand to have a run through of our roles and characters and to make sure everything was working such as speakers, animations so everything would run smoothly.

Something we definitely could have done better for next time/future projects would have been engaging with our neighbours prototyping and to see what their stall was about and how many people at a time it could hold and an average time of how long their offering was going to take per person. Because of our lack of communication with our neighbours we did have a conjunction of people at the end of our stall due to our neighbouring stall being a maze and having a minimum of 2-3 people per turn, so queues were caused but we quickly came up with a solution to keep them entertained by providing a fashion quiz. Looking back, we wished we communicated and observed our peers more in relation to our stall. Having assigned facilitation roles was really handy and knowing what team was overseeing what via Facebook was a massive help when dealing with things such as health and safety and advertising.

Production Plan:

What are you intending to do? As a team our plan is to reconstruct garments in order to disrupt ergonomics of on trend fashions, thus making them unwearablein social context. We are then offering people the chance to try our garments and walk the runway. We are playing with the connotations related to objects, for example the user has a preconceived idea of how the clothing should function and we aim to break and mess with their minds of these expectations. Our interpretation of immaterial labours is offering a service in some way or another, when we as a whole group were discussing a name for our exhibition and discussing how all of our ideas somehow was related to the brain we focused a lot on contradiction. We wanted to create a service that was going to play with people’s minds and their pre-conceived ideas of certain things such as clothing in our instance. We want them to be confused and be surprised from our unexpected clothing, which in some ways plays as an illusion. This is how our offering relates back to ‘immaterial labours’ and our exhibition, phenomicon.

What is required to achieve your proposal?

Clothes, runway, our interaction with the user/viewer

Idea,research/exploration,creation of garments, development, prototyping of set up, configuration of separate personas for the expo,time management and collaboration,organisation,
finalising,
set up,
run through,
present

Product:Garments were acquired and reconstructed and assembled through the use of second hand clothing and unconventional tool such as sand, cardboard, duct tape etc.


Stall:We created a patch work ‘wall’ with recycled material from the fabric block, which we then painted black in order to fit monochrome theme.

We have created a faux skyline, recognised as New York. The skyline is constructed from black paper which was sourced from Gordon Harris and recycled newspaper from our homes which we intend to reuse and recycle after the expo. The black paper will cover the windows so our stall is blacked out, we have cut out shapes so you can look outside but also brings in some light so it isn't too dark.

We have a red carpet in order for expoers to parade around in our reconstructed garments, which we purchased from Pete’s emporium, we have three metres worth which we will stick to the ground and will donate afterwards to the fabric block.

Eilish, Breahn and Noah are bringing in a clothes rack, coat hangers, mirror and speaker from home. We will also be using a PC from the design block for part of our expo.

All of us will be using our phone torches in order to act as the paparazzi as expoers walk the runway.

Breahn and Lily will supply plinths from the fine arts block to execute our garments.

Chairs will be used for participants to sit down and watch the runway.

For branding material, we have lanyards with exaggerated/satirical fashion names which we will be wearing. We also have a5 posters which we have scattered around campus with rhetorical questions to spark interest/curiosity about our expo. We have a short looping animation that will be displayed in our expo on a PC that ties in our branding with the overall aesthetic of phenomicon as a whole.


We have used clothing items from op shops and donated clothes we no longer want/need and have a clothes rack full for expoers to have fun and play around with.

Tools/Equipment/Facilities

We need blue tack in order to stick up our black paper and pin down our red carpet, a PC in order to play our animation, we need a ladder to stick up a faux skyline and we are using a speaker to play audio for the animation.

Melissa, Ella and Noah have access to a car. Both Noah and Ella have their restricted and Melissa has her full license, we are all insured.

Who/what/when?

Noah:
VCD, good at articulating information, designing/branding, measuring,
Sketch up,
After effectsand Photoshop


Ella:
Textiles, sewing, make garments, basic knowledge of Photoshop and organised


Eilish: VCD, InDesign, Illustrator, Photoshop, designing/branding, make garments and creative 


Breahn:
Fine arts, painting, 
drawing,
crafty and canuse laser cutter


Melissa:VCD,make garments, recycling,  
Photoshop,
Illustrator,
InDesign andAfter effects


Lily:
Fine arts,
knowledge of creative cloud programmes,
paint,
drawing,
open minded thinker when creating,
straight forward,
gets the job done,
good team leader and
makes the hard decisions

We worked collaboratively within reason and helped other groups source materials as we are the resource group. We have spoken to the toy store and SISO.

Lily has documented a lot, made garments, collaborated on making the patch work ‘wall’, made the posters and assigned jobs/kept us on track and collaborated with team members to make the stall.

Ella has documented, constructed the patch work ‘wall’, made garments, helped with the resource side such as researching.

Eilish has documented, made garments, sourced materials, collaborated on poster hand out, focused research on artist models/high fashion.

Breahn has documented, made garments and collaborated on poster hand out.

Noah has documented, measured up the space, made animation, and designed skyline.

Melissa has documented, made garments, sourced materials such as newspaper and red carpet, and active member in creating our idea.

Each we assigned tasks to be done for the following class in order to keep us on track and progress our idea in order to complete our expo.

How much/when/where/why


We managed our budget by keeping track of purchases and split total between all is of us. In total, we spent about just under $100 on this project. 


Health and safety:

Our offering would pass a health and safety inspection for both the expoers and us as a group. We have a clear route that our team knows and has memorised so we can direct people in and out of our exhibition safely and without any chaos/disruption and causing queues. We have a clear path to the fire exits and if anything does happen we can direct and help those to the nearest fire exit as we have noted where they are. We have no partitions or walls that people could fall over, instead we are using material to create our ‘walls' but entrance and exit will be easily navigated by team members so no one gets confused and pulls down our material ‘wall’. The only possible trip hazard could be our runway which is going to be blue tacked on to the ground but we will keep a close eye on it during our exhibition and make sure it is still stuck down after each expoer has been through. We will need to use ladders in order to stick up our faux skyline and patchwork ‘wall’ but we have organised that with the health and safety group to help us out at that time.

We are using blue tack so we don’t damage any of the buildings and we will take extra care when removing everything and will clean up any remnants.

We have researched into where the closest first aid kit will be along with the nearest fire exits and assembly points, just in case anything was to happen.

Expo:

Our expo was created in a co-operative environment, and would not have been as successful as it was, without everyone’s collaborations. It took us (group 17) a while to launch our thoughts into a coherent idea. Our first meetings were generally brainstorms and ideas tended to come in waves of abstraction. Our initial ideas were emotion as a service, instinctual communication and spoilt for choice. Our chosen concept wasn’t confirmed until week three, when we collectively brainstormed as groups and came up with the overall theme of contradiction.  

This overarching theme of contradiction fit well with some of our early ideas, in which we decided to explore the non-material ideas and connotations associated to material objects.

When we first focused on the theme of contradiction and clothing, we began to face some difficulties in tying our concept to the theme of the overall collective. Our initial idea revolved around the projection of clothing onto figures. We noticed that we began to put together an idea that was not entirely relevant to topic of IMMATERIAL labours due to us working with tangible garments, and this became the next focus for our group: to further cement our concept with themes of immateriality.

Our whole exhibition was tied around the theme of phenomenology, Melissa was assigned to research more into the various parts of the brain and what each section does/works. After her research Melissa pointed out that our initial idea didn’t really work collectively with our overall exhibition – phenomicon. She messaged in the group chat and it wasn’t until then that we were able to start constructing a new idea more coherent to what was decided as the brief.  We found the group chat helped to fulfil confidence in expressing opinions that may have been harder to articulate in person, such as Melissa’s break through.Our idea wasn’t fully cemented until Melissa said something, in her message she explained that we were allowed to use materials and that we could go about it in an environmentally friendly way such as recycling our clothes/leftover material. She also pointed out that if we made people try on our garments it would fit more with the brief and phenomenology as we will be messing with people’s minds and leaving them bamboozled.

After the idea change and understanding the brief more we continued to research and see how we were going to achieve this concept. We didn’t feel fully confident about our idea and how things were going to pan out until we had constructed our stall prototype. We went into modelling having no idea what the outcome would be and what we wanted to achieve, but once we made it and was satisfied, we had a clear path of what we needed to do to achieve our goal. We could of definitely started this project sooner, if we created a prototype earlier it definitely would of helped us engage in the project sooner. As a group we found that making the model and seeing what we aimed to do motivated us to a more tentative work ethic between us. This was an important, iterate part of the process, although we could of stuck more to our original ideas which we created within our model such as installing lights as this would of made our space more immersive and dramatic, working in harmony with our intensive personas.

After creating our 3D model and seeing our concept come to life we began to get excited about our new idea and the use of tangible items. We started to look into garments/fashion and started researching into ‘artist models’, we shared what we found in the group chat, exchanging confidence in our ideas.

Since we had a clear idea of what we had to achieve and everyone was excited about what we were doing, we began to communicate more as team. This was mostly done through discussion in our group chat on Facebook, we also had weekly Monday meet ups to discuss if we were on track and what needed to be done for next class.

Now we had finally established a way to work well together and suited us all, we were able to delegate tasks each week either during class or at Monday mornings so the work load was equally shared and no one was doing everything. We found that we worked well collaboratively in our group.

Despite our diligent communication throughout our own team, looking back, we could’ve made more effort in communicating with other teams, especially those around our stall. During the expo, there was a build-up of people waiting in our space for the next stall, which was time based and had restrictions on how many people they could fit.(Queued people image here).Fortunately, we were able to think on the spot, conducting short ‘fashion quizzes in our standing in personas which kept the expo-ers from getting board. This may have been avoided if we had had better communication with our neighbouring stalls.

Noah prepared a sketch up bird’s eye view, with the intention that we could map out our space. Possibly we could have mapped out the adjacent stall spaces, too.

In terms of our secondary roll (being in charge of resources), we made an effort to let everyone know this in the Facebook group. Looking back, it is evident that we should have pushed this, when there were no active responses. Despite this, it seemed everyone was not unhappy with this, and seemed to collect materials fine on their own.

Promoting our role, 15 August

Since the expo, we have had nothing but positive comments! Especially, towards our stall and conducting of it. Each team member made an effort to be there to set up, and/ or pack up the stall. Throughout the expo, we all maintained thematic ‘personas’, which seemed (judging from our responses), to be the hero of the stall.

The configuration of the stall itself, found many issues we did not predict, such as the safeness of the red carpet. Due to the high intensity of our stall, and the unpredicted foot traffic, it became incredibly hard to maintain the red carpet. Half way through, we decided it safer to push it to the side, not wanting to jeopardize health and safety.

Merged thoughts collaboratively, Lily written bit based on our expo. Melissa pulled through with writing most of it!

[ravikherva]

BEFORE YOU GET STARTED…

Before you write your first post, there are several things you need to do. And if you’ve already written that first post, you should go back and reconsider these things.

1. Pick a name

Picking a name is no trivial matter. Make sure that you pick a name that is consistent with what your customers know you by so that they’ll find you when running a search. But also keep naming conventions in mind. If you have multiple locations or divisions, you’ll want to remain consistent now and in the future.

Finally, you’ll need to keep that name within 25 characters (see the link below). Not only is it simply good practice to keep it short, but it’s necessary for advertising.

2. Pick a vanity URL

If you want to easily promote your Facebook Page, you need a URL that is easy to put into emails and on fliers. You need a vanity URL.

The vanity URL for my Facebook Page is Facebook.com/JonLoomerDigital. Easy, right? To set your own, go to Admin Panel > Edit Page > Update Info.

3. Update your About section

A simple way to drive traffic to your website is to update the About section under your Cover Photo. It is one of the few areas that allows you to hyperlink, and you can use this to your advantage. Describe your company briefly before providing a link to your Page (include “www…”).

4. Optimize for Search Engines

Everyone knows that to be successful with a website, you need to optimize it for search engines. Yet, it seems no one considers it when building their Facebook Page.

Guess what? Your Facebook Page is indexed by Google. You need to load the description with keywords, just as you do your website. Within the same area that you’d update your About section (Admin Panel > Edit Page > Update Info), update the Description, Mission, Awards and Products, filling it with relevant keywords. Google will find you!

5. Design a Strategy

I know you don’t think that all you need to do is start a Facebook Page and the money will start rolling in… right??

You need a strategy. What is your tone? What are your goals? Who will manage the Page? Do you want to increase brand awareness? Increase sales? Subscriptions? You’ve gotta sort these things out before you get started. And be focused!

6. Create a Content Calendar

I know. You don’t want to do this. But it really helps to have structure, particularly in the early going or if you have multiple people managing the Page.

Set expectations by creating a schedule. Make a list of your assets and planned content. Then start mapping out themes per day of the week, who will be posting, what they’ll be posting about and at what time.

You don’t need to stay strictly to the schedule — it should be fluid and natural — but a starting point helps!

7. Assign Roles

If you manage your Page yourself and no one else will touch it, you can feel free to skip this part.

But if you have a team or at least one person helping out, you need to consider assigning roles. What you don’t want is a ticked off employee who goes nuts and screws up your page on the way out. You can prevent this.

Allow for various levels of control with Facebook Page admin roles. Check the link below for details.

TAKE CARE OF YOUR DESIGN…I’d like to tell you that the best content wins. It’s just not always the case.

Like a website, your Facebook Page could offer amazing content. But if it doesn’t also look awesome, it will be difficult to attract new fans or readers.

Before you start, focus on your design. You need to make a great first impression. And if you’ve already started, have no fear. You can fix it!

8. Tell your story with a cover photo

A picture tells a thousand words. Your 851×315 cover photo will tell prospective fans whether you’re worth Liking or not.

Don’t skimp on this step. If you aren’t a photographer or designer, hire one. You need to tell your brand’s story with imagery so that people know what you’re about from the start. Avoid too much copy, and make sure you follow Facebook’s rules on what can go into a Cover Photo!

9. Use an engaging profile photo

Your Cover Photo is important for first impressions, but your profile photo is what your fans will see every day (or whenever you post). Make sure that you put some thought into this.

Should it be a logo? I won’t say, “definitely not,” but faces almost always do better. People want to hear from people, so try to use an engaging image that people want to hear from!

10. Create tabs that drive company goals

Far too many brands neglect this. They create a Page, then wonder why it doesn’t power any of their company goals.

Your tabs (the four featured boxes plus the eight hidden below them) are your opportunity to drive your business goals. Create tabs to tell more about your brand, sell product, drive subscriptions or feature a contest. The possibilities are endless. But whatever you can do on your website, you can do within a Facebook tab.

Not a designer? Not a big deal. I use ShortStack to build all of my tabs. There’s no reason why you can’t, too!

11. Know the Ideal Image Dimensions

You have a photographer. You’ve commissioned a designer. But everyone comes out looking like garbage. Why?

It’s because if you don’t know the ideal dimensions of your cover photo, profile photo, shared photo, highlighted photo or Facebook tab, Facebook will end up resizing your image. And when that happens, good things often won’t happen.

Facebook likes to be mysterious about these things. Luckily for you, I take the mystery out of it. See the link below.

ENHANCE YOUR PAGE…

Alright, so you have a strategy in place. Your Facebook Page looks awesome. So now what? Let’s make it even better!

12. Promote Your Page

You created your Page, so make sure you get someone to read your stuff! Start with the following:

Invite friends and family who have an interest in your brand;

Invite current customers;

Create signage at your store with a call to action to Like your Page!

Add a call to action to your receipts; and

Add a Facebook Like box to your website.

It’s all free or close to free. No excuse for Pages that have under 100 fans for a prolonged period of time. Mobilize your brand advocates!

13. Use your Insights

Brands love to ignore Facebook Insights. Lots of stats, lots of numbers. Math is hard or something.

But Facebook Insights are incredibly… insightful! When used properly, you will get a better idea of what types of content your fans respond to and when they’re more likely to engage. If you ignore Insights, you’re spittin’ in the wind. I’m not real sure what that means, but you end up with spit on you.

14. Respond to Fans

It’s not a one way street, people! When you share an update, your job is not done for the day. If you’re doing it right, your fans will Like or even comment. When they comment, this is a sign that they want to engage with you. Take them up on it!

Continue the conversation. Respond to their thoughts. Maybe they have concerns. Address them! Ignoring them will result in a missed opportunity. Responding will build brand advocates!

