Multimedia Presentations -- A Primer

ADDED WED. ~~~ I HEAR THAT FOR SOME SESSIONS YOU HAVE TO RESERVE A SPOT. PLEASE JUST COME. I'M LOOKING FORWARD TO HAVING A CHANCE TO TALK TO SOME PEOPLE AND COMPARE EXPERIENCES HERE AND IN CANADA AFTER 2 "STAND & DELIVER" SESSIONS.

PLEASE HAVE AT LEAST THE TRAIL ADOBE PREMIER ELEMENTS DOWNLOADED AND READY. OLD VERSIONS WORK FINE. i KNOW VS4 AND HAVE VS8. THE ADOBE BOOTH MAY HAVE TRIAL VERSIONS ON DISC OR YOU CAN GET ONE ONLINE AT THE ADOBE WEBSITE.

THIS IS GOING TO BE THE FASTEST VIDEO CREATING WORKSHOP IN HISTORY, BUT IF THE ROOM IS NOT IN USE AFTERWARD OR IF WE CAN FIND A SPACE TO MOVE TO, ILL BE HAPPY TO STAY ON SO WE CAN KEEP WORKING AND SHOW YOUR COMPLETED VIDS. AT THE END.

Using multimedia presentations with students -- either as teaching tools or as an alternative to traditional essays or research projects -- is becoming a big part of using technology in classrooms. Students who know that their work is going up for public view have to deal with such issues as teamwork, ethical use of source material, factual accuracy, and the quality and cohesiveness of the presentation. The learning involved -- both content and technical -- can be phenomenal.

This session will give you a basic working knowledge of my favourite editing software: Adobe Premier Elements (for making videos). The end product will be a short (1-2 minute) presentation answering an essential question. Sample rubrics and an Easybib bibliography of the resources I share with you will be available on the workshop wiki. Public domain and creative commons sources will be used.

One of the reasons I personally love working with presentation software is that it makes me feel creative when I never really had that experience before. However, it can be a daunting prospect to try your first presentation on your own. Although these programs tend to advertise themselves as 'intuitive', that is often only the case if you’re already familiar with how that genre of programs really works. By the end of the hour you should feel familiar enough with the basic functions to let your students try these programs in class. You're invited to bring 1 or 2 students along to try the software with you so they can act as helpers when you get back to class.

I usually do this workshop in 90 minutes, and we have only 1 hour, so we'll be working fast. If you can get into the room early so we have enough time for you to finish one short video and share it with others, that will be phenomenal!!!

This is how you cite this paper:

All delegates attending this session must bring and ensure:

Participants will need to have downloaded and installed Adobe Premier Elements [http://www.adobe.com/products/premiereel/]. This is PC software which takes about 2 hours to download and install. I believe the free trial lasts about 15 days, so don't download too far ahead. If you already have an older version, there's no need to upgrade. The one I use most is an older one, too.

People with Macbooks are welcome to come and problem-solve together. I am familiar with iMovie 6, but the newer versions have changed and I'm not a new-Mac person.

I will have thumbdrives with a collection of resources ready for you to save to your laptops. These all conform to Creative Commons standards so may be used with the correct attribution. At the end I'll ask you to save your final products on the drives so I can post them for everyone to see.

Also, if you want to use your own footage and images, please have the files in a folder on your computer. The video formats that import easily are Quicktime (.mov), .mp4, .wmv and .avi. Modern flash camcorders often store files in a highly compressed MPEG-4/H.264 format which Adobe does like. To get around that problem you can upgrade to Quicktime Pro and save your video files as .mov files.

Meanwhile, I've created 2 Voicethreads for you to view:
~ one introducing myself [http://voicethread.com/#u267519.b787247].
~ the other giving you the flavour of the workshop[http://voicethread.com/share/892524/].