Digital Signposts

Joined Up Thinking

image Neil Gould

I find it odd, that whilst on the one hand the government purports to promote "digital skills" and "personalised learning", teachers are to be given the right to confiscate pupils' MP3 players and mobile phones, if they hinder learning. Exactly what they mean by 'learning' and 'hinder' is another debate.

I can see some interesting scenarios taking place as teachers ask teenagers to hand over their personal and valuable kit ...(unlikely). And, of course, some pupils may be lucky enough to argue they need the kit for their next (enlightened) class where podcasting, blogs and electronic communications are featured.

To good to be true...

Every now and again some software comes along that seems to good to be true. One such is Celtx a comprehensive open source
software package that provides a range of tools for film and TV pre -production such as scriptwritng, screenplays, character development and scheduling.

I have used it with a group of medical students (who are complete beginners) I am teaching on a digital video course and found they are producing excellent quality scripts and plans and scenarios. The software helps themfocus, work collaboratively and produce professional outcomes. It has added a new degree of depth to the planning and development of their DV projects. I would recommend it to anyone teaching film, TV or media studies, or indeed any subject that requires narrative or character development.

The software designed for, and by production professionals is available for Mac, Unix and Windows and comes with an excellent screencast tutorial. There is also extra online support through a discussion forum.

Oh! .. and its free.

In the short space of a few months

Since the launch of the ‘iPod with Movies’ its real potential is becoming apparent. Had it been restricted to playing music videos purchased from the iTunes Music Store  then it would probably slipped quietly into obscurity.

However, Apple did have the good sense to empower customers by including an, Export for iPod option with QuickTime Pro 7. Other applications such as Elgato’s EYE TV were quick to follow suit and included an Export for iPod. I must confess my first use of it was  to convert Pink Floyd’s set from Live 8, recorded  in the summer on my Mac with EyeTV.

This 5th generation iPod has brought about many creative, educational and entrepreneurial opportunities. Business have been quick off the mark, for example a real estate company in California is offering iPod downloads of virtual tours of properties for sale. Deals are being struck between Apple and the ‘big players’ with the usual suspects (Disney, ABC, ESPN) in on the act providing ‘premium quality content including music videos, TV shows on the iTunes store.  These businesses see the iPod user as consumer rather than a creator or a producer.

Personally having noted, some of the drivel masquerading as entertainment, on TV,(Celebrity BB to name but one) has ensured that no ‘premium’ content has reached its hard drive to date.

But I do have video clips downloaded from DTV,built video assemblages using BBC- Creative Archive and Prelinger stuff, collected student course work done in iMovie for review.  Learning materials include Photoshop tutorials, educational presentations (PowerPoint and Keynote) converted to movies, news footage, animations, adverts and ephemera and of course some obligatory holiday memories. All can easily be shown on a projection system or a TV.

Although individually these diverse assets are not spectacular, the sum of the parts is greater than the whole and the technology enables a personalised harvesting and remixing of media on a scale, previously unknown.

Having shown it to students, teachers, friends and colleagues and let them play, the reaction has always been genuine interest and excitement as they came up with suggestions how they would use one.  More on this in a later posting…

Every now and then

Every now and then and application or technology comes along that changes the digital landscape.
Blogs and podcasting being the obvious examples. Internet TV seems to be following a similar path and one application that may give it a kick-start is DTV. At the moment this is Mac only but a Windows version seems to be on the cards.

DTV gives you to access hundred of free TV channels all featuring unique free content which is tagged (much of it with Creative Commons licenses) and includes categories such as education, animations, documentary, and of course lots of cool off the wall stuff.

When you find a channel you like you can subscribe to it, and browse the content on offer choosing to download those you like the look of. Channel Menu Then click on the download arrow and the TV assets are saved in various formats including MP4 and Mov within your Movies folder and added to the My Collection pane of the DTV interface.

Of course the real potential will be setting up your own channel and broadcasts. If you have some web space then install the free Broadcast Machine software that will let you easily Publish internet TV channels (RSS feeds), describe and tag your videos in both private and public channels.

If Internet TV starts to make an impact then of course the mainstream commercial interests will start to become involved just as they have done with podcasts etc., but that's for another posting.