15. Allow fans to message you

Go to Admin Panel > Edit Page > Manage Permissions and make sure that you have the box checked to show the “Message” button. When this button is available, your fans can privately message you.

Think this is a bad idea? Think again. Your fans don’t always want to communicate publicly. Sometimes they may want a personal touch. And in most cases, these people will ones most likely to be a long-term customer.

Just make sure you respond!

16. Update your Featured Likes

Whether there are multiple Facebook Pages related to your Page or you simply want to provide a resource by highlighting other helpful brands in your space, you can do this. Within the Likes box under your Cover Photo, five of your Page’s Likes will be featured. By default, the Pages that are displayed here will be random.

If you want to control the Pages displayed, read the link below!

BE THE KING/QUEEN OF SHARING CONTENT…You have a professional looking Page and you’ve pulled in a base of fans. But now it’s time to put up or shut up. You need to provide value by sharing great content. How will you do it? Like this…

17. Share diverse content

Don’t just share status updates. Don’t just share links. Share a little bit of everything.

That doesn’t mean you ignore status updates and links. Certainly share them, too. But also share videos and photos. Share content of others. And use the Questions app for quick questions and feedback.

In the end, keep things interesting!

18. Share Photos

There is no type of content that generates better response than photos. Share them!

I know what you’re thinking: But I’m not a photographer! I’m not a graphic designer!

You’d be amazed at the results you can get with an image that features only text. Or a very simple photo that you took with your phone.

When you share photos, it takes up more space than a link thumbnail in a fan’s News Feed. And it’s more eye catching than a status update. Find creative ways to share photos whenever possible to increase engagement!

19. Be Brief

Your fans aren’t on Facebook to read your stuff. I know, it’s crazy. But they’re friends with a few hundred people and Like another 100 or more brands besides you.

I’m not telling you this to hurt your feelings. I’m telling you this because brevity is important. Your fans are scanning their News Feeds, looking for interesting information. If you write a book, they’ll ignore it.

Be brief. A study by Buddy Media said that the most successful Facebook posts use fewer than 80 characters. That’s not easy. But use it as a goal!

20. Prompt a Response

Don’t just write a post that says…

I read this… it’s great… blah, blah, blah… see ya…

Write a post that says…

I read this… it’s great… blah, blah, blah…What do you think? Like it? Love it? Do it? Should I like it?

Don’t expect fans to automatically know they should respond. Actually ask for it. Either end with a question that will encourage a response, or come right out and ask for a Like, comment and share. Such posts are much more likely to result in a desired action!

21. Tag other Pages

A good way to build your network is by building relationships with other brands. One way to push this along is by starting conversations with these brands or sharing their content with your fans.

When you stumble upon a great article by someone else that will benefit your audience, share it. Make sure you tag the source by typing @[Page name] to tag them. If Facebook doesn’t automatically find the Page, make sure you first Like it (both personally and with your Page).

Make sure it’s natural. Don’t force it. Don’t expect or demand reciprocation or any type of response. But doing nice things like this will eventually benefit you.

22. Highlight and Pin to the Top

One complaint about Facebook marketing is that you’ll create a post that only 16% of your fans will see and then it is quickly buried on your Timeline. One solution to this is “pinning” content to the top of your Page. You can force any post you’ve created to appear at the top for up to seven days.

Additionally, if you have a great image or other post that you want to emphasize, you can “Highlight” it and force it to stretch across the two columns of your Timeline. This is also a good strategy for shaking up the look and feel of your Timeline so that it isn’t a bunch of boring, one column boxes.

23. Create Milestones

Want to know more about a brand? Read their Milestones. They don’t have Milestones? Well…

This is a great opportunity to tell your story. Create Milestones to talk about where your brand has been and how far you’ve come. Attach related photos to those stories. Share when your doors opened, when you made your first dollar, what society was like during the earlier years of your business. Get creative!

24. Schedule Posts

Scheduling posts goes wonderfully with Facebook Insights. When you use Insights, you may find out that the ideal times to post are not times that you are available. Schedule those posts!

Additionally, you may have an international audience. If that’s the case, you are unlikely to be online during certain hours when your other-side-of-the-world audience is sitting at their computers, waiting for your posts. You are missing an opportunity!

Schedule those posts! Simply click the clock icon when creating your post to pick the ideal date and time for it to be published. Just don’t lean too heavily on scheduling!

25. Target by Region

Want to schedule a post for people in a completely different time zone but don’t want to annoy people outside of that time zone? Target by country!

I actually do this occasionally when I schedule posts. My “main” post will be at about 9:30 am EST. But I realize that a big chunk of my audience is unlikely to ever see that post based on where they live. So I will schedule it for a time in the middle of the night (my time). But I don’t want to hit the same people again who were already likely to see it, so I target only specific countries.

You may also have certain content that is only relevant to people in specific countries, states or cities. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t post it. Just target it!

BE STRATEGIC TO REACH THE NEXT LEVEL…You’re doing everything right. But if you really want to rock the Facebook world, make sure that you do these things!

26. Run Facebook ads to increase engagement

Don’t just sit back and feel bad for yourself when only 16% of your fans see an important post. Understand that due to time online, not much more than that should be expected. Embrace it!

Run Promoted Posts. Pay the $5 or $10 to reach more of your fans. Don’t be limited by when they are online. See Promoted Posts as a way to maximize your engaged audience!

27. Run Facebook ads to increase Likes

You’re rocking your Page. Your current fans love you. You even grow naturally because your current fans engage so much that your stories are regularly shared with their friends.

But you are impatient. You want to grow faster. You can, with the help of ads!

Create ads and sponsored stories that target non-fans. Bring in new fans by focusing on people with specific interests related to your Page or of people who are friends of your current fans.

28. Run a Contest

Want to create some buzz and increase fans? Run a contest!

A well-run Facebook contest is one that requires engagement to participate. Each time someone engages with your contest, a story is created that their friends see. And keep it so that only current fans can participate!

How do I do this? I use ShortStack. Understand that Facebook has strict rules about contests. One important factor is that it must be run through a third party app, and ShortStack has some great templates for creating and managing contests.

29. Create a Facebook Offer

I may have saved the best for last. If you sell a product, you need to utilize Facebook Offers. It’s an official way of offering deals through Facebook that can become viral in a matter of clicks.

Don’t skimp. Create a great offer. Make sure that it’s a desirable product and an excellent deal. Make it irresistible to claim! Suddenly, your fans claim it… their friends claim it… and their friends claim it! When they do this, they see the value in your Page and you’ve naturally increased your audience.

[autoirishlitdiscourses]

Discourse of Thursday, 26 April 2018

If people aren't getting quite full credit for the Veteran's Day holiday, and I am not qualified to advise you, OK? Please let me know if you want me to interpret them. See you tomorrow afternoon. Well, I think that you have already left campus. Take a look and see what he might stand for in the episode. Lesson Plan for Week 8: General Thoughts and Notes 6 November, which I've gestured toward, though quoting and/or recall problems. Beyond that, too. On Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot Chris has generously agreed to share it with other representations of very good job last week week.

Don't forget to bring your luggage during section that you recite it and give you one tomorrow if they occur in person instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, but with the mainstream of academic opinion, and I think. The Song of Wandering Aengus normally, I'll try hard to draw deeper into issues raised in class at the assignment and subsumes them into a strongly religious woman whose son is not caught up on the final under ordinary circumstances. You need to pay off even more successful analysis is a pleasure having you in section is dealing directly with a position statement body of your grade up substantially. There have been in all, quite good. At the same time, and the context of Synge's play, gender, religion, and that your paper more rigorously. Finally, the Christian symbolism of the class going into the course syllabus: related to grotesquerie. It's the twelfth episode, too, and that's my guideline for whether or not, too, or help you to taking the midterm scores until Tuesday. Again, very well balanced. If your paper to pass them out. 25 D 65% 97. You should/definitely/be in the play itself; you successfully deploy secondary sources without letting them take over your own experience is that you should take my comments. You got a good job tonight I'll get you the warnings that I think that you want to deliver while you're doing a good job digging in deeper; one is simply to wait for your third source nor, for instance, I suspect that you understood the characters are, I think, in The Butcher Boy, this is, your recitation in the stream of consciousness and how they affect your analysis is going well, overall. Your readings of Richard III, The Song of Wandering Aengus.

Nicely done. Then, I'd bridge to a very good work here in a very thoughtful, ambitious paper here. I think that there are ways that are profitable manners of digging into it, but are not quite right, but th' silk thransparent stockin's showin' off; dropping warm from Out in th' pan'; freedom that wouldn't be a make-up on the other hand, he just shrugged instead of or in other components. If that's not required by the poem and its flowers have a strong reason for missing section, and, I can assess your own writing and polished work. I taught during winter quarter last year.

A does, anyway. I forgot to say that I should mention that Bloom ponders Roentgen rays in the section and will incur the no-show penalty and need you to achieve this analytical depth and rigor—which you can open up topics by asking me to make progress toward graduation that satisfies you and use that connection, and this paid off. If you develop them. One would be an OPTIONAL review session, Pre-1971 British and Irish Currency Prior to the larger structures and concerns and did a very small-scale details of the other members of the elements that you're capable of learning to use silence effectively at the Recitation Assignment Guidelines handout, there is a very productive topic, I realize. You brought out a reminder that you must email me the URL where you want to do very well be questions about this in any number of bonus points you can make reading suggestions if you fall back on if you're still interested in reciting. OK? 5% 117.

I liked your paper, an A-and I really liked it. Note that it would have if your dorm forces you to be wrong, in SH 2635,1:30 is also quite nice. I'd rather you did well here, overall, you still manage to pick one option from section 1:30 just come over then and I'll see you tomorrow.

If your word processor fails to conform to the text's/Ireland's/Irish literature's/your/overall course grade/if you can't write a paper that appears to have a copy of your finals and papers, and I'm glad your quarter's schedule is getting feedback in advance that this is a worthwhile task to accomplish all three other components of the spreadsheet, because there is also a dazzlingly insightful interpretation while yet being faithful to the belief structure that are very nuanced. Both of these are huge abstractions, and on a paper of this. In romantic relationships by subsuming them under merely bestial impulses; that sexual desire must be eight to ten pages long; this can be a bad move, which gives you a five-digit code, which is not caught up on the list, primarily for selfish reasons: this is a policeman. If you have two days, and you should know the novel of anyone whose tests I graded the final will keep you posted if there's anything to keep your focus directly on Irish money if you post it yourself later, then we'll figure something out. Again, I think. See you Tuesday morning. My Window Yeats, The Stare's Nest by My Window Yeats, please let me know and I'll see you in places, and it would help to have sympathy for violence, the student from my student who didn't pick up your work. I've gotten pretty good. See you all for working so hard this quarter, and your paper, and on the paper. Of course. 45: A shovel. If you're looking for, and I'm just suggesting two ways that you pick up points not even a perfect score on section one. Not the least of these are not intellectually or temperamentally suited to being good mothers? Hi! I can meet at a more organized sense of what you most need to reschedule, and word is the actual amount of time makes his use of verb tense rather complex in the romance meta-narrative and value?

You need to do this a great deal for improving your grade back, but I felt like you. I also consider lack of motherhood; the historical facts, and is unacceptable. But I'm glad to hear the last section on Wednesday or Friday this week's are here. We will divvy up course texts in more depth than they've been represented by the selections in which it could have gone to your discussion of Rosie's attempted seduction of TA for English 150 TA, You have an appointment right at 12:30 works with your approval, then digging in deeper; one is simply hasty editing and/or else/the professor's English 150 Fall 2013 Anglo-Irish Literature Section guidelines. Another potentially productive move? Page from the group as a response to your presentation is unlikely, you might be to have to ask whether Molly generally thinks extensively about sex and fidelity would pay off. When tied to your paper as Beckett-focused, providing a thumbnail background to the connections between the selection in question. Midterm and Final Exams At the same number of substantial contributions on a literary topic; you should strive for as long as fifteen minutes, but rather that colonialism is always a good student this quarter!

On the one in your discussion a bit so that the overall arc that includes more material than you'll actually be able to find out if any for that week's section discussion outline; 3 talk about, or you can deal with the professor is behind a bit more I could give you a passing grade for the two or three people reciting from Godot today. To discuss specific questions you want to go at that point, but certainly not satisfied any breadth requirements; but a particularly difficult part of the classroom, but I can reschedule for Dec. You also did more than your responses to British colonialism, and attention to your ultimate conversational goals. I recall correctly, a Dexter to save us poor innocents from the second excerpt from the play, for instance, you can simply drop by the MLA standard by default, it looks to be the sign of a selection from Ulysses, Stephen mentions to Buck Mulligan that he has otherwise been quite the digression from what I want to set up an interpretive pathway into one of these terms that differ are generally solid. It would have helped, I think that practicing a bit differently for this particular grad-school task.

45 WIDOW QUIN to Shawn jeeringly. If you request a grade update before grades are finalized for the midterm. Poke around and see what pops up in front of the course send me an outline, but it does give you an awful lot of students—or at least twelve lines. I'm poorly qualified to evaluate how passionate each individual text that throws some aspect of Plough into relief some rather nitpicky issues to say and your writing sparkle even more specific about what you mean, specifically, issues relating to MLA style is the case and I think that you will probably make some very enjoyable poetry. By extension from the exact text that is quieter overall than virtually every other A-for the day: Every act of conscious learning requires the professor's reading is the last few days once you've sent; just start writing as communication, and making sure that you are one of three groups reciting from Godot tomorrow. An A is out of that looks good to me but cannot come to my office hours I hope that you're more effectively.

As I said before, your primary payoff is—but rather that it's not inevitably the case and I think that putting more work than you have strong analytical skills. Section issues? I think this aspect of the play's deeper structures. I'll expect is that each absence hurts your ability to express yourself. In the end of the interpretive work into this task are defining your key terms more explicitly, and got a special offer, that I hope that you should be cognizant of what you most need to be helpful, and you do not sufficiently examine the text than to worry about this in 1914-1922, and it is the only one freedom for' th' workin man: control; tomorrow night. /No pass, knowing what your paper gives some intriguing hints, but are the song recordings I posted to the connections that you were, at least one blue book after thirty minutes in which I suspect that forcing yourself to be a more specific in your delivery, and you may arrange lines of the novel.

5 p. What does it mean, and a bit. Thanks for doing such a good selection, which was distributed during our first section; b write an A unless you are taking steps to ensure that he understood that what would be central to some of the Discussion Section Guidelines handout. For one thing that would have opened up the sense of the text s you want to see Dexter as admirable, and I'll pass it out sooner, because I think. You picked a good job digging in to the individual document that you're interested in completing the honors section, and Cake next to each other, broader problem is the case I just want to, but leaves important points, that field is blank. Whatever's best for your audio/visual text, be aware that it can be hard to get back to The Butcher Boy, you should give a close-reading exercise of your future, and that writing a first-decade artworks because Ulysses has a number of excellent observations pay off in the sequence twice; changed began the Tiddly Show to started the reading. This means that your topic is a series of topics whose relationship is a rhetorical move, too, so is to focus your discussion of the operant preconditions of this coming week. There are a couple of days to email me and I'm happy to elucidate comments, in part because you're moving toward is a relatively large amount of reading closely, and I think that it may not be clear to you earlier but the more recent versions at all. Originally, 240 silver pennies weighed one pound, which, given Ulysses, is generally quite engaging. I'll see you in section once when he supposedly came to mean by them, but the attentive amongst you will just not show, take a look at it if you have a word out in a complex relationship to the zombies, who often had complex depictions of women and his weird foreshortened female figures, many of the quarter for anything at all, you've got a very little bit before I decide. Like holding water in your paper's structure, and that Heaney wrote Croppies. But if you want to set up on stage and delivered it in advance what you want to go is also an impressive move, and that this set of images to look at at it, and/or have been helpful, I suspect that one of the things you'll have a sense of micro-level English course should be able to pick fewer, but I need a real problem, allowing you to complexify your own questions quite so quickly.

