iMotionHD: Great iPad app for creating stop motion video

Posted on May 20, 2013 by

by Judy Robinson

One of the several apps I shared with the mentors at the JEA/NSPA convention in San Francisco this past spring was iMotionHD.  It’s a great app and worth reviewing again or sharing with those of you who weren’t able to attend in San Francisco.

Creating stop-motion video or time-lapse photography has its place in journalism.

For student journalists, once they have been shown how easy it is to record time-lapse video on an iPad with iMotionHD (free or $1.99 in app purchase to email the vid to yourself),  they usually have many ideas of what to record.  For example, here’s a volleyball game covered for an online newspaper.

Stop-motion video is best used to show quickly a process or event that would normally take a longer period of time.

With iMotionHD, the process is easy — almost too easy compared to what you used to have to do.  Below is a video showing the sun setting at Yosemite National Park. The video was taken with iMotionHD on my iPad and covers about 45 minutes real time.  You don’t see the sun set entirely because it was getting cold and I didn’t want to stand there another 30 minutes.

Think about the old way we used to shoot time lapse with SLR cameras.  The video below was created using a series of photos shot with a Canon Xsi on a tripod.  The camera was set up at the back of Julie’s classroom/lecture hall and I recruited a student to press the remote shutter every 10 seconds.  You can see that the camera — set for shutter priority with white balance accounting for flourescent lights — does have trouble keeping the white balance steady.  Every other shot looks green-blue.  And it took time to import the 400 odd photos (I weeded a few out) into Final Cut Express, add the audio track and export as video.  It’s approximately 10 minutes of real time compressed into less than two.

This is an interesting twist on stop-motion video and a little hard for me to watch, but you may like it.  Watch the transformation of a traveller through China.

Mentors in San Francisco entering the room for the forum where they learned (among many things) about iMotionHD.

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Posted in high school media, JEA Mentoring Program, news apps, What's happening? | Tagged , , , , , , , | 1 Comment

Mentoring Monday: JEA mentors enjoy camaraderie offered in mentor training at JEA/NSPA conventions

Posted on May 13, 2013 by
JEA mentors and members of the Mentor Committee posed for a photo outside Buca di Bippo, where they had dinner following training at the JEA/NSPA convention in San Francisco.

JEA mentors and members of the Mentor Committee posed for a photo outside Buca di Beppo, where they had dinner following training at the JEA/NSPA convention in San Francisco.

by Julie Dodd
Mentoring Committee co-chair

Julie Dodd, Kathy Schrier, Marilyn Chapman and Janice Hatfield. Photo by Judy Robinson

Julie Dodd, Kathy Schrier, Marilyn Chapman and Janice Hatfield paused in reviewing the menu for a photo. Photo by Judy Robinson

The JEA/NSPA conventions are when we provide training the new mentors and extended training for the experienced mentors. More than 25 mentors and Mentor Committee members attended the JEA/NSPA convention in San Francisco, April 25-27.

Following a full day of training on Thursday, the mentors and committee members enjoyed a festive dinner at Buca di Beppo. Linda Barrington made reservations for us, and we were seated together in a small dining room.

Martha Rothwell, Corneilia Harris, Kay Windsor and Shelia Jones were some of the mentors who attended the group dinner. Photo by Judy Robinson

Martha Rothwell, Corneilia Harris, Kay Windsor and Shelia Jones were some of the mentors who attended the group dinner. Photo by Judy Robinson

The group swapped stories about their mentoring experiences and their own teaching and discussed the importance of the mentoring program. The new mentors and experienced mentors had the opportunity to meet each other.

Even though the mentors are career journalism teachers, were active in their state scholastic press organizations, and have attended JEA conventions, many of them had never met the veteran media advisers from other states. So the Mentoring Program accomplishes that.

Posted in JEA Mentoring Program, Journalism Education Association, Mentoring, Mentoring Monday, Mentoring Program Events, Scholastic Journalism, teaching journalism | 1 Comment

Mentoring Monday: Sending news release to local media lets you promote the success of your students

Posted on May 6, 2013 by
The staff of the Beachcomber (Beachwood High School, Beachwood Ohio) staff posed for a group photo at the OSMA Convention. Photo by Doug Levin

The staff of the Beachcomber (Beachwood High School, Beachwood Ohio) posed for a group photo at the OSMA Convention. The staff had its best performance at in contests at the convention. Photo by Doug Levin

by Georgia and Wayne Dunn
JEA Mentors, Ohio

We were some pretty proud mentors at the Ohio Scholastic Media Association convention when OSMA executive director Candace Perkins Bowen announced the awards. Seven of our present and former mentees entered their students in individual contests, and their students won 226 awards!

