Life-Long-Learners

For my January, 2013 “Teacher Feature”, I thought that I’d remix a famous Vince Lombardi quote with this very appropriate Flickr image from Jeffrey Cuvilier which he shared with a Creative Commons license.

Teacher Feature #25 – Vince Lombardi – January, 2013

I encourage educators to demonstrate the hard work that goes into teaching. Students and staff need to realize how much extra time is invested as innovative risk-takers explore how technology can engage students and improve learning. Furthermore, it is important that students understand that their teachers do not “always have the right answers” and that educators are on their own learning journey. If youngsters see teachers hard-at-work, in a more transparent learning model, it is hoped that, in time, these same students will develop their own work ethic and be successful.

Take care & keep smiling

Larger Image: Brian Metcalfe’s Teacher Feature “photostream”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/life-long-learners/

I’m having fun learning how to create animated GIFs with frames extracted from digital video. In fact, with practice, and the support and feedback of my DS106 learning community, I think I am getting better!

I created this animated GIF and then chose my title. The message combination resonates with me on two levels: the primary one which I’ll address now and the more subtle, subliminal suggestion (which I hope you can figure out), I’ll share at the end of this post.

DS106 Task Tips
This post’s title warning “You Snooze – You Lose!”, with its animated GIF, is a reminder to both DS106 participants (and me) to begin work early Monday morning on the current week’s “Daily Creates” and/or assignments. Those who wait until Sunday to complete the majority of projects assigned during that week will be not only frustrated but will miss out on many positive support and learning opportunities.

As the Digital Storytelling DS106 course moves into more participant-selected assignments and projects, I’d recommend the following:

1. Plan out your upcoming week’s work early.
2. Select your first weekly assignment carefully. Pick one that you feel you can accomplish in the least amount of time and, if necessary, with little time spent learning new applications or techniques. Once you have completed your first weekly assignment, you will be motivated and inspired to continue with others.
3. In your blog posts, document your learning journey. Where possible, provide hyperlinks to tips and resources that showcase how you “tweaked” or made the assignment “your own”. Indicate, what you might do differently if you were to attempt this assignment again.
4. Choose your “Daily Creates” with care. As an example, if you are instructed, as a minimum, to “do three ‘Daily Creates’ this week”, do not wait until Friday, Saturday and Sunday to tackle this task. Also, if you are weak using Photoshop (as I am), I might be tempted to bypass the Wednesday challenge asking me to “Design a poster of an action movie starring Julia Child” because I know it will require me to spend more than 20 minutes. However, don’t skip a “Daily Create” hoping that the next one will be easier. In reality, the “Daily Creates” are designed to stimulate your creativity and engage you in your learning adventure. No one appreciates this endeavour better than Norm Wright (from the Spring 2012 DS106 course) who shares more than a year’s worth of each days’ creativity in “All My Daily Creates”.
5. Leave some “percolation time”. In order to be innovative in completing or designing your own assignments, you will need “think time” to explore all aspects of the endeavour before jumping into the task at hand.
6. Investigate the DS106 Handbook for ideas and tips to help you progress, with fewer hassles. The associated links have been compiled from previous DS106 courses and represent the best resources.
7. Invoke Google Reader’s RSS feeds in order to keep up-to-date with blog posts and resources shared by the DS106 learning community.
8. Read other student’s blog posts and provide positive, constructive comments.
9. Connect with other DS106 students (face-to-face or online) so that you have an idea of whom you might like to work with should a collaborative project be assigned.
10. Sign up for Twitter so that you can monitor and reply to DS106-related tweets, which can be filtered, using the hashtags like #ds106, #dailycreate or specific iindividuals like #cogdog. I personally like to use TweetDeck, to organize Twitter feeds, as I can setup individual columns for “All Friends”; “Mentions”; “Search: #ds106″; “Search: #dailycreate”; “Favorites”; etc.
11. Take time to send 140 character tweets (with the #ds106 and/or #dailycreate hashtags) to share your accomplishments. You will be surprised how many of your DS106 colleagues will check out your creativity and provide you with motivational comments.
12. Faithfully read CogDog’s Blog posts and Twitter feeds (@cogdog) so that you are kept up-to-date on the many facets of the DS106 course.
13. Always be generous when scheduling each project’s time estimate. Remember that when using technology, Murphy’s Law states that “Anything that can go wrong will go wrong.” If you have completed a DS106 assignment in less time than you previously estimated, then you are “laughing”
14. If you leave projects to the weekend you will miss out on the valuable aspect of reading colleagues’ blog posts and commenting. This important step helps build a productive and caring learning community.