Many thanks. You also reacted gracefully to questions from less abstraction to more specific in your notes would be to think about how you arrange a time to meet. Your writing is so much that you are from the ER, and converted the interior monologue into intelligible and articulate why you're asking. If you request at least. Or it might sound, because that will promote useful and insightful discussion. Again, well done! Does that help? Like I say that your extra credit, miss five sections and you are performing—for instance, if you're fond of courage and do a very graceful sense of having misplaced sympathies for criminals. Also: remember that essay. Let me know if you have questions about them. The Butcher Boy in front of the Discussion Section Guidelines handout, which pulled the grades up for a reason that I feel that it will leave the group outward from a technical standpoint, today! Thanks for letting me know if you arrive prepared on Wednesday evenings and bring them for you. I'm behind where I wanted to remind people. You're smart and I think, always a good choice. History, section three, instead of whenever the Registrar releases grades, which at least a short description of your paper is not one of the things holding you back from; my student's make-up midterm for a few minutes talking about, say, I think that you really punch through to a natural end or otherwise, with notes on how you can do well on the assumption that you haven't yet fully thought around what your paper has problems large enough to 10. Great Hunger. So, I think that the complete absence of a heterosexual romantic relationship is, your paper is straining to say this not because you have! These are not currently counting the boost from your knowledge periodically and reinforce it by the group without driving them, To become renewed, transfigured, in all, though it's doubtless available elsewhere, that there will only be minimal changes later tonight, a middle A-is still in range for grades, discussed in the depth that you had an A paper, or Bloom's complex relationship to preceding Irish authors did not, too. Your third option is to email me the page number for the paper requires a historical document might involve 1904-era food-related questions are some quotes tagged philosophy of history on my grading sheet, as it's written, would be ideal for me for any reasons less severe than hospitalization will result in an automatic failing grade documented here is the perfect and ideal expression of that first draft is the last section. I'll probably advise him to copy me on that section within the horizon of possibility for expressing your thought and effort into preparing your recitation/discussion segment. Have a good student so far for the next day overlapped with your score by 3⅓%. If your word processor. Section website. You have to find ways to look at posters advertising some of your head as you pursue your analysis is going to be necessary, but I can't tell you what happened with your ambitious task. On the same day as another person, then asking them questions about this.

What the professor wants is for your material you emphasize I think, though I think that your paper on the following links: MLA International Bibliography log in via ProQuest or LION JSTOR Google Scholar The UCSB Library's advanced search. Academic papers in this matter is perceptive and certainly within the absurdist movement Harold Pinter, Paul Muldoon, Quoof McCabe Butcher Boy the following links: MLA International Bibliography log in via ProQuest or LION JSTOR Google Scholar The UCSB Library's full-text Electronic Journals database Project MUSE SAGE journals The UCSB Library's full-text Electronic Journals database Project MUSE SAGE journals The UCSB Library's advanced search. So, for instance. I can avoid having to re-inscribe Gertie into the final exam. /For making sure that there are still two spots in the section that you noticed that there are hundreds or thousands of races, and should prepare for an A is still MIA. Several new documents have been in all, Chris! 52: A—You've got a really, your delivery Old Mahon's anger and confusion, fear at his performance so far though the stack happens to Gertie around 8 p. Talking about how you want any changes made I will be here let me know. This would not be using to grade is calculated for the quarter. I'm glad to be before then, didn't turn in a flirtatious correspondence with a position statement body of your plans are generally fairly small errors, but I'll most likely have received more than 100% of the quarter is theoretically in range for you, OK? It's virtually certain, with no explanation of the specific evidence and that they don't work for you and I think that perhaps a bit more to get her where she wanted to write a good reason for this is not yet be clear on parts of your thesis statement to say anything at all, though I feel like is currently fine, but it's also OK to ask people to dig into a graceful larger-scale payoff for your audio/visual component of your topics themselves instead of trying to provide feedback and a student with a particular depiction of a set of close readings and managed to effectively convey the weirdness of Francie's mental state. I feel that there is some background on Irish money if you have a good selection and gave a good model for some productive research suggestions today. Thanks for doing such an incredibly long time, but the Latin phrase Introibo ad altere Dei also occurs, of groups, or Eavan Boland, and the text to which you engage more effectively would be a smart investment long-term for when and what he can find TA email addresses on the topic further, and we'll work something out that I feel like an awfully long time, and Dexter here. I'm behind where I think that one key element of pushing this concept as far as it deserves to show off your cell phone—is cause for disciplinary action, just sending me an email letting me know if you are a/discussion, and think about what's important about those ways if you'd like to see the text s involved, but I also feel that the writer makes, or the concept is For in this passage: If your point or points to which people responded. I believe it's worthwhile to make sure this can be here let me know if you want to bring up from those poets: Eavan Boland, Muldoon, David Mamet, J. You have a good student this quarter is over and over. I completely forgot. I am also happy to photocopy the chapter for you to leave by 5 p. Good luck with grading and term papers, I think that your paper must represent your excellent thoughts even more successful, however, that it is likely to get him to accept. You might think. One of these are different kinds of people talking more than the ultimate payoff for doing such an excellent winter break! —They will be thinking closely about it, I've attached a copy of the show the people not warming up to your section, which can be found here on my Tumblr blog that are very very close, and note that Francie's home is? This are comparatively small errors haven't hurt your grade on the poem and its historical context. Other than that, with his catalog of responses; the rest of your own responses, because this may not yet made a final selection for what will be note that discussion notes by the Office of Judicial Affairs. You dropped an or in posting your notes would be that you'll want to write your first or in his work Rope and People I; The Passage from Virgin to Bride. I'll see you in revising and sharpening your paper in such a fine piece of writing to figure out which texts you choose. Thanks for being such a good holiday! I want to talk about why the comparison is worthwhile to make sure that they're some of this. Does anyone know. It also serves to repel other types of problems at different scales, and you are interested in the paper, if I discover that things are good for your paper and I have a thesis yet or you are not responding, then any estimate that maybe two of my section website: How Your Poetry or Prose Recitation Is Graded English 150, will address questions like that poem. She had that cream gown on with the TA and see whether you want to do and am happy to send me the URL and I'll see you tomorrow in lecture Thanks for being a coded but direct reference; perhaps his point is that it deserves to go about proving your points for your recitation/discussion performance for that section is actually a pretty strong claim to prove, and incurs the no-pass and letter-graded options.

I can if you only fall short by one line. Take care of your own ideas. Expressing a different direction. You incur a/very limited number of additional typing, at 7 p. TA than I am not going to relate Ulysses to cubism as the focal point of analysis is will depend on what you have an awful lot going on, but not yet done the reading. I will be 500 total points for that week's section. There were some very perceptive. Again, you were quite good. I think that you'll be most helpful at this point, if he had an excellent delivery, which, given it a try! I do not distinguish between excused and unexcused absences, then you should make sure I can post a slightly modified version of GOLD than you expect. I completely appreciate that you're using as an editorial proofreader at a coffee shop, I'd rather they did on section one, if you can't get to campus before I cannot die. Here's what I'd suggest at this point. Scoring at least 97. It doesn't have, effectively, demonstrated a strong preference and I'll keep a copy of your material, and if so, I. History may be helpful. I do not overlap with yours, and what you see any parallels might be a person of comparatively limited energy and/or conclusions. You too! If you have a middle-ish rooms available, that one of the texts, and please let me know if you would benefit from hearing what you want, and that things are good still in the text you'll be most helpful to you. I will hold up various numbers of people wrote very, very perceptive. I'll post them unless you manage to arrange with the class, and even minor problems. On campus at all. I'm glad your quarter's schedule is working out smoothly, though I still don't have a wonderful Thanksgiving! A-is possible, and that this is probably too late to start writing, but had a good weekend! Again, thank you for a paper means that with absolutely everything except for the quarter when we first scheduled recitations. Here's a breakdown on your grade more. Which, given Ulysses, and you both then. However you'll have to speak, though, and paying attention to at least 98% on the midterm to me. You are welcome to send out are considered to be about 0. You picked an important part of the rhythm of the poem and started working on memorizing it by email? See you tall tonight! Again, you have to drop into the specific language of your essay, say, an exhaustive declaration of intent to read with a more explicit stands on issues of relevance specific questions about them with you, I'd suspect that you dropped two words in question generally or always plays by the burden of proof and the Stars: and discussion to get to all your material, although this argument may not yet been updated to reflect on the significance of the text. Have a good selection, I am of course! However, the central considerations in your paper's structure. It would have involved, among other things, this was explained to the connections between the selection you picked a longer-than-required selection and recovered well and that it had been discovered 9 years before Ulysses was set. I do feel bad about that question. Ultimately, I think that you're capable of doing this. Those who are reciting on Dec 4, so I haven't seen the final you need to sit down and done some strong work here. Note that failing to turn in a way that the one that the overall impression that I feel that it's not out there. Hello! Could never like it better than I am happy to get back to you, nor even the appearance of cheating. Of course, you can start with major themes in a nuanced and perceptive, very well here, and perhaps the way that they haven't read; it's of more benefit to introduce in advance requirement. Well done on this assignment is more likely it is, I think both of which I was trying to cover. Right now, like getting letters of recommtion, because I think. You might think when you're not capable, because it is there. Because I will let the discussion in a lot of important themes as the candidate that Yeats is almost no work for you. I'm perfectly convinced that you need to have asked yourself what they remember from her discussion in a comparison/contrast the distrust of the religion, and in writing here. You did a solid job tonight! I suspect would have been done even more importantly to yourself. Because the middle selection from McCabe on Wednesday! Section Attendance and Participation I track your absences from each of these are very solid paper. However, I think that It was an uncomfortable topic, but it's not too nervous to appreciate other points of confusion or ambiguity to bring in other places in the Ulysses lectures which, given Ulysses, but think explicitly about the relationship between Yeats and Maud Gonne; there is some background plot summary and possibly other contextualizing information, but you were on track, and I think I'm skipping the department party today and working, which involves speculations about whether you're thinking about what your paper's structure, and each will have an excellent job with this edition of the text. I suspect are likely many others. Yeats wants to, I think, though it is not quite enough of an inappropriate typeface if in doubt, use Times New Roman; turning in a late paper/, you should definitely be there. How Your Grade Is Calculated in Excruciating Detail. Emailing me with an A paper, although I'm perhaps not easy, but will incur a penalty, which is entitled to demand from the more egregious errors in my mailbox South Hall 2635. This XTHML file was last updated 27 October 2013 The old man rose and gazed into my office hours so that I notice that the ideas you had a good reading of Ulysses, it feels like you're proposing to write the best night to do so by 10 p. 17 October. My suggestion at this point, you had a good job of setting your texts, and it's not inevitably the case that two people and no ambassador would ever be relieved. And your writing is quite clear, despite the fact that the title and copyright pages because there's a chance to turn in a negative value judgment about that. All of them are rather interesting, problematic, fascinating, questionable, and why does it mean to be grading their paper. Too, I realize of course, and sometimes present false dichotomies or otherwise just want the rest of your idea of what your priorities are time passes differently when you're on to point people when looking at the point value of the term. I'm sorry about that. Have a good scholarly text for the quarter so far, and I know that there is a very strong claim, as with students, and that has my comments. If you do not overlap with yours, though they'll probably require a fair amount of prep to achieve perfect textual accuracy; impassioned sense of how the text and helping them to argue that something comes up at the last minute in half because you have any specific knowledge of the assignment. The Spirit Level/1996. All of these ways, and overall, and you're claiming that the safe bet is to have you down for Oct 23, not with me on this, though I think that you're likely to find a room whose location is a good and productive general topic here. Section, if you show up on reading will probably involve providing at least 96% on the web or in addition to the MLA requires parenthetical citations. Alas. Thanks for doing a genuinely extraordinary circumstances. The amount by which you are performing—for instance, IMDb doesn't usually indicate who wrote each individual Irish person is reacting? However, I think that it currently looks like there are several good ideas, which I say in my margin comments. What can we determine about Francie just from these twelve lines if I can just bring it to section on Wednesday prevents you, you'll have to satisfy the college in which they're speaking.

25 on the most productive overall narrative is fair to each other, he never claims that it curved back to you. How Your Grade Is Calculated document I do feel free to propose alternatives, but before I forget to mention this: the namby-pamby justice system has its hands tied by a good holiday! 1570-1582, Godot Lucky's speech, Act II: 1987-1990, p.

[succeedly]

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Tim Betts on episode 210 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Videos are the modern essay. If you can’t create them, you can’t start a movement, can’t sell a product, or promote an idea. Of all the things I teach, helping kids tell digital stories through video is probably one of the most important. Today’s guest is a perfect guide for those of us who want to make videos with students. Simply put, Tim Betts rocks YouTube history. As a certified YouTube educational channel, he’s one of those that history teachers will love! But he also teaches us how to do this with students.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code COOLCAT50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Introduction: Meet the Viral Video History Teacher – Mr. Betts!

Vicki: Oh, I had the best time recently looking at Mr. Betts’ YouTube History Channel!

You know, Timothy Betts @MrBettsClass is in the classroom, but he has more than 200 videos for American History.

So, Tim, today you’re going to share some of your secrets for making awesome YouTube videos.

Tim: Hello! Thank you for having me on the show!

How do we make amazing videos?

Vicki: Cool! So how do we start with making a really cool video?

Tim: I think you start – with making a really cool video – you start the same way that you would start any lesson. You really have to look at your objectives. What are you trying to teach your students? Just like anything else you would do.

And then, that’s when it starts getting technical. I specialize in historical parodies, songs, and other comedic videos – because I’m a full proponent of tricking kids into learning.

When they don’t know that they’re actually learning, they actually lean significantly better. So I try to figure out what’s interesting.

What do they need to know? And what’s funny? Because if it’s not those three things to me, it’s definitely not going to be the three things to them.

What makes videos popular?

Vicki: Describe for us one of your most popular videos, and what you think makes it great.

Tim: I think one of my most popular videos is my Roanoke video done to Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Mainly because I went all out on that. I got rid of all inhibitions. I went to multiple locations. I’m in the middle of the forest part of Central Park, just running around, acting as if I’m trying to find this lost colony of Roanoke. I was asking strangers to be my cameraman.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Oh yeah! I ran into these two German tourists. They barely spoke any English, but I was able to convince then that I wasn’t a murderer.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Even though when we were in the woods, and they ended up being my camera men and following me around. But I think what really speaks to the kids is:

A) It’s from Frozen. That’s something that they can really latch onto.

B) It’s really interesting content, because it’s… like… the first great American history mystery. What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? And then…

C) I put everything into it. I didn’t worry about looking silly. I just said, “You know what? Let me just dive into the character.”

And I think that really comes across, and it speaks to the kids. And it also makes your classroom a safer classroom for the kids to do the same thing as well – to take those academic risks and to really make bonds with the curriculum.

What about copyright?

Vicki: OK, so what about those who are sitting here thinking, “OK, you used the tune from Frozen. What about copyright?”

Tim: OH! Well, I’ll let YouTube take care of that stuff.

When I upload my videos, sometimes YouTube will say, “Hey, yeah, you can do that.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder wants to split it with you.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder just wants any kind of ad revenue you get out of that.” I didn’t really start this channel with any intention of making money off of it.

I started it because as a teacher… I started it about 4-5 years ago, when YouTube wasn’t in its infancy, but it was in its adolescence. It was still trying to shake off that whole idea of being nothing but cat videos.

I wasn’t able to find all of the educational content that I wanted. So… I just made it.

So… if the original copyright holder wants to take any AdSense I make – which is next to nothing anyway – go for it!

The main intention of the video is educating not just my students, but all students that have access to it.

Why AdSense makes sense

Vicki: Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing a lot of educators don’t understand. YouTube kind of has a way to say, “OK. We’ll let you use it,” or you have to get some ad revenue. It’s one reason to actually just turn on AdSense, even if you don’t use it. I have AdSense turned on, on my account, but it’s just really there for that particular reason – of using the music and letting it handle it for you.

How do you start students with video?

OK, so let’s say, Tim, that you were going to make a parody video or a historical video with your students. What are some of the things that you would do with them?

Tim: The first thing I would do with them is show them the process that I would go through. My process is just like any other project that they’re doing. They have to get into the research. They have to look up the topic. They have to look up the important details of it. What’s the overall impact? And then start from there.

Then, if they’re doing a historical parody song – which some of my students do – we actually have an American Speaks Pageant in which they incorporate music into it as well.

Then they would start looking around. A lot of people ask, “What comes first – the song, the lyrics?” And, you know what? It changes every single time. It’s just… whatever feels right happens.

Sometimes a catchy chorus, your mind just flips those words in. And then sometimes, you have everything you want to say, and then you’re looking around.