Here are two tips for advisers:

Tip # 1 — Enter every contest you can!

Tip #2 – Send a press release to get coverage of your students’ accomplishments. Following a convention, be sure to send a press release about your student and publication accomplishments to your local media. OSMA provided a fill-in the blanks press release on the OSMA website. You can modify the news release for your event. OSMA News Release

[See the coverage in The Beachcomber of their OSMA awards.]

Posted in Journalism Education Association, Mentoring, JEA Mentoring Program, Scholastic Journalism, Best Practices in Teaching, teaching journalism, Mentoring Monday, high school media | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Mentor Forum in San Francisco

Posted on April 25, 2013 by

The mentor forum is underway in San Francisco and we started the morning off with a discussion of technology — specifically touch screen technology. We looked at several apps that mentors could use both for themselves and share with their mentees. Apps such as GarageBand on the iPad, Scancam, Hello Sign, iMotion HD and more.

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Martha Rothwell takes notes using dual technologies — phone and pen

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Kathy Schrier checks the schedule for the JEA convention.

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Patti Turley always has a ready smile

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Nick Ferentinos working with the new mentors in a training session

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Digital Judy watches as Carmen Wendt starts grooving to her first loop created in GarageBand on the iPad. If you make your own loops, you own the copyright.

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Katharine Swann talks with new mentors from Denver

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Carmen Wendt and Marilyn Chapman check out the contents of the convention bags.

Photos by Bill Fletchner, Judy Robinson

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Mentoring Matters provides insights into Mentoring Program and financial challenges for program

Posted on April 24, 2013 by

mm_page1by Julie Dodd
JEA Mentor Committee co-chair

The latest issue of JEA Mentoring Matters is available — Mentoring_Matters_Spring 2013

JEA Mentoring Matters is published twice a year to coincide with the Journalism Education Association/National Scholastic Press Association conventions.

The spring JEA/NSPA convention is in San Francisco, April 25-28.

Thanks to Linda Barrington for another informative issue.

This issue of Mentoring Matters takes on two critical topics.

Success of the JEA Mentoring Program
In the cover story, Peggy Gregory discusses the Mentoring Program and the impact it has had on training quality advisers. In the six years the program has been in operation, we’ve trained 44 mentors. Those mentors have worked with 267 new teachers in 17 states.

A major goal of the Mentoring Program is to help keep good new media advisers in the classroom. Nationally, the turnover rate of new teachers is high — with 46 percent leaving teaching within the first five years.

mm_budget_pageOf the new teachers in the JEA Mentoring Program, 75 percent are still in the classroom after five years. [Those who leave the program typically have done so because the journalism program in their schools is eliminated or because they have lost their job in school budget cuts.]

Peggy includes insights from mentors, mentees and Mentor Committee members on what makes the JEA Mentoring Program very different from the typical “buddy mentor.”

Financial challenges for the Mentor Program
Linda Barrington discusses the steps the Mentor Program is working on to maintain the core values of the program but make major budget cuts — responding to major budget cuts that JEA is making to its overall budget.

Linda also recognizes the many sponsors who have provided support for the Mentoring Program.

The Mentor Committee has been working with other JEA Board members to try and reach compromises so that the many important JEA programs, including the Mentoring Program, can continue.

Posted in high school media, JEA Mentoring Program, Journalism Education Association, Mentoring, Scholastic Journalism | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Mentoring Monday: Mary Beth Tinker plans ‘Tinker Tour’ as pep rally for First Amendment

Posted on April 22, 2013 by

by Don Corrigan
Professor, Webster University
AEJMC Scholastic Journalism Division member

Tinker flyerMary Beth Tinker was 13 years old in 1965 when she and her brother wore black armbands to school in Des Moines to protest the Vietnam War. Tinker and several other students were thrown out of school –- resulting in a First Amendment lawsuit on  behalf of the students’ rights to free speech.