Creating My Animated GIF
Without repeating myself, I worked through the basic tasks that I have already documented in my post entitled “The eyes are the windows into the soul. In fact, as someone who does not easily internalize processes, I find that if I document the steps in my learning journey, I can go back to that post whenever I need to repeat the process. In summary, I used these steps:

1. I began, by selecting the YouTube movie trailer “The Mask of Zorro – Trailer”
2. Since I am using an older Windows computer running the XP operating system, I used the PWN YouTube bookmarklet process for downloading the trailer and saved it as a High Quality MP4 file. 
3. Next I used MPEG Streamclip to extract only the clip showing Zorro’s “sword play” near the start of the trailer. I was careful determining the “In ” and “Out” points along the timeline by using my arrow keys to move one frame at a time. Ideally, I wanted the final sword slash to end at a position near where the initial slash began. Such positioning would promote a cleaner, cyclic animated GIF. Unfortunately, I was unable to find a video footage where Zorro uses his rapier in repeated, distinctive “Z” slashing moves, so I did the best that I could in selecting the start and end points of this trimmed video clip.
4. I extracted 16 frames that I imported into GIMP as separate layers. I then followed the detailed steps in the DS106 Handbook link “Creating Animated GIFs with (free) Open Source Software”.

I admit that I do not understand the complexities of GIMP and follow the instructions blindly. However,  having a link to these important instructional documents, always helps me in the future. I know that if I enter “animated GIF” (without quotes) into my right-hand “Search L-L-L Blog” field on my blog, I will find posts explaining how to create animated GIFs. I know that if I scan each post for hyperlinks, I’ll find valuable resources to help me create another animated GIF.

I’ll always like to ask myself … “If you were to repeat this assignment/project, what would you do differently?”. For this activity, I’d like to follow up on Alan Levine’s suggestion to try and reduce the size of animated GIFs. To do so, I would like to see if I could delete some of the 16 frames that I extracted without diminishing the visual appeal of the sword play.

Did you find the subliminal message?
At the start of this post, I suggested that the title “You Snooze – You Lose!” and Zorro’s distinctive, three stroke rapier cut “Z mark”, shared a subtle, subliminal message. One might suggest that the animated GIF, that I created, produces a repetitive pattern of “Z Z Z Z …”. In the English language, the symbol of repeated Zs often means that an individual is snoozing or snoring. Thus Zorro, with his distinctive sword-play, is subtly reinforcing the title message that snoozing or snoring during the DS106 term not only causes the individual to lose out, but perhaps equally important, the DS106 learning and support community loses an important contributing component … You!

Take care & keep smiling

The Educational Technology and Media #ETMOOC, that I recently joined, suggested that participants introduce themselves in a unique manner. Following in the creative steps of Jess McCulloch, I decided to try my hand at writing and narrating a poem to help others better understand my learning journey.

Once my poem was created, I thought that I would read it and share it as an audio file through SoundCloud. Readers should be able to hear my narration by clicking on the “Play” button below. Should the orange “Play” symbol not display, readers may have to click on the hyperlink to transfer and play my narration from the SoundCloud web site. I have also included the text of my poem so that one may more easily follow along.

[https://soundcloud.com/brian-metcalfe/brian-metcalfe-life-long]

Brian Metcalfe: A Life-Long-Learner

Here’s an audio introduction
to a Metcalfe, named Brian
who keeps on learning each day,
without really tryin’.

My educational career
spanned 40 great years!
I shared resources and ideas
with any, and all my peers.

I taught grades 7-12 students
Computer Science & Math,
and for my last 25 years
took on a new, career path.

Towards Educational Technology
in a consultant’s new role,
To help K-12 teachers
use technology was my goal.