Actually, one of the things I do, about twice a month, is I just go on YouTube. I look at what are the 20 most popular songs of the month. I know that’s going to be more accessible to the kids — if I can make my content into their songs.

But then, with that, I put them in a right direction – rhymezone.com

Vicki: Oh, I love that site! I use it too!

Tim: Rhymezone – it is the best! Yeah, when you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner…

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: … And you’re like, “What rhymes with ‘patriot’? Oh no!” And then you go there, and actually it’s a good English lesson as well because you learn about the true rhymes. And you learn about slant rhymes.

Just being able to use language, and how you use it, it really incorporates a lot of English language skills that you wouldn’t normally put in here.

And also, kids have such access to technology. I am so jealous of my students! Like refrigerators have cameras in them now! I remember being a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to touch like the giant camcorder, which was basically a VCR that you put on your shoulder.

And now they’re constantly walking around with cameras!

Vicki: (agrees)

The success he feels from making videos

Tim: So, just letting them know that they can do this. This is really accessible!

And the most successful projects I like to do with my 7th graders with American History every year is to just shoe them the basic green screen function in their iMovie – which comes standard with every single Mac.

I have them do a historical blog, where they have to look up a topic, create a character, and then just speak and make a video as if they’re that character, talking about whatever they’ve been assigned to talk about.

And it’s really, really cool. Because not only do they get into character – I do it relatively early in the year – and then I start seeing them do that in other classes throughout the year.

And they’re going, “Mr. Betts, do you have any more of that green paper that we can use? We have a science project coming up… or an English project.”

And that’s when I know that not just the content of what I was teaching was successful, but the skills of what I was teaching was successful.

Vicki: So real quick… Give us a rundown of your equipment. It sounds like you have Macs, and you use iMovie. What other equipment do you use in the process of making your movies?

Tim: Yeah, my students have those. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m more of a Windows-based guy.

Vicki: Oh well, you just told everybody! (laughs)

Tim: Yeah. I use the Adobe Suite throughout. I use Premiere Pro for my video editing. I use Audition for any audio editing. When I’m making thumbnails or different images, I’ll use Photoshop.

But it doesn’t matter! Equipment does not matter. Whether you get a PC or whether you get a Mac, there’s Windows MovieMaker or there’s iMovie. There is so much free software out there to allow you to make these kinds of creations.

Tip with videos: Start horrible!

Another thing — the first one you make is going to be horrible!

Vicki: Yup! (laughs)

Tim: Let it be horrible. Nobody starts off good. If you start off only slightly cringy, you’re miles ahead of where I started.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: But, you know, I think it’s important to us as teachers that we go out and take risks, and teach ourselves new skills, so we’re growing as well. It gets really monotonous, sometimes teaching the same subject matter over and over again.

You kind of fall into a repetition. You should be looking back on your lessons, to go, “This lesson in this unit? I want to do a total overhaul on this one, throw a whole bunch of resources into there, and allow myself to grow as a professional. Let me try something new.”

Why you should consider making videos in class

Vicki: OK. Tim, as we finish up… You have 20 seconds to give us a pep talk about why we should consider making videos in our class.

Tim: You should be making videos in your class because your kids are addicted to videos. That’s the way that they learned. Especially if you’re in a history class, but any class that has any kind of story. We love stories. We spend billions and billions of dollars a year watching stories, reading stories, listening to stories. These are the tools that will allow your kids to make these stories and show that they really understand what you’re teaching them.

Vicki: OK, teachers. Get out there and let descend upon YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Do you?

Tim: Yes I do! It’s http://www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

MrBettsClass musical parodies and comic videos have been used in classrooms around the world. With nearly 200 videos focused mainly on American history topics, MrBettsClass has helped teachers, students, and other learners laugh and learn over 3.5 million times. Betts is preparing to do it all over again by launching a brand new school year of content on August 24th, publishing new content every Thursday until the school year’s end.

Channel: http://www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Twitter @mrbettsclass

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks published first on http://ift.tt/2jn9f0m

[strivesy]

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Tim Betts on episode 210 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Videos are the modern essay. If you can’t create them, you can’t start a movement, can’t sell a product, or promote an idea. Of all the things I teach, helping kids tell digital stories through video is probably one of the most important. Today’s guest is a perfect guide for those of us who want to make videos with students. Simply put, Tim Betts rocks YouTube history. As a certified YouTube educational channel, he’s one of those that history teachers will love! But he also teaches us how to do this with students.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code CoolCat50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Introduction: Meet the Viral Video History Teacher – Mr. Betts!

Vicki: Oh, I had the best time recently looking at Mr. Betts’ YouTube History Channel!

You know, Timothy Betts @MrBettsClass is in the classroom, but he has more than 200 videos for American History.

So, Tim, today you’re going to share some of your secrets for making awesome YouTube videos.

Tim: Hello! Thank you for having me on the show!

How do we make amazing videos?

Vicki: Cool! So how do we start with making a really cool video?

Tim: I think you start – with making a really cool video – you start the same way that you would start any lesson. You really have to look at your objectives. What are you trying to teach your students? Just like anything else you would do.

And then, that’s when it starts getting technical. I specialize in historical parodies, songs, and other comedic videos – because I’m a full proponent of tricking kids into learning.

When they don’t know that they’re actually learning, they actually lean significantly better. So I try to figure out what’s interesting.

What do they need to know? And what’s funny? Because if it’s not those three things to me, it’s definitely not going to be the three things to them.

What makes videos popular?

Vicki: Describe for us one of your most popular videos, and what you think makes it great.

Tim: I think one of my most popular videos is my Roanoke video done to Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Mainly because I went all out on that. I got rid of all inhibitions. I went to multiple locations. I’m in the middle of the forest part of Central Park, just running around, acting as if I’m trying to find this lost colony of Roanoke. I was asking strangers to be my cameraman.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Oh yeah! I ran into these two German tourists. They barely spoke any English, but I was able to convince then that I wasn’t a murderer.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Even though when we were in the woods, and they ended up being my camera men and following me around. But I think what really speaks to the kids is:

A) It’s from Frozen. That’s something that they can really latch onto.

B) It’s really interesting content, because it’s… like… the first great American history mystery. What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? And then…

C) I put everything into it. I didn’t worry about looking silly. I just said, “You know what? Let me just dive into the character.”

And I think that really comes across, and it speaks to the kids. And it also makes your classroom a safer classroom for the kids to do the same thing as well – to take those academic risks and to really make bonds with the curriculum.

What about copyright?

Vicki: OK, so what about those who are sitting here thinking, “OK, you used the tune from Frozen. What about copyright?”

Tim: OH! Well, I’ll let YouTube take care of that stuff.

When I upload my videos, sometimes YouTube will say, “Hey, yeah, you can do that.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder wants to split it with you.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder just wants any kind of ad revenue you get out of that.” I didn’t really start this channel with any intention of making money off of it.

I started it because as a teacher… I started it about 4-5 years ago, when YouTube wasn’t in its infancy, but it was in its adolescence. It was still trying to shake off that whole idea of being nothing but cat videos.

I wasn’t able to find all of the educational content that I wanted. So… I just made it.

So… if the original copyright holder wants to take any AdSense I make – which is next to nothing anyway – go for it!

The main intention of the video is educating not just my students, but all students that have access to it.

Why AdSense makes sense

Vicki: Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing a lot of educators don’t understand. YouTube kind of has a way to say, “OK. We’ll let you use it,” or you have to get some ad revenue. It’s one reason to actually just turn on AdSense, even if you don’t use it. I have AdSense turned on, on my account, but it’s just really there for that particular reason – of using the music and letting it handle it for you.

How do you start students with video?

OK, so let’s say, Tim, that you were going to make a parody video or a historical video with your students. What are some of the things that you would do with them?

Tim: The first thing I would do with them is show them the process that I would go through. My process is just like any other project that they’re doing. They have to get into the research. They have to look up the topic. They have to look up the important details of it. What’s the overall impact? And then start from there.

Then, if they’re doing a historical parody song – which some of my students do – we actually have an American Speaks Pageant in which they incorporate music into it as well.

Then they would start looking around. A lot of people ask, “What comes first – the song, the lyrics?” And, you know what? It changes every single time. It’s just… whatever feels right happens.

Sometimes a catchy chorus, your mind just flips those words in. And then sometimes, you have everything you want to say, and then you’re looking around.

Actually, one of the things I do, about twice a month, is I just go on YouTube. I look at what are the 20 most popular songs of the month. I know that’s going to be more accessible to the kids — if I can make my content into their songs.

But then, with that, I put them in a right direction – rhymezone.com

Vicki: Oh, I love that site! I use it too!

Tim: Rhymezone – it is the best! Yeah, when you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner…

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: … And you’re like, “What rhymes with ‘patriot’? Oh no!” And then you go there, and actually it’s a good English lesson as well because you learn about the true rhymes. And you learn about slant rhymes.

Just being able to use language, and how you use it, it really incorporates a lot of English language skills that you wouldn’t normally put in here.

And also, kids have such access to technology. I am so jealous of my students! Like refrigerators have cameras in them now! I remember being a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to touch like the giant camcorder, which was basically a VCR that you put on your shoulder.

And now they’re constantly walking around with cameras!

Vicki: (agrees)

The success he feels from making videos

Tim: So, just letting them know that they can do this. This is really accessible!

And the most successful projects I like to do with my 7th graders with American History every year is to just shoe them the basic green screen function in their iMovie – which comes standard with every single Mac.

I have them do a historical blog, where they have to look up a topic, create a character, and then just speak and make a video as if they’re that character, talking about whatever they’ve been assigned to talk about.

And it’s really, really cool. Because not only do they get into character – I do it relatively early in the year – and then I start seeing them do that in other classes throughout the year.

And they’re going, “Mr. Betts, do you have any more of that green paper that we can use? We have a science project coming up… or an English project.”

And that’s when I know that not just the content of what I was teaching was successful, but the skills of what I was teaching was successful.

Vicki: So real quick… Give us a rundown of your equipment. It sounds like you have Macs, and you use iMovie. What other equipment do you use in the process of making your movies?

Tim: Yeah, my students have those. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m more of a Windows-based guy.

Vicki: Oh well, you just told everybody! (laughs)

Tim: Yeah. I use the Adobe Suite throughout. I use Premiere Pro for my video editing. I use Audition for any audio editing. When I’m making thumbnails or different images, I’ll use Photoshop.

But it doesn’t matter! Equipment does not matter. Whether you get a PC or whether you get a Mac, there’s Windows MovieMaker or there’s iMovie. There is so much free software out there to allow you to make these kinds of creations.

Tip with videos: Start horrible!

Another thing — the first one you make is going to be horrible!

Vicki: Yup! (laughs)

Tim: Let it be horrible. Nobody starts off good. If you start off only slightly cringy, you’re miles ahead of where I started.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: But, you know, I think it’s important to us as teachers that we go out and take risks, and teach ourselves new skills, so we’re growing as well. It gets really monotonous, sometimes teaching the same subject matter over and over again.

You kind of fall into a repetition. You should be looking back on your lessons, to go, “This lesson in this unit? I want to do a total overhaul on this one, throw a whole bunch of resources into there, and allow myself to grow as a professional. Let me try something new.”

Why you should consider making videos in class

Vicki: OK. Tim, as we finish up… You have 20 seconds to give us a pep talk about why we should consider making videos in our class.

Tim: You should be making videos in your class because your kids are addicted to videos. That’s the way that they learned. Especially if you’re in a history class, but any class that has any kind of story. We love stories. We spend billions and billions of dollars a year watching stories, reading stories, listening to stories. These are the tools that will allow your kids to make these stories and show that they really understand what you’re teaching them.

Vicki: OK, teachers. Get out there and let descend upon YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Do you?

Tim: Yes I do! It’s http://www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

MrBettsClass musical parodies and comic videos have been used in classrooms around the world. With nearly 200 videos focused mainly on American history topics, MrBettsClass has helped teachers, students, and other learners laugh and learn over 3.5 million times. Betts is preparing to do it all over again by launching a brand new school year of content on August 24th, publishing new content every Thursday until the school year’s end.

Channel: http://www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Twitter @mrbettsclass

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks published first on http://ift.tt/2yTzsdq

[growthvue]

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Tim Betts on episode 210 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Videos are the modern essay. If you can’t create them, you can’t start a movement, can’t sell a product, or promote an idea. Of all the things I teach, helping kids tell digital stories through video is probably one of the most important. Today’s guest is a perfect guide for those of us who want to make videos with students. Simply put, Tim Betts rocks YouTube history. As a certified YouTube educational channel, he’s one of those that history teachers will love! But he also teaches us how to do this with students.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code CoolCat50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Introduction: Meet the Viral Video History Teacher – Mr. Betts!

Vicki: Oh, I had the best time recently looking at Mr. Betts’ YouTube History Channel!

You know, Timothy Betts @MrBettsClass is in the classroom, but he has more than 200 videos for American History.

So, Tim, today you’re going to share some of your secrets for making awesome YouTube videos.

Tim: Hello! Thank you for having me on the show!

How do we make amazing videos?

Vicki: Cool! So how do we start with making a really cool video?

Tim: I think you start – with making a really cool video – you start the same way that you would start any lesson. You really have to look at your objectives. What are you trying to teach your students? Just like anything else you would do.

And then, that’s when it starts getting technical. I specialize in historical parodies, songs, and other comedic videos – because I’m a full proponent of tricking kids into learning.

When they don’t know that they’re actually learning, they actually lean significantly better. So I try to figure out what’s interesting.

What do they need to know? And what’s funny? Because if it’s not those three things to me, it’s definitely not going to be the three things to them.

What makes videos popular?

Vicki: Describe for us one of your most popular videos, and what you think makes it great.

Tim: I think one of my most popular videos is my Roanoke video done to Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Mainly because I went all out on that. I got rid of all inhibitions. I went to multiple locations. I’m in the middle of the forest part of Central Park, just running around, acting as if I’m trying to find this lost colony of Roanoke. I was asking strangers to be my cameraman.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Oh yeah! I ran into these two German tourists. They barely spoke any English, but I was able to convince then that I wasn’t a murderer.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Even though when we were in the woods, and they ended up being my camera men and following me around. But I think what really speaks to the kids is:

A) It’s from Frozen. That’s something that they can really latch onto.

B) It’s really interesting content, because it’s… like… the first great American history mystery. What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? And then…

C) I put everything into it. I didn’t worry about looking silly. I just said, “You know what? Let me just dive into the character.”

And I think that really comes across, and it speaks to the kids. And it also makes your classroom a safer classroom for the kids to do the same thing as well – to take those academic risks and to really make bonds with the curriculum.

What about copyright?

Vicki: OK, so what about those who are sitting here thinking, “OK, you used the tune from Frozen. What about copyright?”

Tim: OH! Well, I’ll let YouTube take care of that stuff.

When I upload my videos, sometimes YouTube will say, “Hey, yeah, you can do that.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder wants to split it with you.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder just wants any kind of ad revenue you get out of that.” I didn’t really start this channel with any intention of making money off of it.

I started it because as a teacher… I started it about 4-5 years ago, when YouTube wasn’t in its infancy, but it was in its adolescence. It was still trying to shake off that whole idea of being nothing but cat videos.

I wasn’t able to find all of the educational content that I wanted. So… I just made it.

So… if the original copyright holder wants to take any AdSense I make – which is next to nothing anyway – go for it!

The main intention of the video is educating not just my students, but all students that have access to it.

Why AdSense makes sense

Vicki: Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing a lot of educators don’t understand. YouTube kind of has a way to say, “OK. We’ll let you use it,” or you have to get some ad revenue. It’s one reason to actually just turn on AdSense, even if you don’t use it. I have AdSense turned on, on my account, but it’s just really there for that particular reason – of using the music and letting it handle it for you.

How do you start students with video?

OK, so let’s say, Tim, that you were going to make a parody video or a historical video with your students. What are some of the things that you would do with them?

Tim: The first thing I would do with them is show them the process that I would go through. My process is just like any other project that they’re doing. They have to get into the research. They have to look up the topic. They have to look up the important details of it. What’s the overall impact? And then start from there.

Then, if they’re doing a historical parody song – which some of my students do – we actually have an American Speaks Pageant in which they incorporate music into it as well.