That lawsuit led to the 1969 Tinker v. Des Moines Independent Community School District Supreme Court ruling that provided freedom of expression for high school students.

Mary Beth Tinker spoke about her case to high school journalism students at convention last month hosted at Wesbser University by the Sponsors of School Publications of Greater St. Louis (SSP). Almost 650 students cheered Tinker at the convention as she quizzed them about the five freedoms guaranteed in the First Amendment.

Tinker also commented on the impact of the Hazelwood decision in 1988, when the U.S. Supreme Court rejected the logic of its Tinker decision and handed administrators the power to censor student free expression.

In remembering her court experience, Tinker said she was summoned to the Supreme Court in November, 1968, where she listened to serious men in black robes discuss her case.

“Several months later, in February, we heard we won the case,”  Tinker recalled. “It was nerve-wracking when the press came to interview me, almost as nerve-wracking as chemistry class. I was shy, so it was all pretty strange.”

Tinker_armbands_wThe high court voted 7-2 that wearing armbands at school to protest the war was constitutionally-protected speech.

Justice Abe Fortas wrote: “It can hardly be argued that either students or teachers shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech at the schoolhouse gate.”

Mitch Eden, journalism adviser at Kirkwood High School, and his SSP colleagues arranged for Tinker memento armbands to be given to students during the morning rally and given to members of the community who attended an evening session for the greater St. Louis community.

After the St. Louis event, Tinker said it was a sort of dry run for an upcoming “Tinker Tour.” If all goes as planned, the Tinker Tour will be a First Amendment Bus Tour of schools all over the country. The tour will officially start in Philadelphia in September on Constitution Day.

 “It is like a pep rally for the First Amendment,” she said of the tour. “What could be better than that? The time has never been better to stand up for free speech and for high school journalism programs that are getting squeezed in tough budget times for school districts

“Students actually use their freedoms that they learn about in civics,” Tinker said. “I tell young people they have rights –- and if you don’t use them, you lose them.”

Posted in education, high school media, Mentoring Monday, Scholastic Journalism, student press rights, teaching journalism | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mentoring Monday: 25th anniversary of Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier ruling inspires efforts to promote student journalists’ First Amendment rights

Posted on April 15, 2013 by

[Editor’s note: The Journalism Education Association Board is voting on a motion to  support the AEJMC Resolution discussed in this post. The deadline for voting is April 16.]

by Don Corrigan
Professor, Webster University
AEJMC Scholastic Journalism Division member

Don Corrigan

Don Corrigan

This year marks a sad anniversary year for high school newspaper advisers and their students. For 25 years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court made its ruling in the Hazelwood v. Kuhlmeier (1988) case, a dramatic setback for student press rights.

Of course, this anniversary is also the bane of university newspaper advisers and their students, because lower courts have been trying to apply the logic of Hazelwood in college media cases ever since 1988.  Some U.S. courts would like to put the same curbs on college media as were sanctioned for high school media in the Hazelwood case

With that in mind, the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communications (AEJMC) issued a resolution this April on the anniversary of Hazelwood. The college media organization’s statement reads, in part:

jea_resolution“The AEJMC Board of Directors declares that the Hazelwood level of control over student journalistic and editorial expression is   incompatible with the effective teaching of journalistic skills, alues and practices at the collegiate level, and that institutions of post secondary education should forswear reliance on Hazelwood as a legitimate source of authority for the governance of student and educator expression.”

In a recent editorial in the school newspaper at Kirkwood High School in suburban St. Louis, editor Claire Salzman and staffers also  took issue with the 1988 high court’s 5-3 decision. Salzman argued that many school administrators still believe, as they did in the  Hazelwood situation, that if papers don’t cover problems like drugs,  alcoholism, bullying, birth control, crime – the controversial topics  will simply go away.

Continue reading →

Posted in education, high school media, Journalism Education Association, Mentoring Monday, Scholastic Journalism, student press rights, teaching journalism | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

Mentoring Monday: Create your own music with GarageBand to avoid copyright violations

Posted on April 8, 2013 by

by Judy Robinson
JEA Mentor Committee member

robinson_mug

Judy Robinson

A yearbook adviser asked her JEA mentor if the yearbook could include music as part of the yearbook’s online content.

All published music is copyrighted, and using it is a copyright violation. It’s also a copyright violation to do a remix, i.e., take a popular song and have someone play it on their instrument or keyboard.