I created a monthly newsletter
which was called “Bits and Bytes”.
For 23 years I shared resources
and worked on it many long nights!

Some say I’m somewhat anal
with a perfectionistic passion.
I believe in … a “job well done!”.
I trust it’s still “in fashion”.

I really value family and friends
and am truly lucky as well,
that my “best friend” is my wife
with a family … that is swell!

My teacher-wife & I retired together
and are no longer wage earners.
So I created an educational blog
which is called “Life-Long-Learners”.

I’m now enrolled in a MOOC -
a massive, open, online course;
where one gets to choose assignments
where engagement is the force!

When you start to chart your own path
MOCCs make learning fun!
Supported by a creative community,
Your learning’s never done!

So I ask … what do you value?
What can you share
with educators world-wide
to show that you care?

So I’m passionate about sharing
and learning for me is beguiling.
So I’ll sign off, as always, with
Take care & keep smiling

***

Credit: The “Learning is about the journey …” image was created by Krissy Venosdale and is available from her {Free} Posters web site.

An old adage states that “a picture is worth 1000 words”. Based on this premise, what teacher would not want access to an innovative resource of educational posters worth 207,000 words?

Recently, I serendipitously chanced upon Krissy Venosdale’s amazing resource of free, motivational posters. To help my readers appreciate her talents, I have included a sample of nine of Krissy’s 207 posters. Readers are encouraged to click on each thumbnail to view a larger version of the following posters:

Teacher’s wishing to peruse Krissy’s wealth of posters, should check out her “Free on Flickr!” Classroom Posters site. Here she advises readers of an efficient way to browse through her collection and offers how to download free posters in a variety of sizes for school use. I recommend readers also view Krissy’s “{Free}Posters” post to gain some important tips on the “crop ratio” when printing poster enlargements. Furthermore, I’d strongly recommend that you take poster images, on a memory thumb-drive/stick, to Costco, Staples, or your local camera shops printing and/or enlargement. Realize that many of the posters have a solid black or coloured background. If you choose to print such posters on a school printer, be prepared to spend your year’s allotment for toner or colour cartridge(s) in one poster “run”. Furthermore, you don’t want your administer referring to you as the school’s “poster boy/girl”

Krissy has not placed any stipulations on the free download of her posters or images that she has created and shared through her blog. However, as a professionals, I think educators who download images created by Krissy should consider adapting the Freemium model. Wikipedia defines Freemium as:

Freemium is a business model by which a product or service (typically a digital offering such as software, media, games or web services) is provided free of charge, but a premium is charged for advanced features, functionality, or virtual goods. The word “freemium” is a portmanteau combining the two aspects of the business model: “free” and “premium”.

Certainly Krissy’s poster downloads are “free” (with no strings attached). However, I’d like to suggest that if we download a poster, we consider that our “premium” obligation is to send her a tweet to:[(at)ktvee] or email to: [Krissy(dot)Venosdale(at)gmail.com]
thanking her for creating and sharing these posters. To me this is a very small, optional “fee” to gain such a wealth of educational posters. However, as a recipient of comments to various blog posts, I know how motivating it can be to know that you have helped out a fellow teacher. I  feel confident that Krissy would appreciate receiving such feedback as to how her poster(s) will be used in your school or classroom.

In closing, I want to thank Krissy on behalf of my readers for her inspirational poster resources. When I found Krissy’s descriptive “venspired” image (shown above) and read her mission statement, I was so impressed with her passion for teaching and learning. Not only does this lady have engaged students; this lady has class!

Thanks Krissy for caring and sharing.

Take care & keep smiling

What does one do when time is a critical factor and one is challenged to accomplish two different tasks in two different environments? Well … some might get uptight and vent their frustration, by swearing, using profane, “four-letter words”.

In my case, I chose to focus on common elements that satisfy the needs for both entities. Let me explain. I’m currently enrolled in two different massive, open online courses or MOOCs. This year, I am returning to Digital Storytelling – DS106 and thanks to information shared in this learning community, I signed up for Educational Technology & Media. Both of these MOOCs have certain unique expectations.