Then they would start looking around. A lot of people ask, “What comes first – the song, the lyrics?” And, you know what? It changes every single time. It’s just… whatever feels right happens.

Sometimes a catchy chorus, your mind just flips those words in. And then sometimes, you have everything you want to say, and then you’re looking around.

Actually, one of the things I do, about twice a month, is I just go on YouTube. I look at what are the 20 most popular songs of the month. I know that’s going to be more accessible to the kids — if I can make my content into their songs.

But then, with that, I put them in a right direction – rhymezone.com

Vicki: Oh, I love that site! I use it too!

Tim: Rhymezone – it is the best! Yeah, when you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner…

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: … And you’re like, “What rhymes with ‘patriot’? Oh no!” And then you go there, and actually it’s a good English lesson as well because you learn about the true rhymes. And you learn about slant rhymes.

Just being able to use language, and how you use it, it really incorporates a lot of English language skills that you wouldn’t normally put in here.

And also, kids have such access to technology. I am so jealous of my students! Like refrigerators have cameras in them now! I remember being a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to touch like the giant camcorder, which was basically a VCR that you put on your shoulder.

And now they’re constantly walking around with cameras!

Vicki: (agrees)

The success he feels from making videos

Tim: So, just letting them know that they can do this. This is really accessible!

And the most successful projects I like to do with my 7th graders with American History every year is to just shoe them the basic green screen function in their iMovie – which comes standard with every single Mac.

I have them do a historical blog, where they have to look up a topic, create a character, and then just speak and make a video as if they’re that character, talking about whatever they’ve been assigned to talk about.

And it’s really, really cool. Because not only do they get into character – I do it relatively early in the year – and then I start seeing them do that in other classes throughout the year.

And they’re going, “Mr. Betts, do you have any more of that green paper that we can use? We have a science project coming up… or an English project.”

And that’s when I know that not just the content of what I was teaching was successful, but the skills of what I was teaching was successful.

Vicki: So real quick… Give us a rundown of your equipment. It sounds like you have Macs, and you use iMovie. What other equipment do you use in the process of making your movies?

Tim: Yeah, my students have those. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m more of a Windows-based guy.

Vicki: Oh well, you just told everybody! (laughs)

Tim: Yeah. I use the Adobe Suite throughout. I use Premiere Pro for my video editing. I use Audition for any audio editing. When I’m making thumbnails or different images, I’ll use Photoshop.

But it doesn’t matter! Equipment does not matter. Whether you get a PC or whether you get a Mac, there’s Windows MovieMaker or there’s iMovie. There is so much free software out there to allow you to make these kinds of creations.

Tip with videos: Start horrible!

Another thing — the first one you make is going to be horrible!

Vicki: Yup! (laughs)

Tim: Let it be horrible. Nobody starts off good. If you start off only slightly cringy, you’re miles ahead of where I started.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: But, you know, I think it’s important to us as teachers that we go out and take risks, and teach ourselves new skills, so we’re growing as well. It gets really monotonous, sometimes teaching the same subject matter over and over again.

You kind of fall into a repetition. You should be looking back on your lessons, to go, “This lesson in this unit? I want to do a total overhaul on this one, throw a whole bunch of resources into there, and allow myself to grow as a professional. Let me try something new.”

Why you should consider making videos in class

Vicki: OK. Tim, as we finish up… You have 20 seconds to give us a pep talk about why we should consider making videos in our class.

Tim: You should be making videos in your class because your kids are addicted to videos. That’s the way that they learned. Especially if you’re in a history class, but any class that has any kind of story. We love stories. We spend billions and billions of dollars a year watching stories, reading stories, listening to stories. These are the tools that will allow your kids to make these stories and show that they really understand what you’re teaching them.

Vicki: OK, teachers. Get out there and let descend upon YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Do you?

Tim: Yes I do! It’s http://www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

MrBettsClass musical parodies and comic videos have been used in classrooms around the world. With nearly 200 videos focused mainly on American history topics, MrBettsClass has helped teachers, students, and other learners laugh and learn over 3.5 million times. Betts is preparing to do it all over again by launching a brand new school year of content on August 24th, publishing new content every Thursday until the school year’s end.

Channel: http://www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Twitter @mrbettsclass

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks published first on http://ift.tt/2xx6Oyq

[patriciaanderson357-blog]

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Tim Betts on episode 210 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Videos are the modern essay. If you can’t create them, you can’t start a movement, can’t sell a product, or promote an idea. Of all the things I teach, helping kids tell digital stories through video is probably one of the most important. Today’s guest is a perfect guide for those of us who want to make videos with students. Simply put, Tim Betts rocks YouTube history. As a certified YouTube educational channel, he’s one of those that history teachers will love! But he also teaches us how to do this with students.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code CoolCat50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Introduction: Meet the Viral Video History Teacher – Mr. Betts!

Vicki: Oh, I had the best time recently looking at Mr. Betts’ YouTube History Channel!

You know, Timothy Betts @MrBettsClass is in the classroom, but he has more than 200 videos for American History.

So, Tim, today you’re going to share some of your secrets for making awesome YouTube videos.

Tim: Hello! Thank you for having me on the show!

How do we make amazing videos?

Vicki: Cool! So how do we start with making a really cool video?

Tim: I think you start – with making a really cool video – you start the same way that you would start any lesson. You really have to look at your objectives. What are you trying to teach your students? Just like anything else you would do.

And then, that’s when it starts getting technical. I specialize in historical parodies, songs, and other comedic videos – because I’m a full proponent of tricking kids into learning.

When they don’t know that they’re actually learning, they actually lean significantly better. So I try to figure out what’s interesting.

What do they need to know? And what’s funny? Because if it’s not those three things to me, it’s definitely not going to be the three things to them.

What makes videos popular?

Vicki: Describe for us one of your most popular videos, and what you think makes it great.

Tim: I think one of my most popular videos is my Roanoke video done to Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Mainly because I went all out on that. I got rid of all inhibitions. I went to multiple locations. I’m in the middle of the forest part of Central Park, just running around, acting as if I’m trying to find this lost colony of Roanoke. I was asking strangers to be my cameraman.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Oh yeah! I ran into these two German tourists. They barely spoke any English, but I was able to convince then that I wasn’t a murderer.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Even though when we were in the woods, and they ended up being my camera men and following me around. But I think what really speaks to the kids is:

A) It’s from Frozen. That’s something that they can really latch onto.

B) It’s really interesting content, because it’s… like… the first great American history mystery. What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? And then…

C) I put everything into it. I didn’t worry about looking silly. I just said, “You know what? Let me just dive into the character.”

And I think that really comes across, and it speaks to the kids. And it also makes your classroom a safer classroom for the kids to do the same thing as well – to take those academic risks and to really make bonds with the curriculum.

What about copyright?

Vicki: OK, so what about those who are sitting here thinking, “OK, you used the tune from Frozen. What about copyright?”

Tim: OH! Well, I’ll let YouTube take care of that stuff.

When I upload my videos, sometimes YouTube will say, “Hey, yeah, you can do that.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder wants to split it with you.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder just wants any kind of ad revenue you get out of that.” I didn’t really start this channel with any intention of making money off of it.

I started it because as a teacher… I started it about 4-5 years ago, when YouTube wasn’t in its infancy, but it was in its adolescence. It was still trying to shake off that whole idea of being nothing but cat videos.

I wasn’t able to find all of the educational content that I wanted. So… I just made it.

So… if the original copyright holder wants to take any AdSense I make – which is next to nothing anyway – go for it!

The main intention of the video is educating not just my students, but all students that have access to it.

Why AdSense makes sense

Vicki: Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing a lot of educators don’t understand. YouTube kind of has a way to say, “OK. We’ll let you use it,” or you have to get some ad revenue. It’s one reason to actually just turn on AdSense, even if you don’t use it. I have AdSense turned on, on my account, but it’s just really there for that particular reason – of using the music and letting it handle it for you.

How do you start students with video?

OK, so let’s say, Tim, that you were going to make a parody video or a historical video with your students. What are some of the things that you would do with them?

Tim: The first thing I would do with them is show them the process that I would go through. My process is just like any other project that they’re doing. They have to get into the research. They have to look up the topic. They have to look up the important details of it. What’s the overall impact? And then start from there.

Then, if they’re doing a historical parody song – which some of my students do – we actually have an American Speaks Pageant in which they incorporate music into it as well.

Then they would start looking around. A lot of people ask, “What comes first – the song, the lyrics?” And, you know what? It changes every single time. It’s just… whatever feels right happens.

Sometimes a catchy chorus, your mind just flips those words in. And then sometimes, you have everything you want to say, and then you’re looking around.

Actually, one of the things I do, about twice a month, is I just go on YouTube. I look at what are the 20 most popular songs of the month. I know that’s going to be more accessible to the kids — if I can make my content into their songs.

But then, with that, I put them in a right direction – rhymezone.com

Vicki: Oh, I love that site! I use it too!

Tim: Rhymezone – it is the best! Yeah, when you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner…

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: … And you’re like, “What rhymes with ‘patriot’? Oh no!” And then you go there, and actually it’s a good English lesson as well because you learn about the true rhymes. And you learn about slant rhymes.

Just being able to use language, and how you use it, it really incorporates a lot of English language skills that you wouldn’t normally put in here.

And also, kids have such access to technology. I am so jealous of my students! Like refrigerators have cameras in them now! I remember being a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to touch like the giant camcorder, which was basically a VCR that you put on your shoulder.

And now they’re constantly walking around with cameras!

Vicki: (agrees)

The success he feels from making videos

Tim: So, just letting them know that they can do this. This is really accessible!

And the most successful projects I like to do with my 7th graders with American History every year is to just shoe them the basic green screen function in their iMovie – which comes standard with every single Mac.

I have them do a historical blog, where they have to look up a topic, create a character, and then just speak and make a video as if they’re that character, talking about whatever they’ve been assigned to talk about.

And it’s really, really cool. Because not only do they get into character – I do it relatively early in the year – and then I start seeing them do that in other classes throughout the year.

And they’re going, “Mr. Betts, do you have any more of that green paper that we can use? We have a science project coming up… or an English project.”

And that’s when I know that not just the content of what I was teaching was successful, but the skills of what I was teaching was successful.

Vicki: So real quick… Give us a rundown of your equipment. It sounds like you have Macs, and you use iMovie. What other equipment do you use in the process of making your movies?

Tim: Yeah, my students have those. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m more of a Windows-based guy.

Vicki: Oh well, you just told everybody! (laughs)

Tim: Yeah. I use the Adobe Suite throughout. I use Premiere Pro for my video editing. I use Audition for any audio editing. When I’m making thumbnails or different images, I’ll use Photoshop.

But it doesn’t matter! Equipment does not matter. Whether you get a PC or whether you get a Mac, there’s Windows MovieMaker or there’s iMovie. There is so much free software out there to allow you to make these kinds of creations.

Tip with videos: Start horrible!

Another thing — the first one you make is going to be horrible!

Vicki: Yup! (laughs)

Tim: Let it be horrible. Nobody starts off good. If you start off only slightly cringy, you’re miles ahead of where I started.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: But, you know, I think it’s important to us as teachers that we go out and take risks, and teach ourselves new skills, so we’re growing as well. It gets really monotonous, sometimes teaching the same subject matter over and over again.

You kind of fall into a repetition. You should be looking back on your lessons, to go, “This lesson in this unit? I want to do a total overhaul on this one, throw a whole bunch of resources into there, and allow myself to grow as a professional. Let me try something new.”

Why you should consider making videos in class

Vicki: OK. Tim, as we finish up… You have 20 seconds to give us a pep talk about why we should consider making videos in our class.

Tim: You should be making videos in your class because your kids are addicted to videos. That’s the way that they learned. Especially if you’re in a history class, but any class that has any kind of story. We love stories. We spend billions and billions of dollars a year watching stories, reading stories, listening to stories. These are the tools that will allow your kids to make these stories and show that they really understand what you’re teaching them.

Vicki: OK, teachers. Get out there and let descend upon YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Do you?

Tim: Yes I do! It’s www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

MrBettsClass musical parodies and comic videos have been used in classrooms around the world. With nearly 200 videos focused mainly on American history topics, MrBettsClass has helped teachers, students, and other learners laugh and learn over 3.5 million times. Betts is preparing to do it all over again by launching a brand new school year of content on August 24th, publishing new content every Thursday until the school year’s end.

Channel: www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Twitter @mrbettsclass

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

[aira26soonas]

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Tim Betts on episode 210 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Videos are the modern essay. If you can’t create them, you can’t start a movement, can’t sell a product, or promote an idea. Of all the things I teach, helping kids tell digital stories through video is probably one of the most important. Today’s guest is a perfect guide for those of us who want to make videos with students. Simply put, Tim Betts rocks YouTube history. As a certified YouTube educational channel, he’s one of those that history teachers will love! But he also teaches us how to do this with students.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code CoolCat50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Introduction: Meet the Viral Video History Teacher – Mr. Betts!

Vicki: Oh, I had the best time recently looking at Mr. Betts’ YouTube History Channel!

You know, Timothy Betts @MrBettsClass is in the classroom, but he has more than 200 videos for American History.

So, Tim, today you’re going to share some of your secrets for making awesome YouTube videos.

Tim: Hello! Thank you for having me on the show!

How do we make amazing videos?

Vicki: Cool! So how do we start with making a really cool video?

Tim: I think you start – with making a really cool video – you start the same way that you would start any lesson. You really have to look at your objectives. What are you trying to teach your students? Just like anything else you would do.

And then, that’s when it starts getting technical. I specialize in historical parodies, songs, and other comedic videos – because I’m a full proponent of tricking kids into learning.

When they don’t know that they’re actually learning, they actually lean significantly better. So I try to figure out what’s interesting.

What do they need to know? And what’s funny? Because if it’s not those three things to me, it’s definitely not going to be the three things to them.

What makes videos popular?

Vicki: Describe for us one of your most popular videos, and what you think makes it great.

Tim: I think one of my most popular videos is my Roanoke video done to Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Mainly because I went all out on that. I got rid of all inhibitions. I went to multiple locations. I’m in the middle of the forest part of Central Park, just running around, acting as if I’m trying to find this lost colony of Roanoke. I was asking strangers to be my cameraman.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Oh yeah! I ran into these two German tourists. They barely spoke any English, but I was able to convince then that I wasn’t a murderer.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Even though when we were in the woods, and they ended up being my camera men and following me around. But I think what really speaks to the kids is:

A) It’s from Frozen. That’s something that they can really latch onto.

B) It’s really interesting content, because it’s… like… the first great American history mystery. What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? And then…

C) I put everything into it. I didn’t worry about looking silly. I just said, “You know what? Let me just dive into the character.”

And I think that really comes across, and it speaks to the kids. And it also makes your classroom a safer classroom for the kids to do the same thing as well – to take those academic risks and to really make bonds with the curriculum.

What about copyright?

Vicki: OK, so what about those who are sitting here thinking, “OK, you used the tune from Frozen. What about copyright?”

Tim: OH! Well, I’ll let YouTube take care of that stuff.

When I upload my videos, sometimes YouTube will say, “Hey, yeah, you can do that.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder wants to split it with you.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder just wants any kind of ad revenue you get out of that.” I didn’t really start this channel with any intention of making money off of it.

I started it because as a teacher… I started it about 4-5 years ago, when YouTube wasn’t in its infancy, but it was in its adolescence. It was still trying to shake off that whole idea of being nothing but cat videos.

I wasn’t able to find all of the educational content that I wanted. So… I just made it.

So… if the original copyright holder wants to take any AdSense I make – which is next to nothing anyway – go for it!

The main intention of the video is educating not just my students, but all students that have access to it.

Why AdSense makes sense

Vicki: Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing a lot of educators don’t understand. YouTube kind of has a way to say, “OK. We’ll let you use it,” or you have to get some ad revenue. It’s one reason to actually just turn on AdSense, even if you don’t use it. I have AdSense turned on, on my account, but it’s just really there for that particular reason – of using the music and letting it handle it for you.

How do you start students with video?

OK, so let’s say, Tim, that you were going to make a parody video or a historical video with your students. What are some of the things that you would do with them?

Tim: The first thing I would do with them is show them the process that I would go through. My process is just like any other project that they’re doing. They have to get into the research. They have to look up the topic. They have to look up the important details of it. What’s the overall impact? And then start from there.