There are places online you can buy rights to perform copyrighted music, or rights to play copyrighted music but the popular music of the day would likely be out of price range for most schools.

Option 1: : Look for indie musicians and ask if you can use their original compositions with credit.  Sometimes they readily give their permission and you need to include it. Look on SoundCloud or Vimeo for Creative Commons music.  Other resources are listed in this article.

garagebandOption 2:  Make your own original music. The school may have a talented computer musician (GarageBand) or guitarist. Make sure they wrote the song (and it’s not a remix), and you include written permission on the slideshow.

There is NOT fair use for popular music in slideshows.

I’ll be showing the mentors at the Mentor Forum (San Francisco JEA/NSPA Convention) how, on GarageBand for iPad, you can make and use your own music for slideshows.  My students at the University of Florida love learning this for their online multimedia, and it keeps them from violating copyright.

To be ready for this session, download the GarageBand app ($4.99) to your iPad and bring you iPad to the Forum.
***
The Mentor Forum will be held on Thursday, April 25, during the JEA/NSPA Convention. The training for the new JEA mentors also will be held that day.

Posted in high school media, JEA Mentoring Program, Journalism Education Association, Mentor Forum, Mentoring Monday, teaching with technology | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Mentoring Monday: 7 strategies to recruit students to join your student media program

Posted on March 25, 2013 by

The success of next year’s media program is based in large part on what you’re doing now to recruit the staff for next year. Here is advice from long-term adviser and JEA mentor Randy Swikle.

by Randy Swikle
JEA Mentor, Illinois

Randy Swikle

Randy Swikle

A successful media program is based on a multidimensional, ongoing recruiting process that propelled interest in journalism and student news media. Our journalism recruitment strategy had subliminal, incidental and explicit dimensions­. Sometimes “quietly,” sometimes loudly, we did what every good PR campaign does in selling an idea [ours was join journalism]: We made NOISE.

Strategy #1 – Hold an open house.
Whenever the public attends an “open house” kind of function at school—including, of course, registration orientations— your journalism students can promote the program by “doing” journalism during the open house. The can be working on computers and discussing editorial topics. Have them stop to make a presentation to visitors who arrive. Serve treats and have handouts.

Strategy #2 – Send letters of invitation.
While you would welcome any student who has a learning style, work ethic and responsible character that are compatible with the design of your journalism program, you also want to target students with a special interest and aptitude for journalism. Based on teacher and student recommendations, the adviser writes personal letters inviting top prospects to consider journalism if they think it meets their interests and needs. Journalism students make personal contacts to give prospects insight about our program and the satisfaction and rewards of producing news media.

Strategy #3 – Make classroom presentations.
Student editors and you can make a recruitment visit to junior high English classes just prior to registration for high school to promote the program and answer questions. Then when you receive new class lists after the registration process, get your editors to return to pass out a welcome treat to the new enrollees.

Continue reading →

Posted in education, high school media, JEA Mentoring Program, Journalism Education Association, Mentoring Monday, Scholastic Journalism | Tagged , | Leave a comment

SmugMug’s free account for non-profits can mean fundraising opportunities for high school media staffs

Posted on March 18, 2013 by

gallery_smugmugby Julie E. Dodd
JEA Mentoring Committee co-chair

Good news from our JEA colleague Aaron Manfull, who is chair of the JEA Digital Media Committee.

Aaron announced in a JEA Digital Media blog post (and also on the JEA listserv) that SmugMug is offering a free account for non-profit organizations. That’s good news because that can provide a fundraising opportunity for student media.

For those hearing about SmugMug for the first time…

SmugMug is an online photo sharing site that lets you upload photos and then sell them — as photos, designs on T-shirts, etc. Previously, SmugMug charged a hefty membership fee that discouraged many student media programs from signing up for an account. But with the offer of free accounts for non-profits (like schools), SmugMug provides a fundraising opportunity for student media.

In his blog post, Aaron explains how student media has used SmugMug to sell photos and make money for the publication. The screen capture at the top of this post is a gallery on SmugMug of photos from Aaron’s newspaper staff.

Posted in Journalism Education Association, Technology, teaching with technology, JEA Mentoring Program, Scholastic Journalism, teaching journalism, Mentoring Monday, education, high school media | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment