Learning Curve

It took 2 days to get this DVD to embeddable code. Here it is, the long-awaited 9-11 presentation. For all of us who remember, this video brings back life as it was and life as we live it in a post 9-11 world. Broadcasting Terror calls into question “what if” there was no news–what would the impact of 9-11 been? Created by Brandon Lansing, William Kennington, Shannon Safi, Sarah Gracely, Matt Eherts, and Josh Gregory.

Definitely worth the re-filming to get a great final production captured forever. What if there was no news? What’s news? Watch The Nixon Era as Nadia Daher, Laudi El-Kareh, Hayley Joseph, Kelsey Molseed, and Andrew Samy uncover coverups in factual and counter-factual historical scenarios.

Long awaited, definitely worth the extra effort at re-filming. What if there was no news? What’s news? Enjoy viewing an intriguing counter/factual historical interpretations of what daily life might have been during this era with/out news. Created by Peter Cialkowski, Skye McCarty, My Phan, Fatema Rajmohamed, Hannah Rucker, and Courtney Weiss. ENJOY!

Thanks to the foresight of Frank Walsh, who taped his daughter Meagan’s IP team that opened the four presentations on May 27, 2009, we have one complete video, sight and sound, compressed, rendered, and uploaded to Mr. Walsh’s Viddler account. He did all of this within and posted it to his blog within 24 hours–talk about a very tech savvy parent (I want to hire him to film and upload next year, but I doubt I could afford his per diem). You can read about IP from a parent’s perspective, and undoubtedly enjoy An Era on Air’s presentation. Don’t miss the pictures in Walsh’s gallery.

IP
An Era on Air
1920-1933
Education
Technology
Frank Walsh
Turbo Tagger

Guest Blogger: William Kennington, junior, SHS
Cross-posted on PA DEN

Last week, on May 27, 2009, four groups at Salisbury High School in Allentown, PA presented their Integrated Project. IP is year-long endeavor for students who enroll in the courses of AP US History and Honors English 11. IP is a research-based project that incorporates a final multi-media presentation as well as a stage production that lasts for 45 minutes. We streamed our presentations using two backchannels, one focused on the stage and one on the projector screen. We had no problems streaming it, but the recorded videos were corrupt. You can still watch the two separate stream as they were the day we went live, but the downloaded video was buggy. Therefore, a compiled version of the presentation can not be made at this time, but we are working with ustream to resolve this issue. I have tried converting the presentation thus far with vixy.net, zamzar.com, ffmpeg, adobe media encoder, vlc, and other free media encoders. Ustream has been working on a way to convert their video directly through their website, but this feature is still unfinished and unavailable. Hopefully once this feature is implemented (or when we find a way to convert the video), we should be ready to release the compiled video for each of the four IP presentations. We used Discoverystreaming videos in creating our factual and counterfactual histories, so when we get this problem fixed, we can show you how factual Discoverystreaming videos can be used to make counterfactual scenariors look real.

Interesting and timely, Mogulus, which has often been a go-to choice, has changed its name and website. Mogulus, now Livestream, always supported multi-camera streaming but didn’t have have high quality resolution, but with the difficulties we have encountered, we might switch to Livestream. From their newsletter, here’s what’s new with Livestream:

Recently we changed our name from Mogulus to Livestream, and you can find us at our new home at www.livestream.com. As much as we loved our old name, it was time for a change that reflects our growth and more clearly communicates what we do. We hope you like “Livestream” as much as we do.

Along with the new brand and domain come a re-designed website, and most importantly for you, another simple way to broadcast from the Livestream website.

This new tool offers instant streaming from any page on our website. Just click the red ‘Broadcast Now’ button or go to your ‘My Account’ section.

Go live with one click from almost any webcam or camcorder, and chat or Twitter to promote your channel, all right within the application.

Of course you can still use Procaster (our downloadable desktop application) for the highest possible quality, but for instant no-fuss streaming, the new broadcaster is great.

Now that we’ve changed, what do you need to do?

In short, nothing!

Your channel pages and embedded players will continue to function just as they did before. You may want to update any links to your channel page (i.e. change from “www.mogulus.com/yourchannel” to “www.livestream.com/yourchannel”), but the old links will still work even if you don’t get around to it.

If you’re using the old logo, we’d appreciate it if you update it to the new Livestream logo. You can download it here.
» More Details

For more info on the change, below are a few links to the press release and related stories. Or, follow us on Twitter @livestreamcom.
Discoverystreaming
Ustream.tv
Livestream
IP (Integrated Project)
Education
Technology
Turbo Tagger

Nothing beats attending a performance live, but is time, space, and conflicts create issues for you, then attending virtually is a great option. For our IP presentations, my colleague, friend, fellow STAR DEN, and now Instructional Coach (next year’s dream job) and IP partner for over a decade, Jen Brinson and I decided to run a backchannel for the presentations. I had run backchannels before at conferences, presentations, and most recently in my classroom for students who were absent and for review purposes. My go-to platform of choice has always been Ustream.tv, although I hold similar accounts in other Web 2.0 offerings as well. The idea was the easy part; executing two-camera channels was an llama of a different color. So, I went to my go-to student, William Kennington, a great example of Tapscott’s Grown Up Digital Net Generation. Kennington was convinced that Ustream.tv could handle multiple channels; I knew Mogulus (now Livestream, but more about that later) could, but had my doubts about the former. Trust William; Ustream could and did handle the two-channel set up, and he also found a way to use CFF Macs to pull in the individual teams’ home laptop videos. We were glad to go with Ustream, because the streaming resolution and end-output quality when archived have always been superior.

On May 27, 2009, when this year’s IP debuted, two students, Megan Heverly and Mark Attilio ran the backchannels, starting, ending, saving, and archiving each team’s two-channel streams for posterity. They were my link to the streams, since I was, as always, mutitasking. Brinson anchored the streaming the whole day, since she had formulated her defense questions for the teams in advance, and was our connection with our guest viewers, which included her family in NC and her Canadian colleagues in her online course with Discovery Education/Wilkes University, Salisbury Middle School history classes, and Mrs. Meholic’s math classes. At one point, Brinson said we had 21 site guests. Not bad at all for IPs maiden voyage into virtual productions.

The question that Brinson and I continue to be bombarded with is when will the presentation be posted. Here’s the timetable. William is giving the teams their stage footage to mix and edit with videos/slides tomorrow. Thursday is binder due date, and that includes a mixed final video. At that point, I will compress each video, render it, and upload it. Each video takes about a half a day from start to finish for embeddable code for online posting. At that point we will post to our blogs: Changing Connections, RJ Stangherlin SHS, Learning Curve, PA DEN, Education, Technology, and Fun blogs. I am guessing that a week from this Thursday you can start checking our blogs. If you are part of our social networks (Brinson’s and mine overlap to a point), you can follow our tweets. We’ll keep you posted for when the students amazing presentations can be virtually yours.
IP
Multimedia
Stage Presentation
Education
Technology
Integrated Project
Turbo Tagger

If a picture’s worth a thousand words, imagine the economy of a video.

The Towel Walk

Hawaiian Day: Towel Walk from RJ Stangherlin on Vimeo.

Spirit Awards

Hawaiian Day Spirit Awards from RJ Stangherlin on Vimeo.

Every once in a while a project design and a great mix of students take a concept and put their indelible signature on it. In the 12 or 13 years that Brinson and I have been working on IP, we’ve seen those years when teams forever changed the way all of us work. Looking back from then to now, I’d say three different years, separated by a chunk of time in between, had students that took IP to the “next level.” On Facebook tonight, before I set out to write this blog, I was talking with the design engineer, Michael Wohlberg, whose team’s vision forever changed the process. And then there was this year.

In many respects, it was a amazing year with high energy but without high drama, and that’s a good thing. We went with a modified “What If” concept, and the students really delivered. What really impressed me about this year was the collaborative effort, the coordination among teams, the creativity, and the kindness of this year’s IPers. Which is not to take anything away from other years, other groups. There was just, for me, something special, almost undefinable working to make this year memorable. So, there you have it. My answer to the question I keep being asked, in and out of school: how were they? Simply great!

A year’s work, a team’s countless hours, a group’s research, monumental collaboration, an individual’s presentations on film footage and live on stage. It’s showtime for 23 students, and no matter how you spell it, IP is a multimedia educational in-house field trip worth taking. Join us on Wednesday, May 27, 2009 at Salisbury High School’s auditorium, or if you cannot attend in person, you can participate virtually in real time by joining our backchannels on Ustream.tv. You can attend by clicking this link, and you can participate in a chat format as well.

If you are new to the Integrated Project, this year’s venue, which explores factual and counterfactual history, asks and answers this essential question: What if there was no news? What’s news? So, why not join us as students rewrite the history of an era as it was, and as it might have been. All times are ET.

8:51-9:51 An Era on Air: 1920-1933–Brandon Aversano, Chloe Frick, Olga Karounos, Erin Lobach, Dennis Peterson, Meagan Walsh

9:55-11:00 Uncovering Coverups–Nadia Daher, Hayley Joseph, Laudi El-Kareh, Kelsey Molseed, Andrew Samy

12:23-1:30 Generation X–Peter Cialkowski, Skye McCarty, My Phan, Fatema Rajmohammed, Hannah Rucker, Courtney Weiss
1:34-2:40
9-11: Broadcasting Terror–Matt Eherts, Sarah Gracely, Joshua Gregory, William Kennington III, Brandon Lansing, Shannon Safi.

So many people who often remain invisible help make IP a success. Parents are the largest support group; I often wish I could be that proverbial fly on the wall and see what a parent sees, or even a student. The “clickers” can make or break a presentation; if their timing is off, or if the people on stage don’t hit their “tag line,” even lighting is off. And that’s my segue for today’s post. Getting lights right involves more that which series of levers to raise and lower, or when to use the spots; it requires setting the lights so they are where they are needed. Our lighting issues are driven by the technology in our presentations–we need light on actors and off of the big screen. Today, when they had a long list of to-do things when school was closed, our custodians rigged our lights. We cannot thank them enough; now our audience will not have to cope with ambient light on the right and left side of the big screen.

Equally important is running lights and sound. Doing these jobs has been a Yorgey family tradition at SHS, and this year is no exception, except that Jeff, as a graduating senior, just made our job harder next year because he’s the last of his siblings. Since we are toggling between video and stage presentation venues, lights are more complicated than past years, all 12 of them. So, a special thanks to the men on lights, and to Tom Smith, who hates having his images captured, who keep the behind-the-scene problems from becoming crises. Bravo for a job well done, and for sending me into a long holiday weekend stress free! Amen.