For example, in today’s  DS106 “The Daily Create” (#374) assignment, I was asked to “Take a picture of your favorite thing in the world to do, however simple or complex.” At the same time, ETMOOC facilitators are asking participants to “Tell us a little bit about yourself – perhaps, where you’re from, what you do, or what you want to be when you grow up – and let us know what you’d like to gain from #etmooc?”

My challenge is to try to meet both of these tasks without uttering any “four-letter words”. Perhaps one might assume that since I have twice the challenges, from the demands of two different MOOCs, my favourite “four-letter words” should increase or double in character length. That is indeed true. In fact, my favourite pastimes can be best described by the “eight-letter word “learning” followed by its slightly shorter, but equally important task of “sharing”. I trust that these two words are demonstrated in the following picture where I glean information from books, magazines and the Internet and share my findings in my educational blog called “Life-Long-Learners”.

[DS106 - TDC #374: My favourite pastime - Learning & Sharing]

Although I am a retired K-12 educator, I’m still passionate about learning. About a year ago, a good friend and innovative educator, Darren Kuropatwa, suggested that I should sign up for the DS106 MOOC. He felt that the innovative learning style, where one can choose his/her own assignments, would challenge and engage me. Darren felt that I would use my blog posts to reflect on what, and how, I learned and share my journey with others. Furthermore, he knew that I would make connections with other like-minded participants and, through mutually supportive blog comments and tweets, extend my Personal Learning Network (PLN).

When I returned to DS106 this year, Ben Rimes (a talented Michigan educator whom I have never met face-to-face) shared in a blog post that he was about to sign up for #ETMOOC. So when another learning opportunity presented itself, be it in a somewhat serendipitous manner, I signed up.

As a former Mathematics/Computer Science teacher, I was always sharing resources with colleagues throughout our school division and our province. When I became an Education Technology Consultant for the Winnipeg School Division, I decided that the best way to help K-12 teachers and their students harness the power of technology was through a monthly educational newsletter. For 23 years I wrote and edited “Bits and Bytes” whose focus was “to provide educators with tips and techniques to help them integrate technology to enhance learning in K-12 classrooms”.

I believe that my philosophy about sharing and the importance of belonging to a PLN can best be summarized in my previous post, and video, entitled “My PLN: A Teacher’s Treasure”.

One of my favourite quotes, that I re-mixed in my first “Teacher Feature” is by Margaret Fuller, who stated “If you have knowledge, let others light their candles in it.” I think that as professional educators, we should strive to share our knowledge with others. Today, the Internet makes it so much easier.

In closing, I’ll end with the following two, “four-letter words”:

Take care

Larger Images are available on Brian Metcalfe’s Flickr photostream at:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/life-long-learners/

The Educational Technology and Media MOOC has invited all participants to introduce themselves by stating:

We would like you to introduce yourself to #etmooc. Declaring your identity, through letting us know a bit about who you are, will help participants better relate to and connect with you.

To try and be more economical with my usual long-winded writing style, I have included an image since we all know that “a picture is worth 1000 words”.

As a retired K-12 Educational Technology Consultant and teacher, I consider myself to be a life-long-learner. My gravatar (Globally Recognized Avatar) creation illustrates the three stages in our human development – child, adolescent, and adult. More importantly, the logo portrays that through communicating, collaborating, and “putting our heads together”, each individual can benefit from the ideas that others share.

I believe that sharing educational ideas and resources is just like tossing a pebble into a quiet pond. We have no idea how far the ripples will travel and we have no idea how other educators, and more importantly, how other students will benefit.

The motto “Ancora Imparo!” was uttered by Michelangelo at the age of 87 and translates to “Still, I am learning” or I am still learning”. Imagine such a profound statement being admitted by this artistic genius who recognized that, even in his latter years, there was still much more to learn. As such, “Ancora Imparo!” seemed to be a very fitting motto for my blog and a mantra for all “Life-Long-Learners”.

The vast majority of the participants in the #etmooc learning environment will use gravatar images that are pictures of themselves. However, I have been actively engaged in using and teaching about the Internet since its first introduction to K-12 students and staff. As educators, we were always concerned with protecting the identity of students. We were diligent in preventing student faces, together with corresponding names, from appearing on our web pages to be viewed by a global audience. As such, I felt it was important, at that time, to model discretion and chose a graphic image to represent my identity. Furthermore, if, the extremely knowledgeable educational blogger, Alan Levine can use a “dog” as his gravatar, I feel quite content to utilize my “putting our heads together” image to represent me in the social networking and MOOC environment.

Take care & keep smiling

I believe in serendipitous learning. For those educators who are connected online, or consider themselves to be part of a professional learning network or  PLN, such learning opportunities present themselves with regular frequency. Readers who have followed my blog for the past year know how excited I was when Darren Kuropatwa sent me an email suggesting that I might like to participate in a free, “massive open online course” or MOCC called Digital Storytelling – DS106. Those wishing to learn more about my amazing adventure, need only click on the DS106 category link on the right-side menu to filter out more than three dozen posts that share my excitement as I became engaged in this free, online learning environment.

I was so excited about the learning and networking opportunities that were afforded me through my initial DS106 exposure last Spring, that I again enrolled in DS106 this January. This action exposed me to Ben Rimes and his informative blog called “The Tech Savvy Educator” where he announced in early January that he had “also signed up for #ETMOOC”. I was intrigued and searched out this Educational Technology & Media MOOC. Like DS106, participants choose their own learning goals, engage in dialogue with other educators, share ideas and resources, and reflect through their individual blogs posts. All tweets with the hashtag #ETMOOC and blog posts with the tag or category ETMOOC will be aggregated centrally thanks to the dedication and hard work of Alan Levine (aka cogdog) and his team. Needless to say, I was intrigued, so I signed up for ETMOOC and officially start this unique learning adventure tomorrow with over 1200 participants representing 67 countries around the world. Future blog posts relating to this unique endeavour will be classified and listed under the newly created ETMOOC category found in the right-hand menu.

My second serendipitous learning opportunity occurred last night while I was scanning some of the aggregated tweets from ETMOOC participants. One individual (who I unfortunately cannot remember, so as to give credit) commented about the creativity of the educational posters created by Krissy Venosdale. As luck would have it, I searched through Krissy’s posters and thought that the image that I included above represented well my love of learning. Thanks Krissy for caring and sharing.

Take care & keep smiling

Credits:
-   Flickr – Creative Commons image “Learning”
by Krissy Venosdale – http://www.flickr.com/photos/venosdale/7051065819/

You might ask, like my wife, why am I enrolling in the DS106 course again. Didn’t I get my “fill” of on-line learning a year ago? The simple answer is that there are gaps in my learning that I want to try fill. I have found that through the on-going support, comments, and instructional blog posts of the DS106 community, I can take ownership for my own learning and professional development.

In the previous post, I alluded to the fact that GIF animation had become so much more sophisticated over the past dozen years. Certainly, I was actively engaged in the Spring 2012 DS106 course and I was extremely pleased at the skills and knowledge I had gained. However, as I continued to read other DS106-related blog posts, during the remainder of 2012, I realized that my GIF animation was quite limiTed.

So now that I have “dotted my “T”s … we’ll now cross our “I”s”

[Animated GIF reflecting "The eyes are the windows into the soul"]

The Back Story
As an educator, I am so grateful to the DS106 individuals, who not only share their assignments, but also take the time to provide insights and instructions into their creative process. Sometimes when we attend Educational Technology conferences or professional development sessions, we are exposed to perfect, polished activities or projects. However, on returning to our classrooms, we may become discouraged when we attempt to replicate the process ourselves. Some of the reasons for this failure might include lacking the necessary hardware, software, or more importantly, the skills that the sharing educator took for granted. I welcome the DS106 model in which participants are encouraged to share their insights into their creative process.

