Storychasers

It worked! We successfully used Ustream and Skype to have an online webinar and brainstorming session for Storychasers last night. Here is the archive on Ustream:

I'd like to invite everyone to a second Storychasers project brainstorming session this week, again on Wednesday evening. We'll meet online at the same time (8 Eastern / 7 Central / 6 Mountain / 5 Pacific) but this time meet in Elluminate instead of using a Skypecast. We had some mixed experiences last week with our Skypecast, so meeting in Elluminate sounds like a better option.

I would like to start a conversation about whether StoryChaser project participants should have a code of ethics. If we can be certain of anything in our digital world, we can be sure that the mainstream media is going to jump on any opportunity to amplify and showcase bad / inappropriate / destructive uses of digital technologies by kids to further reinforce the commonly held public perception that all technology is evil and kids shouldn't be on the Internet at all.

I have two books on Digital Filmmaking that have been helpful. They are:

"The Director in the Classroom" by Nikos Theodosakis

"Digital Filmmaking for Teens" by Pete Shaner and Gerald Everett Jones

Here are a few of the regular segments my students do during our weekly broadcast. Some of the segments are weekly and some are rotated every other week or so. (Our broadcast mascot is Mibby our school mascot is the Mustang)

Weekly Segments:
>Announcements
>School Happenings
>Birthdays
>This week in History
>Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader
>Local/National News (depends on what's happening in the world such as major weather or news, etc...)

Rotated Segments:
Mibby's Believe It or Not (Think Ripley's ...)
Mibby's Mythbusters (Think Mythbusters)

I will be implementing a Federal EETT grant this year with some of my 5th grade teachers (science). Part of that grant communication component is going to be the development of a online learning network. Originally, I had planned on using Ning. Now I hear Wesley mention that he feels Drupal has some advantages over Ning. I'm curious as to what people feel some of the advatages are of using Drupal over Ning?

Thanks to Miguel Guhlin, an audio recording of the first 44 minutes of our skypecast brainstorming session from July 30th is available.

Great discussions tonight, everyone! Let's add our ideas for projects here on the forum. The ideas we kicked around tonight (if I've got them all):
Careers
Digital Citizenship
Ghost Stories
The Holocaust
Regional History

This is just a partial list, I'm sure. Let's use this forum to talk about the Storychaser projects we'd like to see!

Meg :)

This is the text chat transcript from our brainstorming skypecast on July 30, 2008. Apologies for not being able to get everyone into the chat room... We'll work on using Elluminate next week for our meeting-- same time, 7 pm central. Link to be shared here soon!

[7:45:29 PM] Scott says: The Scholastic Television Channel is all grade levels I think with emphasis on high school... At least that is my impression.
[7:45:37 PM] Wesley Fryer says: http://studenttelevision.com/
[7:46:02 PM] Cheryl Lykowski says: Scott I had that impression as well

video formats, uploading, storage, cross posting, applications, software and websites for finished stories