Take cover...it's a brainstorm

Greetings everyone! Today we’re looking at tools that can support personal, professional, and K12 creativity. First of all, what was the creative thing you did since we last met? Talk with someone nearby and then we’ll listen to a few people share.

Speaking of creativity, I’m learning a new tool this semester and I need your help. I want to make a video project called Dear First Year Student for freshmen in college.  I want to make it like this video of moms sharing what they would tell their “pre-mom” selves.  So – what would you tell your pre-UGA self?  Write it in huge handwriting on a large sheet of paper and take a picture of yourself holding it somewhere on campus. Then, send the photo to me at Troovi.  I’ll create a little video that I’ll share with you when I’m done.

That leads us into our next project – digital storytelling! Remember the NETS standards? We used the ones dealing with collaboration and communication previously. Now let’s see what they say about creativity and innovation:

Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology.
Students:
a. apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes.
b. create original works as a means of personal or group expression.
c. use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues.
d. identify trends and forecast possibilities.

Digital storytelling is just one of many ways you can incorporate touch on many of these elements. Work with a partner. Choose one of the stories listed below to get an idea of how digital stories can support content learning. Think about how the story connects technology, pedagogy and content knowledge all in one.

Elementary Science – The Water Cycle
High School Math – Geometry: Art and Architecture
High School Language Arts – To Kill a Mockingbird

What stands out?

You have several options for what your digital story might be:

1. An educational video for use in your subject/grade level.
2. A video that showcases a personal talent.
3. A commercial for your major.
4. A TED talk about something you are passionate about. (What is a TED talk?).
5. A new video about UGA to replace this one.
6. Your choice – must be approved by me on Monday, October 11.

Here are some other details about the project:

• The video should tell a story – not simply instruct.
• Your story needs a beginning, middle, and end.
• It can be fiction or non-fiction.
• You need to identify the age of your audience (within the story or preferably on your Creativity and Innovation webpage).
• If you are writing fiction you need characters and conflict.
• If you are writing nonfiction – your readers need to know why they should care about your topic.
• Regardless of fiction or nonfiction – your reader should learn something.
• The story will likely be 2-3 minutes long. Nothing bad happens if it’s a little shorter or a bit longer.
• You can use video or pictures (or both).

If we have enough time, let’s start brainstorming our story ideas now! If you want to be able to create a visual of your brainstorming (although not required at this point), I suggest using the free online tool called Bubbl.  Spend a few minutes getting used to the tool and then begin a brainstorming web for your story ideas. Your web might be a large cluster of different ideas for a story or you might already have an idea so your web is just laying out what you want to include in your story. There are many other brainstorming tools that you can use as well. You might also want to use Kidspiration, Inspiration, Xmind or Edistorm. Here’s a tutorial for Inspiration and Kidspiration. You can also use old fashioned paper and pencil. If the technology gets in the way of your creativity – don’t use it!

Homework

1. Explore Making Teachers Nerdy to see some of the resources available for digital storytelling. There are all kinds of great tools for lots of things, so click around (I’ll be asking what you found out!).
2. Decide what you think your story will be about.
3. Send your picture (described above) to Troovi.

It's a marshmallow world...

Don’t forget your Chapter 5 reading guide is due at the beginning of class!

Today we’re going to spend some time doing an activity that requires some creativity. Decide now who you’re going to work with. Relocate if you need to. Once we’re done, be prepared to show what you’ve created. Was it easy? Difficult? Why? How did Osborn’s strategies challenge/push your thinking?

Note: if you enjoy exercises in creativity, you might enjoy Alan Black’s Creativity Challenges.


Homework

1. Take a nap 
2. Then, get up and do something creative. Be prepared to report what you did in class on Wednesday.  This is a legitimate assignment . . .

Turn up the music

Today we're going to play around with audio creation.  We'll mostly be playing with a free program called audacity.  You'll want to download this to your computer at home, since it's not an online program.  It allows you to record, edit, mix, and do a whole lot more with audio tracks.

One thing to keep in mind with audio and video production is the idea of tracks.  A track is one recording unit.  When you have more than one track you can do things like fade in or out, play things in stereo (a different sound in the left speaker than the right speaker), and so on.  It's really quite simple.  So let's play around with it a bit.

So your assignment is to create your own mini podcast. You can find a bunch of music you can use here You will need the following elements:

1. An introduction song (only a few seconds)
2. A fade out or cross fade (music fades out while your talking fades in)
3. A minute or so of you talking about anything you want
4. Music fading in
5. An exit song.

You can play around with things like adding white noise, echos, distortion, changing the quality of the sound (making everything louder, removing pops, etc.).

And then, when all is done, save it as a .wav (.mp3 is the best sound file type...just like .jpg file type for pictures, it allows the best compression with the least loss...however, due to copyright laws, you can't save as .mp3 without following these steps, which you can only do on your home computer). 

Then you can convert it to .mp3 using Zamzar.

Add the .Mp3 as an attachment to a new page on your website called "audio" or "podcast" or something like that.  If we have time we'll look at embedding a .mp3 player onto your page.

For Wednesday

• Play around with Audacity at home.  Learn how to do something new.  You'll need to know how to do it to do your next big project.
• Remember, your chapter 5 reading guide is due on wednesday.  This is the 4th reading guide, so if you have already done three, than this is your last one. :)