To illustrate the importance of this “Back Story” process, I urge educational readers to view Dean Shareski’s K-12 Online Conference keynote video entitled “Sharing: The Moral Imperative”. Here, Dean suggests that “the ability to teach and share beyond our classrooms is moving from ‘nice to do’ to ‘necessary to do’”. Although this keynote was extremely powerful and the message is still just as important today as it was in the Fall of 2010, it was Dean’s “Back Story” that I appreciated. Later in the conference Dean shared a remarkable, instructional “behind the scenes” video to help educators better understand why and how his original “Sharing” video was created. Here, I learned a number of tips including how Dean set up his scrolling iPad (above the video camera) to function as his teleprompter.

In the past, the vast majority of individuals were content to be “consumers” of information from sources such as Internet web sites. Only a few were “producers” who created animated GIFs and learned to craft web pages using HyperText Markup Language (HTML). However, there has been a dramatic shift!. Today, the vast majority of students, particularly those in the DS106 community, learn best as “producers of knowledge”, be it their own blog or crafty, video-based, animated GIFs. In order to encourage such production, I recommend that one strive to include insight into how each assignment was crafted through a “back story” process. Through providing such “teachable moments” your learning will improve and perhaps, more importantly, you will provide a learning legacy for others.

My “Animated” Learning Journey
My motivation to begin was the realization that many of the creative “GIF masters” (that I referenced in the previous post) were starting with video rather than a static image to create their animated GIFs. As I was unfamiliar with the process for capturing video, I searched the DS106 website for  information on “animated GIFs”. I was delighted to find a DS106 wiki, which was a veritable gold mine of tutorials. The one that I explored was:

•  Creating Animated GIFs with MPEG Streamclip and GIMP

Based on this information, I jumped in “with both feet” and started searching YouTube for possible videos. I selected a video entitled “Judyism: Judge Judy At Her Best”. I thought that the expression in Judy’s eyes might not only help me learn more about animating from a video clip but might also qualify my work for the “GIF Me Again About My Eyes” assignment worth “two points”.

My next hurdle involved finding a reliable mechanism for downloading YouTube videos. I still use an older Windows computer running the XP operating system so my choices of free downloading options may be somewhat limited. I investigated the Fastest YouTube Downloader, Freemake Video Downloader (for Windows) and the Pwn YouTube process.  Gizmo’s Freeware  posted “Finally a Free, Flexible Youtube Download That Works” which recommended Freemake Video Downloader. I had previously installed this software during last year’s DS106 class. However, during a more thorough investigation this year, I became rather concerned when it was revealed that Freemake Video Downloader used the “Open Candy” system during installation. I admit that when I install software, I always read each page and opt-out of any additions of other products or new toolbars. I pay a yearly license fee to run commercial, up-to-date virus protection and regularly run Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware to remove any potential unwanted threats. So with this latest information, I utilized the Pwn YouTube process, which appeared to be the least invasive approach, to downloading video from YouTube.

Once I had captured the “Judge Judy” video, I downloaded MPEG Streamclip to trim the frames that displayed the eye movement. I found by using the arrow keys on my keyboard, I could advance along the timeline and select video frame-by-frame. These frames were then exported into the GIMP image manipulation program which I had downloaded and installed.

I admit that I do not know very much about making animated GIFs from video. However, I found that by viewing Michael Branson Smith’s excellent “Animated GIF” video and following the detailed steps in the DS106 wiki tutorial, I was able to produce my first animated GIF from video.

The Last Important Question
My wife, who was also a teacher, was very involved in her school divisions “Science Fair”. When judging student projects, one of her most important questions near the end of her interview with students was “If you were to do this over again, what would you do differently?” Such a question is one that I think we, as professionals, should continually ask ourselves.

In my case, I know that there are three things that I would like to attempt:

1. Explore the process for adding an additional “reverse string” of selected video frames to the exported images  to make a smoother, cyclic animated GIF. Michael Branson Smith explained this process do well in his video “GIFFing Video Clips with Photoshop”  (starting at approximately the 5:00 minute mark). However, I’m not sure that my copy of “Photoshop Elements 6″ has all the necessary features.
2. Explore different YouTube download processes and conversion to different formats. I would like to find the best combination to not capture quality video clips but also display the resulting animated GIF in the best format in my blog.
3. Most importantly, I’d recommend that DS106-ers use as their primary resource “The DS106 Handbook”. I believe the renovations to the DS106 web site have been spectacular. The format is so much more inviting and is organized in an efficient manner with all the tools you need identified in the handbook. Therefore, don’t search for “Ds106 animated GIFs” like I did, which brought up the older wiki-based information; rather check out the ever-evolving and updated links in the handbook such as:

• Creating Animated GIFs the Modern Way
• Creating Animated GIFs with (free) Open Source Software
• Downloading YouTube Videos

I admit that this post is rather lengthy but I hope that by modelling the “Back Story” process, I can encourage others to share their tips and tricks along their learning journey.