Then, if they’re doing a historical parody song – which some of my students do – we actually have an American Speaks Pageant in which they incorporate music into it as well.

Then they would start looking around. A lot of people ask, “What comes first – the song, the lyrics?” And, you know what? It changes every single time. It’s just… whatever feels right happens.

Sometimes a catchy chorus, your mind just flips those words in. And then sometimes, you have everything you want to say, and then you’re looking around.

Actually, one of the things I do, about twice a month, is I just go on YouTube. I look at what are the 20 most popular songs of the month. I know that’s going to be more accessible to the kids — if I can make my content into their songs.

But then, with that, I put them in a right direction – rhymezone.com

Vicki: Oh, I love that site! I use it too!

Tim: Rhymezone – it is the best! Yeah, when you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner…

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: … And you’re like, “What rhymes with ‘patriot’? Oh no!” And then you go there, and actually it’s a good English lesson as well because you learn about the true rhymes. And you learn about slant rhymes.

Just being able to use language, and how you use it, it really incorporates a lot of English language skills that you wouldn’t normally put in here.

And also, kids have such access to technology. I am so jealous of my students! Like refrigerators have cameras in them now! I remember being a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to touch like the giant camcorder, which was basically a VCR that you put on your shoulder.

And now they’re constantly walking around with cameras!

Vicki: (agrees)

The success he feels from making videos

Tim: So, just letting them know that they can do this. This is really accessible!

And the most successful projects I like to do with my 7th graders with American History every year is to just shoe them the basic green screen function in their iMovie – which comes standard with every single Mac.

I have them do a historical blog, where they have to look up a topic, create a character, and then just speak and make a video as if they’re that character, talking about whatever they’ve been assigned to talk about.

And it’s really, really cool. Because not only do they get into character – I do it relatively early in the year – and then I start seeing them do that in other classes throughout the year.

And they’re going, “Mr. Betts, do you have any more of that green paper that we can use? We have a science project coming up… or an English project.”

And that’s when I know that not just the content of what I was teaching was successful, but the skills of what I was teaching was successful.

Vicki: So real quick… Give us a rundown of your equipment. It sounds like you have Macs, and you use iMovie. What other equipment do you use in the process of making your movies?

Tim: Yeah, my students have those. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m more of a Windows-based guy.

Vicki: Oh well, you just told everybody! (laughs)

Tim: Yeah. I use the Adobe Suite throughout. I use Premiere Pro for my video editing. I use Audition for any audio editing. When I’m making thumbnails or different images, I’ll use Photoshop.

But it doesn’t matter! Equipment does not matter. Whether you get a PC or whether you get a Mac, there’s Windows MovieMaker or there’s iMovie. There is so much free software out there to allow you to make these kinds of creations.

Tip with videos: Start horrible!

Another thing — the first one you make is going to be horrible!

Vicki: Yup! (laughs)

Tim: Let it be horrible. Nobody starts off good. If you start off only slightly cringy, you’re miles ahead of where I started.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: But, you know, I think it’s important to us as teachers that we go out and take risks, and teach ourselves new skills, so we’re growing as well. It gets really monotonous, sometimes teaching the same subject matter over and over again.

You kind of fall into a repetition. You should be looking back on your lessons, to go, “This lesson in this unit? I want to do a total overhaul on this one, throw a whole bunch of resources into there, and allow myself to grow as a professional. Let me try something new.”

Why you should consider making videos in class

Vicki: OK. Tim, as we finish up… You have 20 seconds to give us a pep talk about why we should consider making videos in our class.

Tim: You should be making videos in your class because your kids are addicted to videos. That’s the way that they learned. Especially if you’re in a history class, but any class that has any kind of story. We love stories. We spend billions and billions of dollars a year watching stories, reading stories, listening to stories. These are the tools that will allow your kids to make these stories and show that they really understand what you’re teaching them.

Vicki: OK, teachers. Get out there and let descend upon YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Do you?

Tim: Yes I do! It’s www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

MrBettsClass musical parodies and comic videos have been used in classrooms around the world. With nearly 200 videos focused mainly on American history topics, MrBettsClass has helped teachers, students, and other learners laugh and learn over 3.5 million times. Betts is preparing to do it all over again by launching a brand new school year of content on August 24th, publishing new content every Thursday until the school year’s end.

Channel: www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Twitter @mrbettsclass

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e212/

[ralph31ortiz]

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Tim Betts on episode 210 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Videos are the modern essay. If you can’t create them, you can’t start a movement, can’t sell a product, or promote an idea. Of all the things I teach, helping kids tell digital stories through video is probably one of the most important. Today’s guest is a perfect guide for those of us who want to make videos with students. Simply put, Tim Betts rocks YouTube history. As a certified YouTube educational channel, he’s one of those that history teachers will love! But he also teaches us how to do this with students.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code CoolCat50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Introduction: Meet the Viral Video History Teacher – Mr. Betts!

Vicki: Oh, I had the best time recently looking at Mr. Betts’ YouTube History Channel!

You know, Timothy Betts @MrBettsClass is in the classroom, but he has more than 200 videos for American History.

So, Tim, today you’re going to share some of your secrets for making awesome YouTube videos.

Tim: Hello! Thank you for having me on the show!

How do we make amazing videos?

Vicki: Cool! So how do we start with making a really cool video?

Tim: I think you start – with making a really cool video – you start the same way that you would start any lesson. You really have to look at your objectives. What are you trying to teach your students? Just like anything else you would do.

And then, that’s when it starts getting technical. I specialize in historical parodies, songs, and other comedic videos – because I’m a full proponent of tricking kids into learning.

When they don’t know that they’re actually learning, they actually lean significantly better. So I try to figure out what’s interesting.

What do they need to know? And what’s funny? Because if it’s not those three things to me, it’s definitely not going to be the three things to them.

What makes videos popular?

Vicki: Describe for us one of your most popular videos, and what you think makes it great.

Tim: I think one of my most popular videos is my Roanoke video done to Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Mainly because I went all out on that. I got rid of all inhibitions. I went to multiple locations. I’m in the middle of the forest part of Central Park, just running around, acting as if I’m trying to find this lost colony of Roanoke. I was asking strangers to be my cameraman.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Oh yeah! I ran into these two German tourists. They barely spoke any English, but I was able to convince then that I wasn’t a murderer.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Even though when we were in the woods, and they ended up being my camera men and following me around. But I think what really speaks to the kids is:

A) It’s from Frozen. That’s something that they can really latch onto.

B) It’s really interesting content, because it’s… like… the first great American history mystery. What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? And then…

C) I put everything into it. I didn’t worry about looking silly. I just said, “You know what? Let me just dive into the character.”

And I think that really comes across, and it speaks to the kids. And it also makes your classroom a safer classroom for the kids to do the same thing as well – to take those academic risks and to really make bonds with the curriculum.

What about copyright?

Vicki: OK, so what about those who are sitting here thinking, “OK, you used the tune from Frozen. What about copyright?”

Tim: OH! Well, I’ll let YouTube take care of that stuff.

When I upload my videos, sometimes YouTube will say, “Hey, yeah, you can do that.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder wants to split it with you.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder just wants any kind of ad revenue you get out of that.” I didn’t really start this channel with any intention of making money off of it.

I started it because as a teacher… I started it about 4-5 years ago, when YouTube wasn’t in its infancy, but it was in its adolescence. It was still trying to shake off that whole idea of being nothing but cat videos.

I wasn’t able to find all of the educational content that I wanted. So… I just made it.

So… if the original copyright holder wants to take any AdSense I make – which is next to nothing anyway – go for it!

The main intention of the video is educating not just my students, but all students that have access to it.

Why AdSense makes sense

Vicki: Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing a lot of educators don’t understand. YouTube kind of has a way to say, “OK. We’ll let you use it,” or you have to get some ad revenue. It’s one reason to actually just turn on AdSense, even if you don’t use it. I have AdSense turned on, on my account, but it’s just really there for that particular reason – of using the music and letting it handle it for you.

How do you start students with video?

OK, so let’s say, Tim, that you were going to make a parody video or a historical video with your students. What are some of the things that you would do with them?

Tim: The first thing I would do with them is show them the process that I would go through. My process is just like any other project that they’re doing. They have to get into the research. They have to look up the topic. They have to look up the important details of it. What’s the overall impact? And then start from there.

Then, if they’re doing a historical parody song – which some of my students do – we actually have an American Speaks Pageant in which they incorporate music into it as well.

Then they would start looking around. A lot of people ask, “What comes first – the song, the lyrics?” And, you know what? It changes every single time. It’s just… whatever feels right happens.

Sometimes a catchy chorus, your mind just flips those words in. And then sometimes, you have everything you want to say, and then you’re looking around.

Actually, one of the things I do, about twice a month, is I just go on YouTube. I look at what are the 20 most popular songs of the month. I know that’s going to be more accessible to the kids — if I can make my content into their songs.

But then, with that, I put them in a right direction – rhymezone.com

Vicki: Oh, I love that site! I use it too!

Tim: Rhymezone – it is the best! Yeah, when you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner…

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: … And you’re like, “What rhymes with ‘patriot’? Oh no!” And then you go there, and actually it’s a good English lesson as well because you learn about the true rhymes. And you learn about slant rhymes.

Just being able to use language, and how you use it, it really incorporates a lot of English language skills that you wouldn’t normally put in here.

And also, kids have such access to technology. I am so jealous of my students! Like refrigerators have cameras in them now! I remember being a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to touch like the giant camcorder, which was basically a VCR that you put on your shoulder.

And now they’re constantly walking around with cameras!

Vicki: (agrees)

The success he feels from making videos

Tim: So, just letting them know that they can do this. This is really accessible!

And the most successful projects I like to do with my 7th graders with American History every year is to just shoe them the basic green screen function in their iMovie – which comes standard with every single Mac.

I have them do a historical blog, where they have to look up a topic, create a character, and then just speak and make a video as if they’re that character, talking about whatever they’ve been assigned to talk about.

And it’s really, really cool. Because not only do they get into character – I do it relatively early in the year – and then I start seeing them do that in other classes throughout the year.

And they’re going, “Mr. Betts, do you have any more of that green paper that we can use? We have a science project coming up… or an English project.”

And that’s when I know that not just the content of what I was teaching was successful, but the skills of what I was teaching was successful.

Vicki: So real quick… Give us a rundown of your equipment. It sounds like you have Macs, and you use iMovie. What other equipment do you use in the process of making your movies?

Tim: Yeah, my students have those. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m more of a Windows-based guy.

Vicki: Oh well, you just told everybody! (laughs)

Tim: Yeah. I use the Adobe Suite throughout. I use Premiere Pro for my video editing. I use Audition for any audio editing. When I’m making thumbnails or different images, I’ll use Photoshop.

But it doesn’t matter! Equipment does not matter. Whether you get a PC or whether you get a Mac, there’s Windows MovieMaker or there’s iMovie. There is so much free software out there to allow you to make these kinds of creations.

Tip with videos: Start horrible!

Another thing — the first one you make is going to be horrible!

Vicki: Yup! (laughs)

Tim: Let it be horrible. Nobody starts off good. If you start off only slightly cringy, you’re miles ahead of where I started.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: But, you know, I think it’s important to us as teachers that we go out and take risks, and teach ourselves new skills, so we’re growing as well. It gets really monotonous, sometimes teaching the same subject matter over and over again.

You kind of fall into a repetition. You should be looking back on your lessons, to go, “This lesson in this unit? I want to do a total overhaul on this one, throw a whole bunch of resources into there, and allow myself to grow as a professional. Let me try something new.”

Why you should consider making videos in class

Vicki: OK. Tim, as we finish up… You have 20 seconds to give us a pep talk about why we should consider making videos in our class.

Tim: You should be making videos in your class because your kids are addicted to videos. That’s the way that they learned. Especially if you’re in a history class, but any class that has any kind of story. We love stories. We spend billions and billions of dollars a year watching stories, reading stories, listening to stories. These are the tools that will allow your kids to make these stories and show that they really understand what you’re teaching them.

Vicki: OK, teachers. Get out there and let descend upon YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Do you?

Tim: Yes I do! It’s www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

MrBettsClass musical parodies and comic videos have been used in classrooms around the world. With nearly 200 videos focused mainly on American history topics, MrBettsClass has helped teachers, students, and other learners laugh and learn over 3.5 million times. Betts is preparing to do it all over again by launching a brand new school year of content on August 24th, publishing new content every Thursday until the school year’s end.

Channel: www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Twitter @mrbettsclass

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e212/

[athena29stone]

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Tim Betts on episode 210 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Videos are the modern essay. If you can’t create them, you can’t start a movement, can’t sell a product, or promote an idea. Of all the things I teach, helping kids tell digital stories through video is probably one of the most important. Today’s guest is a perfect guide for those of us who want to make videos with students. Simply put, Tim Betts rocks YouTube history. As a certified YouTube educational channel, he’s one of those that history teachers will love! But he also teaches us how to do this with students.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code CoolCat50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Introduction: Meet the Viral Video History Teacher – Mr. Betts!

Vicki: Oh, I had the best time recently looking at Mr. Betts’ YouTube History Channel!

You know, Timothy Betts @MrBettsClass is in the classroom, but he has more than 200 videos for American History.

So, Tim, today you’re going to share some of your secrets for making awesome YouTube videos.

Tim: Hello! Thank you for having me on the show!

How do we make amazing videos?

Vicki: Cool! So how do we start with making a really cool video?

Tim: I think you start – with making a really cool video – you start the same way that you would start any lesson. You really have to look at your objectives. What are you trying to teach your students? Just like anything else you would do.

And then, that’s when it starts getting technical. I specialize in historical parodies, songs, and other comedic videos – because I’m a full proponent of tricking kids into learning.

When they don’t know that they’re actually learning, they actually lean significantly better. So I try to figure out what’s interesting.

What do they need to know? And what’s funny? Because if it’s not those three things to me, it’s definitely not going to be the three things to them.

What makes videos popular?

Vicki: Describe for us one of your most popular videos, and what you think makes it great.

Tim: I think one of my most popular videos is my Roanoke video done to Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Mainly because I went all out on that. I got rid of all inhibitions. I went to multiple locations. I’m in the middle of the forest part of Central Park, just running around, acting as if I’m trying to find this lost colony of Roanoke. I was asking strangers to be my cameraman.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Oh yeah! I ran into these two German tourists. They barely spoke any English, but I was able to convince then that I wasn’t a murderer.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Even though when we were in the woods, and they ended up being my camera men and following me around. But I think what really speaks to the kids is:

A) It’s from Frozen. That’s something that they can really latch onto.

B) It’s really interesting content, because it’s… like… the first great American history mystery. What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? And then…

C) I put everything into it. I didn’t worry about looking silly. I just said, “You know what? Let me just dive into the character.”

And I think that really comes across, and it speaks to the kids. And it also makes your classroom a safer classroom for the kids to do the same thing as well – to take those academic risks and to really make bonds with the curriculum.

What about copyright?

Vicki: OK, so what about those who are sitting here thinking, “OK, you used the tune from Frozen. What about copyright?”

Tim: OH! Well, I’ll let YouTube take care of that stuff.

When I upload my videos, sometimes YouTube will say, “Hey, yeah, you can do that.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder wants to split it with you.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder just wants any kind of ad revenue you get out of that.” I didn’t really start this channel with any intention of making money off of it.

I started it because as a teacher… I started it about 4-5 years ago, when YouTube wasn’t in its infancy, but it was in its adolescence. It was still trying to shake off that whole idea of being nothing but cat videos.

I wasn’t able to find all of the educational content that I wanted. So… I just made it.

So… if the original copyright holder wants to take any AdSense I make – which is next to nothing anyway – go for it!

The main intention of the video is educating not just my students, but all students that have access to it.

Why AdSense makes sense

Vicki: Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing a lot of educators don’t understand. YouTube kind of has a way to say, “OK. We’ll let you use it,” or you have to get some ad revenue. It’s one reason to actually just turn on AdSense, even if you don’t use it. I have AdSense turned on, on my account, but it’s just really there for that particular reason – of using the music and letting it handle it for you.

How do you start students with video?

OK, so let’s say, Tim, that you were going to make a parody video or a historical video with your students. What are some of the things that you would do with them?

