Google Teacher Academy Application Video

Below you'll find the video that I created as a requirement of the application process for the Summer '09 Google Teacher Academy which is taking place in Boulder, CO in early August. Applicants for the GTA are required to submit a 60 second video either on the topic of "Motivation and Learning" or "Classroom Innovation." My video is on "Motivation and Learning." I really enjoyed the process of building up this piece and found it extraordinarily challenging to convey my message in this mixed media format in only 60 seconds of time. This has consumed my last couple of days...now it is time to step away from the computer and go into full summer teacher-bum-mode ;-) Project notes on how this video was created are included at the end of this post.



-All images used in this project are licensed in the Creative Commons and posted at flickr (a great big thank you to everyone who posts their content in the Creative Commons)

-The audio track is from an artist that goes by "Tryad" over at jamendo. This is the same audio track that was used in Michael Wesch's viral "A Vision of Students Today" video. Thank you for posting this song with a Creative Commons license, Tryad. Teacher geeks like me truly appreciate this.

-The slides were all assembed in the Google Docs Presentation tool. This is a web based slide authoring tool that I've really come to appreciate. I love how this platform faciliates collaboration and sharing. The Google Docs slides are posted online over here if you'd like to see them.

-After the slides were assembled, I started doing a few screen recordings with Jing Pro and then posting to YouTube. I probably posted 3-4 rough cuts in this manner. I struggled, though, with editing and timing of the video so ultimately I switched over to Screenflow. After recording in screenflow I adjusted the duration for the various slides and dropped in the audio track. This video was extremely helpful in optimizing the settings out of screenflow for posting in YouTube's HD format.

-The word cloud at the beginning of the video was created with wordle.

-There were many, many pieces and ideas that I had to leave out of this video. For example, I wanted to do a series of slides on, "What if...students could connect and collaborate with other students around the world...to solve complex probles, improve cultural sensitivity/awareness, etc." I'll have to save this for "What If 2.0" I guess!