Thursday, January 22, 2015

Our latest library newsletter

What a great finish to the first semester!  Our library has been busy, busy, busy helping students innovate, create, explore, and learn!  Check out our first semester newsletter below to find out more about the great things happening here.


Friday, January 16, 2015

Green Screen Art Talk Videos

During the past few weeks, I have recruited student volunteers to practice with our new green screen.  Students have been creatively generating ideas for how they would use this in their classrooms while getting time to practice with it on their own.  Yesterday it was time to have 7th grade art students create their own videos talking about their sturgeon projects.  These projects will be on display at Mosquito Hill Nature Center during New London's sturgeon run in spring.  Attached to each student created sturgeon will be a QR code, linking Mosquito Hill visitors to each student artist's video description of what inspired his or her art.  I thought that using the green screen to create the student videos would be a perfect fit.

Using Do Ink's Green Screen app for iPad, students added a picture of their sturgeons and recorded a video of themselves discussing their artistic inspirations.  Videos were then uploaded to YouTube, and QR codes were created using the website QRstuff.com.  Since the green screen and the app are new to us, I asked just a few student volunteers to try it out this time.  Here are a few of their samples.



Next quarter our plan is to have all students record in front of the green screen.  We are also thinking about having students include their original drawings in the background and explain more about their artistic process.  In addition, these videos can be further enhanced and edited by smashing the green screen app with other apps such as iMovie.  There are so many possibilities!  The best part was how excited our student volunteers were to create these simple videos.  We hope the community enjoys learning more about our 7th grade artists.