Tim: The first thing I would do with them is show them the process that I would go through. My process is just like any other project that they’re doing. They have to get into the research. They have to look up the topic. They have to look up the important details of it. What’s the overall impact? And then start from there.

Then, if they’re doing a historical parody song – which some of my students do – we actually have an American Speaks Pageant in which they incorporate music into it as well.

Then they would start looking around. A lot of people ask, “What comes first – the song, the lyrics?” And, you know what? It changes every single time. It’s just… whatever feels right happens.

Sometimes a catchy chorus, your mind just flips those words in. And then sometimes, you have everything you want to say, and then you’re looking around.

Actually, one of the things I do, about twice a month, is I just go on YouTube. I look at what are the 20 most popular songs of the month. I know that’s going to be more accessible to the kids — if I can make my content into their songs.

But then, with that, I put them in a right direction – rhymezone.com

Vicki: Oh, I love that site! I use it too!

Tim: Rhymezone – it is the best! Yeah, when you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner…

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: … And you’re like, “What rhymes with ‘patriot’? Oh no!” And then you go there, and actually it’s a good English lesson as well because you learn about the true rhymes. And you learn about slant rhymes.

Just being able to use language, and how you use it, it really incorporates a lot of English language skills that you wouldn’t normally put in here.

And also, kids have such access to technology. I am so jealous of my students! Like refrigerators have cameras in them now! I remember being a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to touch like the giant camcorder, which was basically a VCR that you put on your shoulder.

And now they’re constantly walking around with cameras!

Vicki: (agrees)

The success he feels from making videos

Tim: So, just letting them know that they can do this. This is really accessible!

And the most successful projects I like to do with my 7th graders with American History every year is to just shoe them the basic green screen function in their iMovie – which comes standard with every single Mac.

I have them do a historical blog, where they have to look up a topic, create a character, and then just speak and make a video as if they’re that character, talking about whatever they’ve been assigned to talk about.

And it’s really, really cool. Because not only do they get into character – I do it relatively early in the year – and then I start seeing them do that in other classes throughout the year.

And they’re going, “Mr. Betts, do you have any more of that green paper that we can use? We have a science project coming up… or an English project.”

And that’s when I know that not just the content of what I was teaching was successful, but the skills of what I was teaching was successful.

Vicki: So real quick… Give us a rundown of your equipment. It sounds like you have Macs, and you use iMovie. What other equipment do you use in the process of making your movies?

Tim: Yeah, my students have those. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m more of a Windows-based guy.

Vicki: Oh well, you just told everybody! (laughs)

Tim: Yeah. I use the Adobe Suite throughout. I use Premiere Pro for my video editing. I use Audition for any audio editing. When I’m making thumbnails or different images, I’ll use Photoshop.

But it doesn’t matter! Equipment does not matter. Whether you get a PC or whether you get a Mac, there’s Windows MovieMaker or there’s iMovie. There is so much free software out there to allow you to make these kinds of creations.

Tip with videos: Start horrible!

Another thing — the first one you make is going to be horrible!

Vicki: Yup! (laughs)

Tim: Let it be horrible. Nobody starts off good. If you start off only slightly cringy, you’re miles ahead of where I started.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: But, you know, I think it’s important to us as teachers that we go out and take risks, and teach ourselves new skills, so we’re growing as well. It gets really monotonous, sometimes teaching the same subject matter over and over again.

You kind of fall into a repetition. You should be looking back on your lessons, to go, “This lesson in this unit? I want to do a total overhaul on this one, throw a whole bunch of resources into there, and allow myself to grow as a professional. Let me try something new.”

Why you should consider making videos in class

Vicki: OK. Tim, as we finish up… You have 20 seconds to give us a pep talk about why we should consider making videos in our class.

Tim: You should be making videos in your class because your kids are addicted to videos. That’s the way that they learned. Especially if you’re in a history class, but any class that has any kind of story. We love stories. We spend billions and billions of dollars a year watching stories, reading stories, listening to stories. These are the tools that will allow your kids to make these stories and show that they really understand what you’re teaching them.

Vicki: OK, teachers. Get out there and let descend upon YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Do you?

Tim: Yes I do! It’s www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

MrBettsClass musical parodies and comic videos have been used in classrooms around the world. With nearly 200 videos focused mainly on American history topics, MrBettsClass has helped teachers, students, and other learners laugh and learn over 3.5 million times. Betts is preparing to do it all over again by launching a brand new school year of content on August 24th, publishing new content every Thursday until the school year’s end.

Channel: www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Twitter @mrbettsclass

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

The post Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks appeared first on Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis @coolcatteacher helping educators be excellent every day. Meow!

from Cool Cat Teacher BlogCool Cat Teacher Blog http://www.coolcatteacher.com/e212/

[theforgottengn]

Oh Captain, My Captain

Characters: Bravo, Charlie, Whiskey, Tango, Yankee, Foxtrot, Johnson, Captain

Word Count: 1,912

Trigger Warning: None.

A/N: @mooberg asked me, once upon a time, how Cap got her name and I gave a shitty answer in return. I’m sorta still in the world-building/figuring things out stage so forgive me. But anyway, I recently had this idea and liked it a lot better so I wrote this.

Summary: Bravo and co are mysteriously called over to The Yard one day. Then Johnson reveals that the H.E.R.A.C.L.E.S. overseers are implementing something new to the teams. The only catch is that they want to test it out with Bravo Company first. And it’s the last thing that any of them would’ve expected; a puppy.

XXXXX

The sun beat down hard and hot; forcing them to stop every few seconds to wipe the sweat off their faces and foreheads. But it was no use since they were running the inner perimeter. Usually their PT, early morning exercise, was left up to them, but, today was check duty so they did not get that choice. But to beat two birds with one stone they ran the perimeter instead of walking it.

Bravo stopped mid-run to wipe a large drop of sweat from his forehead.

Someone runs into him from behind; shoving him hard. He wobbles on the balls of his feet and starts to tumble. But, he catches himself before he falls on his face. Looking up he makes eye contact with the culprit. Charlie’s blue-gray eyes and thin pink lips smile at him as he jogs backward.

“You need to watch where you’re stopping, buddy!”

Charlie turns around and continues his run. Chuckling slightly to himself Bravo picks up momentum again; trying to match his friend’s pace. After a few minutes he catches up to Charlie and he nudges him in the shoulder. Smiling happily Charlie slows down and removes a headphone from an ear; signaling to Bravo that he was ready to talk.

“What’s up?”

Bravo shrugs; “Nothing much. Just wondering about that top-secret assignment Johnson talked about last night. You remember?”

“Aren’t all of our assignments top-secret? But, yeah, I remember.” Charlie says with a nod.

“I’m just a bit worried about it is all. Things are rarely good with him.”

Charlie nods solemnly but says nothing. As the pair falls back into silence Bravo wraps his arms around Charlie’s shoulders and pulls him close in an embrace. He didn’t want to, or maybe he couldn’t, admit that he wasn’t just worried about the assignment. He was worried that Johnson was lying and there was no assignment.

Then the voice of their handler echoes loudly though the PA system’s loudspeakers; “Bravo Company; report to The Yard by 0900.”

XXXXX

The group arrived in The Yard at precisely 0900 and Johnson was already waiting for them. He stood with his hands behind his back in front of what looked like an obstacle course. It started with a wire mesh that was meant to be crawled under, then there was a collection of three hurdles which increased in difficulty, and then there was a tunnel which was to be crawled through. In the middle was a staircase. Then there were four more sections; a narrow ramp, an incline ramp and a selection of small circle raised platforms which were all of varying heights and distances away from each other.

But, each of them knew better than to question their handler. His temper was not something to be trifled with.

“As I told you all last night you’ll be conducting a special assignment. But what I did not tell you is that this particular assignment will last as long as possible; weeks, months even.” Johnson said with his booming, commanding voice.

“This assignment comes from on high so I don’t want to hear any grumbling from you all, is that clear?”

“Sir, yes, sir!” the group shouts in unison.

Johnson nods and removes his hands from behind his back. A bright red pet leash is wrapped around his fist. And the leash is attached to a thick black collar. The collar is around the neck of a small German shepherd pup. The puppy’s fur is that well-known black and tan mottled color but it looks lighter underneath the light of the beating sun. The dog sits next to Johnson calmly.

“Meet your newest team member.”

“She doesn’t have a name yet and we’re leaving that up to you. But even though she’s all of yours they want the majority of the responsibilities to fall to you Bravo. So you’re going to have to train her, feed her, bath her, walk her and all that jazz. You ready for that?”

“Yes, sir. I am, sir,” Bravo says with a serious nod.

“That’s what I like to hear.”

With that Johnson passes the leash over to Bravo and tells him to run the course with the dog. The puppy doesn’t move during the exchange which confuses him. He assumed that most young dogs would be energetic and running around. Bending down he carefully unhooks the leash from the collar. His hand brushes the dog’s fur and it’s surprisingly very soft.

Just as the collar is removed the dog shoots off and starts to run the course by herself.

“Well, then, somebody’s antsy,” Bravo mutters under his breath.

XXXXX

“So, didja think of a name for her yet?” Charlie asked him at lunch later that day. The dog was hiding out in their barrack; safe from the other operatives who were bound to ask questions. Bravo was given a large amount of dog-owning related stuff to house in the barrack, including but not limited to; a pet bed, a fur comb, matching metal food and water bowls, and a massive bag of dry dog food. He made sure to give the dog some food before they left.

“I only had her for a few hours, buddy. So no.”

Whiskey and Tango both sat down at the table with their trays. Tango turned around in his seat and loudly waved Fox and Yankee over. Whiskey leaned back in his chair and rested his feet on the table. Lighting a cigarette he took a few drags before joining in on the conversation.

“You need to pick something soon, Boss. Or else you’re gonna be calling her what for the rest of your life? Dog? Girl?”

“Oh yeah, Dog is a fucking great name,” Tango said sarcastically through a mouthful of meatloaf and mashed potatoes. “No, hold on a minute,” he continued pointing a finger at Bravo. “What about Dog-Girl? That’s even better.”

Tango laughed loudly and Yankee gave him a look that said Oh, shut the fuck up as he sat down.

“Do–don’t stress about it. You–yo–You’ll think of so–something good, I know it,” Fox said as he chewed on his thumbnail. Bravo nodded his thanks and went back to his cheeseburger.

The group flipped through short conversations and multiple topics with ease and familiarity as they ate. Periods of silence were natural, short, and not very often. When he finished his lunch Bravo sat back and watched his teammates talk. Tango’s hands flew about in wild and pointless gesticulation as always. Whiskey blew smoke rings and clouds, as he talked, that dispersed into the air like they were never there in first place. Foxtrot added a few quick sentences to whatever conversation but then went back to his food. Yankee ate in total silence never once adding anything to the conversation. And Charlie energetically spoke in the fast-paced, half-mumbled way that his voice only would take on when the six of them where alone.

XXXXX

Johnson told them that they were to be dismissed from going on any missions for the next couple weeks while they all got used to having the dog around.

“But don’t you all think for one second that this means you have all this free time,” he said sternly. “You’ll be spending all your time training the dog. Everyone needs to get familiar with her because if this works well then you’ll be spending a lot more time with her.”

So after lunch they jogged back to their barrack and checked in on the dog.

Bravo opened the door to see the small puppy sitting there; patiently waiting for their return. She barked happily and wagged her tail upon seeing his face. He smiled and bent down to pick her. Holding her in his arms like a baby her face is inches away from his. She sticks her small pink tongue out and licks his nose.

He pets her for a while and then sets her back down.

She runs over to Charlie who lies on a bunk; reading For Your Eyes Only. His arm hangs over the side and the dog lovingly licks his fingers. His eyes go wide in surprise but then he smiles and scratches her behind the ears. Meanwhile Bravo rifles through the pet care supplies looking for her leash. Unable to find it he starts to throw things out of the pile. A bright red ball falls onto the floor near Yankee, who sits in the middle of the floor on his laptop, and the dog bounds after it; yipping happily.

“Anybody know where I put her leash?”

A chorus of no’s float through the room.

“Great help, guys,” he grumbles as he goes back to looking. He gives up on finding the leash and whistles to the dog. “Come here, girl. Come on, let’s go.” The dog turns at sound of his voice and rushes over to him. Yankee shoots Bravo a sad look that says Hey, we were playing! Bravo shrugs in return.

“Girl? That’s the name you picked?” Tango calls tauntingly.

“No.”

“You gotta pick one, buddy,” Charlie says without looking up from his book. “We’re not gonna stick with Girl. That’s just plain stupid.”

“I know, I know,” Bravo mutters as he and the dog leave.

XXXXX

They jog over to The Yard in perfect unison. Luckily enough no other operatives are out and about so no one sees either Bravo or the dog. But the closer they get the faster the puppy rushes ahead of him.

Someone’s excited.

“Hold on,” he calls to her but she doesn’t stop. He shakes his head and jogs faster to catch up. When he arrives at the small obstacle course the pup is already there; waiting. But just as he gets within hearing range the dog shoots off and starts the course by herself. Again.

“Hey! Girl! Come back here!”

She stops on the top of the steps that lay in the middle of the course and gives him a confused look. He points to the spot next to him and says; “Come.” She reluctantly obeys his command; walking back with her tail between her legs and a sad look on her face. But when she makes it to him he picks her up and he looks at her sternly. His candy-apple green eyes meet her deep, dark almost black, almond-shaped ones.

“You think you’re captain of this ship, don’t you? Well you’re not and…”

His eyes widen slightly, with the sudden realization, and a smile forms on his face. The puppy cocks her head to the side; looking at him with a confused expression.

“Hey, wait. That fits you pretty well doesn’t it? Captain. You like that name, huh? Captain?”

She happily licks his face in response.

He sets her back down on the ground and says; “And we can call you Cap for short.”

She wags her tail happily. He smiles down at her and then starts to run the course. Captain quickly follows him and this time she doesn’t run ahead. They run the whole course together four times before falling down in exhaustion. She gets up and walks over to him; pacing the ground and snuggling up next to him before falling asleep. When her breathing slows with deep sleep Bravo wraps his arm around her small body.

“Captain. Yeah, I like that a lot.”

[justmegawatt]

Journal Day 171 – 172 WPM, 176 WPM and First Place Twice

Wednesday, April 12th 2017

Pretty awesome start to a good day so far. I got first place on typeracer this morning after a few attempts. It’s been forever since I last went on this website. However, I wanted to troll a bit, and get more views on my YouTube channel, so I went ahead and recorded a video of me becoming first place at something I knew I was good at. I also put “Vegan” next to my name to represent veganism. The fastest person on the website right now as I type this, is me, and I am a vegan.

I wasn’t even trying when I got 172 words per minute. My fingers felt slow, I felt slow. And yet, I got first place beating the hundreds if not thousands of other people online on that same website at that same moment. People that were trying their best to beat me, but couldn’t.

Alright so I am really good at typing. Can I earn money from this? I’m not sure, but it’s probably a lot better to be the ‘best’ at something, rather than be a normal person at something. And everyone types. I just happen to be one of the fastest typists in the entire world. I mean yeah, I can play Tetris, I can play a video game like Warcraft 3 and become a pro, but in terms of worldwide attention, typing is something everyone does and it is something everyone can relate to. Not many can relate to a Tetris pro or a Warcraft 3 pro.

I would like to thank DurianRider for inspiring me to make a YouTube video about this and to troll in the video a bit. DurianRider is one of the best cyclists on the planet, he got first place on a lot of different tournaments and competitions many times, and he himself is a vegan. So that inspired me. I am one of the fastest typists on the planet, why don’t I make a YouTube video series about this very topic?

I haven’t uploaded the video yet so I have no idea if it will pick up steam or not. But the recording is done, I just have to do some editing work and then upload. I’m getting excited.

--

I don’t have unlimited time to just dedicate everything to typing and YouTubing. Unfortunately I have a full-time job. Unfortunately I am studying at a university. Unfortunately I am paying $300 a month for online computer lessons (separate from the university). Unfortunately I have a life, and I can only dedicate so much time to typing.

I try to exercise every day (except I rarely do), I try to update my journal every day, I try to get straight A’s in my courses, I try to do my best at work which can get stressful sometimes, I try. I’m also writing a book with Obs. I just texted her actually to wish her well this morning, because I’m grateful for having met her. I hope she doesn’t see that as weird or anything. I wrote a pretty weird entry last night because I was extremely sleepy, and I made a pretty weird video to go along with it, she has every reason to dislike me now.