Take care & keep smiling

Creating animated GIFs can be an engaging educational exercise. Students can be challenged to use a computer to draw a series of related, progressive images that, when blended together, create animation.

Background
Twenty-five years ago the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) was created to display images using less than 256 colours. Long before applications such as Flash, iMovie, Photo Story 3, Voki, YouTube or Xtranormal were developed, the only way moving images could be displayed on a web page was through the creation of an animated GIF.

 
[An animated GIF welcoming readers to the New Year]

I admit that I thought I was fairly familiar with the way in which animated GIFs were created. In fact, in October 2000, I wrote a rather detailed article about the process entitled “Get Animated … with Ulead’s GIF Animator Lite Edition”. Students were eager to use Microsoft Paint to create a series of progressive images that were assembled into an animated GIF.

I still remember a major time-saving tip that Don Bellamy, a talented graphic artist, shared with me. The gist of his recommendation was:

To save time when creating animated GIFs, always start with the finished slide/image and work backwards. You can erase components while creating new slides in reverse, faster than you can draw new slide additions working in the forward manner.

The animated growing flower GIF, at right, is composed of five different slides or images. Without Don’s influence, I would have begun the animation process by creating the first slide/image of the pot. Next I would have added the sprouting plant component and saved it as the second slide or image. Successive slides would have included leaves growing off the stem in both directions culminating with the flower bloom as the fifth and last image. However, I found it to be much easier and faster to start with the finished image of the blossoming flower which was saved as slide 5. Then I worked backwards erasing, in turn, the flower (slide 4); left leaf (slide 3); right leaf (slide 2); sprout (slide 1) leaving only the flower pot. When these slides were reassembled (in the forward, numerical progression) using the “GIF Animator” Windows freeware, the result was the animated rose that you see displayed.

Likewise the final slide, in the above New Year’s welcoming animated message, was created with the complete message. The “working backward”  procedure used was to:

• Complete the final message – saved as “ani-NewYears-40.jpg” (with its arbitrarily high-numbered file name)
• Erase final exclamation mark – save resulting image as “ani-NewYears-39.jpg”
• Erase “adventure” – save resulting image as “ani-NewYears-38.jpg”
• Continue the process, erasing one word at a time, while saving the resulting image with its next lower file number
• Erase the large red “0″, as the second last image, and save the image as “ani-NewYears-20.jpg”
• Erase the large red “2″ and save the resulting blank yellow rectangle (with the lowest slide/image number as “ani-NewYears-19.jpg”

The resulting 20 “ani-NewYears-##” images were imported into the GIF Animator software, and like all animated GIF creation software, were imported in ascending order of numerical slide/images from lowest file number (with the least detailed display) to the highest file number which displays the final, complete illustration. One can modify the exposure time of each slide/image in the animation software and when the final GIF is assembled, it can be opened in any browser to view the animation effect. This was the animated GIF process of which I was familiar.

Animation in the 21st Century
Now, we fast forward about 12 years where I am re-introduced to animated GIFs in an on-line  Digital Storytelling “DS106” course. Right away, I realized that my knowledge of how to create animated GIFs had not kept up-to-date. As instructors, Jim Groom and Alan Levine, challenged us by not only creating animated GIFs from images but also by creating animated images from movies, television, and home videos. Not to be outdone, other DS106 instructors and students went wild demonstrating their “animated” creativity. In fact, as I explored the animated GIFs from DS106 this past Summer and Fall terms, I began to feel the excitement to signup for another DS106 session which officially starts January 14, 2013. In order that you can experience the creativity and positive learning environment fostered through DS106, I encourage you to explore the links, blog posts, and comments shared by the following amazing individuals:

