Here is a  PowerPoint designed for a high school music class to be used on the presentation station.  The PowerPoint demonstrates how to combine the videos of your choosing, Delicious, and PowerPoint 2007.
youtubesymphony.ppt

The presentation gives an overview of the YouTube Symphony so that all of the students view the selected videos and have a chance to participate in a class discussion. This gives them all a base of common knowledge that will help them as they work on their assignments.

After viewing the PowerPoint, students are given a study packet designed using the PowerPoint notes feature. Assignments outlined on each slide page with instructions. You print these out from the slides by going to the Office Button > Print.
A pop up menu appears.
Go down to Print What: > Select Notes Pages and Click OK.
Using these pages, students are able to work from any computer at school, at home, or at a public library to access the Delicious resources and complete their assignments as scheduled by the teacher. Using resources in this way allows for whole class and individualized learning.

Notice that the PowerPoint is saved as a .ppt not as a .pptx in order to place it in a file share for students to take home to their own computers. The .ppt will work on a Mac or a PC with older versions of Office installed. By using the file share at your school you also have the ability to give the presentation to students who were absent.

Here are two Quick Reference documents to help you and your students use the camera. They operate slightly differently between the Mac and the PC platform so download the one you need for the platform you are using.

flipvideoforpc.pdf and flipvideomac.pdf

For Mac users look at this resource for iMovie. Apple Learning Interchange

For PC users here is a Quick Guide for getting started with MovieMaker moviemaker.pdf The program essentially steps you through the necessary steps to completing a movie. Have fun!
For more on MovieMaker go to this resource put together by LeAnn Sahlin from Instructional Technology.

In 08-09 SPS will be required to report how we assess students’ learning in dance, music, theatre, and visual arts to OSPI. To support assessment of student work and reporting data, the District has developed LEARN. There are a variety of ways to capture student learning, download, assess and save students’ scores. (OSPI Arts assessment page)

The main steps are:

1. Capture Performance

• Document Cameras
  • Capture Images
  • Downloading Images
  • Deleting Images
• Flip Cameras
  • Meet the Flip
  • Quick Start Guide
  • Reference Documents
  • IT Blog References

2. Edit Performance

3. Upload Performance to LEARN via SOURCE.

• Source
• Video Instructions

4. Score Using the Appropriate Rubric

• Entering Scores in LEARN

Access to Video

Schools must comply with federal CIPA rules in order to keep students safe and get network infrastructure funding. For almost all school districts this has meant Internet filters. As video content has exploded on the Internet so have the restrictions for student access which often means that student access to video sharing sites like YouTube are blocked. You have two options to solve this problem.

1. Use sites that are not blocked like TeacherTube.
2. Transfer YouTube or other video from computers that have access to the site, teacher workstations for example, onto presentation stations so they can be shared with students. (full directions here)

Bandwidth Issues

The District’s access to the Internet is limited by the amount of service we buy from the Washington State k-20 Network. Schools are further limited by the network infrastructure that connects them to the network operations center at the JSCEE. Schools connected by fiber have better bandwidth than schools that are not. Within the next 3 years we should have almost all school sites connected by fiber, but until then many elementary sites that are not connected will have less access. Keeping all this in mind, it is important to treat Internet access as a scarce resource. Your options:

1. Download video in off peak usage times and then show during class. A great way to do this is to use video podcasts. see Podcasts for the Classroom
2. Use streaming video if you have a fiber connection, but be aware of possible network slowdowns if several classrooms are using Internet intensive applications at the same time. (You may also want to check with your librarian to make sure that their book checkout times are not severely effected). Links to great video sites for education.

What does this mean for teaching? First and foremost it means that we must teach our students to ask powerful questions about the media itself. The skill of reading and interpreting information needs to be expanded to all message forms; verbal, visual, auditory, or a combination of all three.

Now that the presentation station is available in almost all classrooms in our schools we have the ability to help students analyze media by guiding them through Web sites teaching them to evaluate the content and intent of the authors, as well as the effectiveness of the use of images and sound.

Our access to information is growing so fast that it is impossible to keep up with it. That is why these skills are so vital for our students. It used to be that people thought teachers taught students all that they needed to know for a lifetime. Now we realize that no one person or source is the seat of all knowledge. Our students must understand how to handle the data that is coming at them because they will never be able to accumulate it all in their own minds.

Here are The 5 Core Concepts and the 5 Key Questions of Media Literacy from the Center for Media Literacy to help you get started thinking about and teaching these skills.

When you are ready, here is a PowerPoint for you to use with your students when you talk to them about evaluating Web sites. web-site-evaluation.ppt

Some resources you might like to look at for more discussion and information on this topic:

• David Warlick
• Jamie McKenzie
• The Question Mark a digital journal about powerful questions and media literacy.
• Wikipedia’s definition of Visual Literacy with links to articles.
• Kathy Schrock’s age appropriate Web evaluation tools

What is a digital camera and why do I want one?
A digital camera is one that records an image using an electronic sensor. The sensor is made up of millions of pixels, the more pixels it has, the sharper the detail of the image. The sensor transfers the picture into a digital file that is saved to a memory card.
You want a digital camera because it is easy to use, gives you full control of your pictures from taking them to editing them, to adding special effects. This is all done on your computer and sometimes in the camera.

What is a megapixel and why should I care?
A megapixel is one million pixels.
The term pixel is short for picture element. You need lots of pixels to produce a good photograph.
Most cameras today are between 3-8 Megapixels, with some offering 10 and 12 Megapixels.
So when you are buying a camera, or looking through the ads for one, remember that the more megapixels the camera has, the larger you can reproduce your image and still have good quality.

Here is a quick overview.

2 megapixel – These cameras will make good quality 5”x7” prints,
3 megapixel – These cameras will make good quality 8”x10” prints.
4 megapixel – These cameras will make good quality 11”x14” prints.
5 megapixel – These cameras will make good quality 13” x19” prints.

Print your pictures at the 300 dot per inch (dpi) setting.

You may really be into photography and want a good zoom lens. Remember, most of these cameras have both digital and optical zooms. The zoom that is more like a 35mm camera is the optical zoom. The higher that number the better your zoom quality.

This information is really only about point and shoot digital cameras. If you are interested in an SLR camera talk to someone in a camera shop. These cameras deliver bigger pixels, better quality shots, and interchangeable lenses. They work the same as traditional 35mm SLR cameras that photography experts like to use.
What is an SLR camera? SLR stands for Single Lens Reflex. In the days before digital cameras, SLR cameras were the tools of professional photographers. Basically the design is such that light entering the lens is reflected by a mirror up in to the viewfinder, allowing the photographer to see exactly what the final picture will look like (focus, dep[th of field, etc.). A Digital SLR is just a computerized version of the same thing, using digital memory cards and light sensor chips instead of film. SLRs also use interchangeable lenses that you can buy separately from the camera that allow for macro and elphoto photography. These cameras are expensive, but the prices are coming down.

For most of our school and family uses, the point and shoot cameras are the way to go. Just remember that higher megapixels are better as are higher optical zoom numbers for the quality of your photographs.