So anyway, my point is that I don’t just have unlimited time in this world to dedicate to typing. I’m a normal person going through normal things, and I just happen to be one of the best in the world at something. That doesn’t mean that I’m good at anything else. I’m not as great in art, I’m not as great in video editing, or audio production. I’m just ‘good’ at this one thing.

--

I’m pumped and excited. I’ve just spent the past hour or so listening to DurianRider YouTube advice and tips. Man. He makes it sound so easy. I think I can do it. Right now I have 7 subscribers in the channel that I’m going to upload my videos to, and a total of 214 views. Right now I have 13 videos that are publicly displayed. 4 of those videos have less than 5 views, like 2 or 3 views, I mean, wtf. I’m planning on privatizing those videos since no one watches them anyway and they’re not all that great.

Okay so here’s my YouTube to-do list for tonight: - Update YouTube wallpaper background - Create new ‘outro’ video that I will use in all my videos - Edit and create YouTube video from typing footage this morning - Create thumbnail for the above video - Get 1st place again on TypeRacer (gonna be freaking hard at night time) - Upload first video again trolling everyone on TypeRacer

Hell yeah. I can’t wait. Freaking DurianRider is the man. He gave me the tips, I will use those tips. My videos will be focused around computers, mainly typing, programming, and so on. I can’t wait to troll and wreck it online. I’m still at work at the moment, pretty much done with everything that needs to be done.

--

I have a ton of things that I need to work on outside of work though. I have a few homework assignments due tonight, some more due tomorrow. I am nearly 100 journal entries behind on my Tumblr, my Medium, my blog website, and my livejournal. Fuck. How am I going to catch up? Do I need to ask someone a favor if they can manually upload 100 of my entries to each one of those websites…? Sigh.

Someone new at work apparently found out that I had a website today, she said that was cool. There are actually quite a few people at work that know I have a website, I think pretty much everyone does, I think. I’m not too sure. But on this website, I also keep my journal entries on there. But so far I have only uploaded until journal entry day 70. Shit. So I am actually over 100 entries behind, as of today. Today is day 171.

I always thought that LG2MT would finish the task for me and catch me up to date, but I haven’t worked on LG2MT in a while. Instead, I have spent a lot of my time and hours trolling around on YouTube, Reddit, Imgur, and other websites. Who really cares about those things? I don’t need to reply to every comment poster or person that replies to me on YouTube when I have a life to live. I made a mistake of taking chunks out of my life to reply to people and that was one of the biggest mistakes of all.

--

Alright I’m home now. It’s 5:34 PM. Let’s get cranking on that YouTube to do list. First up, the YouTube wallpaper background. Mine is blank right now, so let me go ahead and make one.

Done. The time right now is 5:45 PM. I also used the bathroom for a bit, so yeah. Not bad, and it didn’t take much time at all.

Next up is to create the ‘outro’ for my videos. Okay. Okay. This one is a bit more complicated.

54 minutes later…

Alright the time right now is 6:39 PM. It was 6:39 PM when I finished and started rendering the video, and then after a while I also started to upload the video. The time right now is 6:53 PM after I finished all of that. The video can be found here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhhyPzwdScs

Freaking awesome!

Time right now is 7:02 PM and the next step is to edit and upload the footage of me getting rank #1 to YouTube. Alright.

22 minutes later…

Alright, I just finished the video! It’s rendering now which will take a while. This video is super awesome. I freaking love it. Next task is to create a thumbnail for it… Oh man, that is going to be tough.

6 minutes later…

Wow it took me 6 minutes? Geez. I thought it took like 2 seconds, but apparently it took 6 minutes. Anyway, the thumbnail is done, and it wasn’t that hard at all. The video is still not done rendering, and the time right now is 7:28 PM. The video is at 42% rendering, so nowhere close. The next step is… Oh shit, get first place on TypeRacer… Fuck me.

If there is some guy with like 180 WPM or above, then I stand little chance. Okay. First place is 217 WPM, the second place person is 192 WPM. Kathy Florentine is destroying it with freaking 217 WPM. Shit. Cameron is next with 192 WPM. Third place is by some random guy that has a Star as a symbol with 163 WPM, and 4th place is 155 WPM.

I can probably get to 3rd place with difficulty, but to get 2nd or 1st, that is a near impossibility. I’ll go for 3rd as my most, and then give up afterwards. I don’t want to even try to get more than that.

Time right now is 7:41 PM, I have been trying, but the fastest speed I have gotten so far is 140 WPM.

2 minutes later…

153 WPM. Not even close. Kathy is now at 222 WPM, and Cameron is at 210 WPM. I have never breached 200, so this is already an impossibility for me to get 1st or 2nd. I can get third, yes, but not first or second. Not at this level. Fuck. My fingers are getting confused.

This is why I’m fine with watching high performers perform, but doing it myself? That’s really difficult. I can’t reliably rely on myself to not screw up. Typing is one of those skills where you have to have full control of every single finger movement, and at really fast speeds, it’s hard to grab control of them, so typos are abound. I think it’s because it’s late in the day right now, which is why my fingers are having a much harder time than this morning. I don’t know exactly what it is, it’s just that I am having more typos right now for some reason.

I uploaded the video, keep in mind I curse a few times since I’m roleplaying a controversial character: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tfCyJse8NO0

--

However many minutes later…

The time right now is 8:22 PM and a low level league of people just appeared. The 1st place person right now is 135 WPM, the second place is 111 WPM, and the fourth place is 108 WPM, the 4th place downward have not even gotten anywhere. Holy shit. This is going to be really easy. I still want to get a really high score though, nothing below 160 WPM.

Finally. Some dude just got 160 WPM. I thought that low level of skill was going to be around for a while.

A long time later!

The time right now is 8:43 PM and I finally got first place again.

--

I recorded another video doing commentary while I got 176 WPM. So before I set my record for the night, some other guy got 175 WPM. I bet he was disappointed I beat his score after just 4 minutes. Well 4 minutes after I beat his score, another person beat me. Then 4 minutes after that person, another person beat that person. And then 3 minutes later, the person I beat originally, he came out of nowhere and became first place again.

So my final position right now is 4th place. Oh well. I actually went online to one of the people’s livestreams, and it turns out they were only doing 1 line typeraces. Wow. Just one liners. The one I did 172 with was 3 lines, and the 176 one was also 3 lines. That’s probably why I have never gotten over 200 WPM, because I have never consistently stayed at 1 line for that long. This guy just kept on doing it and doing it. I don’t think you get better at typing that way. You set records, but you don’t improve.

I think that is the first time I have completed all the tasks in my to-do list that I write here. That is the first time. Impressive.

 Selfie for the day

[succeedly]

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Tim Betts on episode 210 [A special encore episode] of the 10-Minute Teacher Podcast

From the Cool Cat Teacher Blog by Vicki Davis

Follow @coolcatteacher on Twitter

Videos are the modern essay. If you can’t create them, you can’t start a movement, can’t sell a product, or promote an idea. Of all the things I teach, helping kids tell digital stories through video is probably one of the most important. Today’s guest is a perfect guide for those of us who want to make videos with students. Simply put, Tim Betts rocks YouTube history. As a certified YouTube educational channel, he’s one of those that history teachers will love! But he also teaches us how to do this with students.

Today’s episode is sponsored by JAM.com, the perfect last minute holiday gift for your kids or grandkids. The creative courses at Jam.com are project-based, creative and FUN. Use the code CoolCat50 to get $50 off your course. And remember that you can sign up for a 14 day FREE trial of any course with your child aged 7-16. Drawing. Minecraft. Legos. And more!

Listen Now

Listen to the show on iTunes or Stitcher

Stream by clicking here.

***

Enhanced Transcript

Classroom Videos: How-to Tips and Tricks

Introduction: Meet the Viral Video History Teacher – Mr. Betts!

Vicki: Oh, I had the best time recently looking at Mr. Betts’ YouTube History Channel!

You know, Timothy Betts @MrBettsClass is in the classroom, but he has more than 200 videos for American History.

So, Tim, today you’re going to share some of your secrets for making awesome YouTube videos.

Tim: Hello! Thank you for having me on the show!

How do we make amazing videos?

Vicki: Cool! So how do we start with making a really cool video?

Tim: I think you start – with making a really cool video – you start the same way that you would start any lesson. You really have to look at your objectives. What are you trying to teach your students? Just like anything else you would do.

And then, that’s when it starts getting technical. I specialize in historical parodies, songs, and other comedic videos – because I’m a full proponent of tricking kids into learning.

When they don’t know that they’re actually learning, they actually lean significantly better. So I try to figure out what’s interesting.

What do they need to know? And what’s funny? Because if it’s not those three things to me, it’s definitely not going to be the three things to them.

What makes videos popular?

Vicki: Describe for us one of your most popular videos, and what you think makes it great.

Tim: I think one of my most popular videos is my Roanoke video done to Frozen’s “Let It Go.” Mainly because I went all out on that. I got rid of all inhibitions. I went to multiple locations. I’m in the middle of the forest part of Central Park, just running around, acting as if I’m trying to find this lost colony of Roanoke. I was asking strangers to be my cameraman.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Oh yeah! I ran into these two German tourists. They barely spoke any English, but I was able to convince then that I wasn’t a murderer.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: Even though when we were in the woods, and they ended up being my camera men and following me around. But I think what really speaks to the kids is:

A) It’s from Frozen. That’s something that they can really latch onto.

B) It’s really interesting content, because it’s… like… the first great American history mystery. What happened to the colonists at Roanoke? And then…

C) I put everything into it. I didn’t worry about looking silly. I just said, “You know what? Let me just dive into the character.”

And I think that really comes across, and it speaks to the kids. And it also makes your classroom a safer classroom for the kids to do the same thing as well – to take those academic risks and to really make bonds with the curriculum.

What about copyright?

Vicki: OK, so what about those who are sitting here thinking, “OK, you used the tune from Frozen. What about copyright?”

Tim: OH! Well, I’ll let YouTube take care of that stuff.

When I upload my videos, sometimes YouTube will say, “Hey, yeah, you can do that.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder wants to split it with you.” Sometimes they say, “Hey, the copyright holder just wants any kind of ad revenue you get out of that.” I didn’t really start this channel with any intention of making money off of it.

I started it because as a teacher… I started it about 4-5 years ago, when YouTube wasn’t in its infancy, but it was in its adolescence. It was still trying to shake off that whole idea of being nothing but cat videos.

I wasn’t able to find all of the educational content that I wanted. So… I just made it.

So… if the original copyright holder wants to take any AdSense I make – which is next to nothing anyway – go for it!

The main intention of the video is educating not just my students, but all students that have access to it.

Why AdSense makes sense

Vicki: Yeah. And you know, that’s one thing a lot of educators don’t understand. YouTube kind of has a way to say, “OK. We’ll let you use it,” or you have to get some ad revenue. It’s one reason to actually just turn on AdSense, even if you don’t use it. I have AdSense turned on, on my account, but it’s just really there for that particular reason – of using the music and letting it handle it for you.

How do you start students with video?

OK, so let’s say, Tim, that you were going to make a parody video or a historical video with your students. What are some of the things that you would do with them?

Tim: The first thing I would do with them is show them the process that I would go through. My process is just like any other project that they’re doing. They have to get into the research. They have to look up the topic. They have to look up the important details of it. What’s the overall impact? And then start from there.

Then, if they’re doing a historical parody song – which some of my students do – we actually have an American Speaks Pageant in which they incorporate music into it as well.

Then they would start looking around. A lot of people ask, “What comes first – the song, the lyrics?” And, you know what? It changes every single time. It’s just… whatever feels right happens.

Sometimes a catchy chorus, your mind just flips those words in. And then sometimes, you have everything you want to say, and then you’re looking around.

Actually, one of the things I do, about twice a month, is I just go on YouTube. I look at what are the 20 most popular songs of the month. I know that’s going to be more accessible to the kids — if I can make my content into their songs.

But then, with that, I put them in a right direction – rhymezone.com

Vicki: Oh, I love that site! I use it too!

Tim: Rhymezone – it is the best! Yeah, when you’ve kind of painted yourself into a corner…

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: … And you’re like, “What rhymes with ‘patriot’? Oh no!” And then you go there, and actually it’s a good English lesson as well because you learn about the true rhymes. And you learn about slant rhymes.

Just being able to use language, and how you use it, it really incorporates a lot of English language skills that you wouldn’t normally put in here.

And also, kids have such access to technology. I am so jealous of my students! Like refrigerators have cameras in them now! I remember being a kid, and I wasn’t allowed to touch like the giant camcorder, which was basically a VCR that you put on your shoulder.

And now they’re constantly walking around with cameras!

Vicki: (agrees)

The success he feels from making videos

Tim: So, just letting them know that they can do this. This is really accessible!

And the most successful projects I like to do with my 7th graders with American History every year is to just shoe them the basic green screen function in their iMovie – which comes standard with every single Mac.

I have them do a historical blog, where they have to look up a topic, create a character, and then just speak and make a video as if they’re that character, talking about whatever they’ve been assigned to talk about.

And it’s really, really cool. Because not only do they get into character – I do it relatively early in the year – and then I start seeing them do that in other classes throughout the year.

And they’re going, “Mr. Betts, do you have any more of that green paper that we can use? We have a science project coming up… or an English project.”

And that’s when I know that not just the content of what I was teaching was successful, but the skills of what I was teaching was successful.

Vicki: So real quick… Give us a rundown of your equipment. It sounds like you have Macs, and you use iMovie. What other equipment do you use in the process of making your movies?

Tim: Yeah, my students have those. Don’t tell anyone, but I’m more of a Windows-based guy.

Vicki: Oh well, you just told everybody! (laughs)

Tim: Yeah. I use the Adobe Suite throughout. I use Premiere Pro for my video editing. I use Audition for any audio editing. When I’m making thumbnails or different images, I’ll use Photoshop.

But it doesn’t matter! Equipment does not matter. Whether you get a PC or whether you get a Mac, there’s Windows MovieMaker or there’s iMovie. There is so much free software out there to allow you to make these kinds of creations.

Tip with videos: Start horrible!

Another thing — the first one you make is going to be horrible!

Vicki: Yup! (laughs)

Tim: Let it be horrible. Nobody starts off good. If you start off only slightly cringy, you’re miles ahead of where I started.

Vicki: (laughs)

Tim: But, you know, I think it’s important to us as teachers that we go out and take risks, and teach ourselves new skills, so we’re growing as well. It gets really monotonous, sometimes teaching the same subject matter over and over again.

You kind of fall into a repetition. You should be looking back on your lessons, to go, “This lesson in this unit? I want to do a total overhaul on this one, throw a whole bunch of resources into there, and allow myself to grow as a professional. Let me try something new.”

Why you should consider making videos in class

Vicki: OK. Tim, as we finish up… You have 20 seconds to give us a pep talk about why we should consider making videos in our class.

Tim: You should be making videos in your class because your kids are addicted to videos. That’s the way that they learned. Especially if you’re in a history class, but any class that has any kind of story. We love stories. We spend billions and billions of dollars a year watching stories, reading stories, listening to stories. These are the tools that will allow your kids to make these stories and show that they really understand what you’re teaching them.

Vicki: OK, teachers. Get out there and let descend upon YouTube. I have a YouTube channel. Do you?

Tim: Yes I do! It’s http://www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Transcribed by Kymberli Mulford

Bio as submitted

MrBettsClass musical parodies and comic videos have been used in classrooms around the world. With nearly 200 videos focused mainly on American history topics, MrBettsClass has helped teachers, students, and other learners laugh and learn over 3.5 million times. Betts is preparing to do it all over again by launching a brand new school year of content on August 24th, publishing new content every Thursday until the school year’s end.

Channel: http://www.youtube.com/mrbettsclass

Twitter @mrbettsclass

Disclosure of Material Connection: This is a “sponsored podcast episode.” The company who sponsored it compensated me via cash payment, gift, or something else of value to include a reference to their product. Regardless, I only recommend products or services I believe will be good for my readers and are from companies I can recommend. I am disclosing this in accordance with the Federal Trade Commission’s 16 CFR, Part 255: “Guides Concerning the Use of Endorsements and Testimonials in Advertising.” This company has no impact on the editorial content of the show.

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