• Spreadsheet Invasion: Animating Pong – Jim Groom
• Photo it Like the Peanut Butter – Alan Levine
• Animated Comic Book Cover – I’m Free At Last – Jim Groom
• It’s a great day for sporting GIFs – Hockey – Rowan Peter
• Salivating Over Animated GIFs – Michael Branson Smith
• Return of the Animated GIF Day! – Ben Rimes
• DS106 GIFFEST – Alan Levine
• Multi Frame GIF Story: Beaker’s Hair – Andrew Forgrave
• Merry GIFmas to All! – Ben Rimes
• Keep Clicking Those Ruby GIF Slippers – Alan Levine

However, the best part about the creativity demonstrated by these “GIF masters” is that, as part of the DS106 learning community, they shared the processes they went through to accomplish their animation. I think that as educators we need to ask our students to reflect and share the processes/hangups that they encounter when learning. It can definitely be a window into their comprehension and, better yet, provide us with important feedback into out teaching.

Take care & keep smiling

Technology empowers students. Certainly this brief sentence contains three important words. However, when creating this month’s “Teacher Feature”, I remembered “three little words” that will help reduce teacher stress while empowering students. It is recommended that teachers start responding to student questions, for which they don’t know the answer, with the three little words … “I don’t know”.

Teacher Feature #24 – Stephen Heppel – December, 2012

Undoubtedly, for some teachers, such a confession will be difficult. Especially if they have prided themselves on always knowing everything about their particular subject area(s). However, with technology invading our homes and our schools, it will be impossible, for even the most tech-minded individual, to always have the right answer. Therefore, I recommend that each teacher become more transparent and acknowledge students more frequently with “I don’t know … but if you find out, I’d love for you to share it with me”. With such feedback, the individual pupil is empowered as the traditional teacher’s and student’s roles are reversed.

In order to survive the barrage of questions posed by inquisitive Early Years students, some teachers direct their young students to “Ask three, before me.” What an amazing catch-phrase! This strategy asks that students search for answers in other ways as opposed to always relying on the teacher. Not only does it take pressure off the teacher, it also encourages students to learn new problem-solving techniques. Teachers, who are hoping to infuse technology into their classrooms, cannot know all the myriad of details about each software application. Neither can they know how to accomplish all tasks on each particular gadget in a Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) classroom environment. Rather, empower the students to collaborate and problem solve as a community of learners. Such action will benefit them when they are employed in the real world.

I was very lucky to be exposed to such a “real world” learning experience when I enrolled in the popular “Digital Storytelling” course offered by the University of Mary Washington in Fredericksburg, Virginia. This massive, open, online course (or MOOC), affectionately known as “DS106” (www.ds106.us), ran for 15 weeks and exposed me to the realities of learning in the 21st century. No, there were no recommended textbooks nor required software applications. Neither were there specific handouts on how to create GIFs or a special effects using Photoshop or Gimp. Although the instructors worked hard, they did not take ownership for creating up-to-date instructions on how to accomplish a task using different versions of Photoshop. Rather students were empowered to search Google for “Photoshop tutorials” or communicate with others taking the course to learn how certain tasks were best accomplished. Furthermore, students were encouraged to share their creative assignments providing “behind the scenes” insights into how their projects were accomplished. Following the “ABCs” of DS106, students were encouraged to “Always Be Creating” and “Always Be Commenting” on other students’ work so that a true sharing and learning community could be fostered.

• Can you move towards harnessing technology in your classroom?
• How can you become less of a gatekeeper of knowledge and more of a facilitator of learning?
• Are you willing to be more honest with students by saying “I don’t know”?
• Would you be willing to explore one new educational application each month?
• Could you connect with other educators to form a Personal Learning Network?
• Will you encourage students to explore creative ways that technology can empower them?

As the year 2012 comes to an end, I want to wish all my readers and friends a warm Seasons Greetings and finish this post with three little words … “Happy New Year”.

Take care & keep smiling

Larger Image: Brian Metcalfe’s Teacher Feature “photostream”
http://www.flickr.com/photos/life-long-learners/