Media projects continue to gather strength across the curriculum, sometimes building on essential literacies of writing or speaking. This semester Dr. Laura Carroll’s English 111: Composition and Rhetoric students produced short video responses to the typical Proposing a Solution prompt. This is just a part of Dr. Carroll’s assignment:
Proposing a solution is a common writing task in personal and professional life. You call your audience’s attention to a problem, offer a solution, and urge the reader to act on your proposal. You will learn to analyze the problem, evaluate possible responses to the problem, select one solution, and argue the effectiveness of your solution to your audience.
Basic Features of Evaluation Essays
• A clearly defined problem, framed as a question in the early stages of writing
• An effective solution
• A convincing argument in support of the proposed solution
• Anticipation of reader’s objections and a response to those objections
• An evaluation of alternative solutions
• A call to action
The students came over to the Learning Studio for a training session in Camtasia for Mac which allowed them to bring together a variety of media types into their final projects. Here are a few examples.
The iPod is 10 years old this fall and most of us can remember the first time we ever picked one up. The smooth action of the scroll wheel with the slight click as you moved through albums or artists. In 2001, the iPod seemed like the evolution of the music player–less hard drive than box of wonder–but for its first few generations the iPod remained a one-way street. Your computer sent music to the device and the iPod sent it to your ears.
So much has changed with media players in the last decade, but perhaps the most important is the two-way expressways they’ve become. We’re as likely to record a track as listen to one, and the addition of better optics and HD cameras have only expanded the role of the iPod and now the iPhone as a mobile media production studio.
The App Store is teaming with media creation apps, but these are the best of breed..
Apple re-imagined audio production for the touch interface. GarageBand brings smart instruments to the iPad and the iPhone to support performers of all skill levels. It also packs an 8-track recorder and mixer for editing together an interview or electric guitar solo quickly. When you’re done, the app can export high-quality audio files or bring your tracks into GarageBand back on your Mac for further editing.
The quality of the camera now on the iPhone with the sudden explosion of photo sharing sites have encouraged app developers to move beyond seeing this as a basic camera-phone. Apps like Filterstorm bring together the combination clean interfaces with advanced tools to approximate Photoshop Elements on a mobile platform. The Pro version is iPad only but–combined with the iPad camera connection kit–provides opportunities to get some real work done on the road.
Since video first came to the iPhone on the 3GS, student filmmakers have been exploring ways to shoot music videos and short films on it. Now with the processing power of the iPhone 4, 4GS, and iPad 2, editing and basic visual effects are also possible on a mobile device. Like GarageBand, iMovie allows you to record content directly into the app, bring in DRM-free music from your library, and cut together a movie with basic edits and transitions. When you’re finished, the app makes it easy to upload to YouTube or Facebook, and with video mirroring to play it on a local TV.
This is an alternate movie editor compatible with all versions of iOS device. It provides most of the same features now found in iMovie but does allow access to DRM and DRM-free music from your library. Both apps also provide a platform for creating narrated slideshows or digital storytelling projects quickly and easily.
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Free(ish) Essentials
Though our #12apps giveaways will focus on paid apps, there are a few free apps that provide additional capabilities to your photo, audio, or video projects.
PhotoSynth – quick and easy way to produce mobile panoramas, though app doesn’t currently produce “synths”
Instagram – simple way to share immediate photos with followers, often with some retro-analog style
Camera+ ($0.99) – nice upgrade to basic camera app, with shooting scenes and a timer
8mm Vintage Camera ($1.99) – basically Instagram for video with an analog, old-school look
This semester we asked a hundred freshmen in separate Cornerstone sections to take photos that included the Jacob’s Dream angels. Our object was to illustrate the way disciplines in the liberal arts attempt to provide a more complete view of the human and our relation to the divine.
Once uploaded to Photosynth, the students’ photos were combined into a “synth” which is a 3-D construction of the Jacob’s Dream site based on the many facets of the space captured in the photos. We then shot the space again, attempting to produce a careful survey of the site.
In his Cornerstone Spotlight presentation yesterday, Dr. Greg Straughn paralleled this first example with crowd-sourced initiatives that can leverage the wisdom of the group but sometimes without a coordinated plan or design. Scholarly research often approximates the second example that leveraged higher-powered tools (wide-angle and telephoto lenses) and moved around the site to create a greater degree of coverage.
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Getting Started with Photosynth
To explore each synth further, enter by selecting “Click to View” and then the full screen button in the bottom right. From there, explore each of the main views: the 3D View, the Overhead View, and the Point Cloud View. Thanks again to the students who contributed a nice range of images.
(Photosynth utilizes the Silverlight plugin developed by Microsoft and the following examples are not currently compatible with mobile devices.)
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Cornerstone Students – 172 photos (mostly phone photos)
We often focus on how technology is transforming the way we share finished ideas with a global audience. Easily overlooked is the role they now play on the other end of the creative process. When many of us are ready to begin a project, sketch out an idea, or draft a few paragraphs, mobile apps are now the tools we turn to first.
Apple’s iWork app was among the first mobile tools to expand our view of how a desktop application could be adapted to a mobile device. Pages is more than a bare-bones word processing app. Document templates, text styles, find/replace, and editing tools all made the mobile version as well.
The app is easy to work with on an iPhone or iPad, but version 1.5 added iCloud integration which makes it that much easier to pick up where you left off on your computer or second device.
The first of two iPad only apps we’ll start with, tablets are emerging as a third platform with particular needs and benefits. A tablet is far easier to take into a meeting or class for occasional notes. Notes Plus makes efficient use of zooming to make efficient use of a page with handwritten notes and adds the ability to record audio associated with a particular page or notebook.
Stylus recommended, but if you prefer to type, Notes Plus lets you blend handwriting and sketches with typed text.
One other iPad only app we’re offering this week offers the best way to sketch out ideas quickly, whether individually or as a group. You may have noticed we have a certain fondness for whiteboards in the LS—with 12 of them in our group rooms and another 16 rolling around upstairs. Most ideas don’t appear neatly organized into clear paragraphs or strong images without some work. A whiteboard gives you the space to see how an idea takes shape before beginning to focus it into some final shape.
Whiteboard HD also allows you to project it on an external monitor in a classroom or collaboration room using an iPad VGA adapter. This spring we’ll also be experimenting with an Apple TV in the Screening Room for wireless video mirroring from an iPad or iPhone.
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Free Essentials
Though our #12apps giveaways will focus on paid apps, there are a few free apps we consider essential to basic productivity around campus.
Dropbox – great app for keeping 2gb of files synced across devices and your desktop
Evernote – the standard “digital brain” for capturing and remembering almost anything
SimpleMind+ – a strong mind-mapping app for developing idea maps on an iPhone or iPad
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So what’s missing?
We’d love to hear from you in comments. What apps do you turn to when it’s time to begin a project?
The Learning Studio is heralding the holiday season with 12 days of giveaways. For the first 12 days of December, we’re giving away our favorite 12 apps with an assortment of gear to brighten the final days of the semester.
*Details below for how to enter.
How To Enter
All ACU students, faculty, and staff may enter by following @learningstudio on Twitter or liking ACUlearningstudio on Facebook. That’s it.
Additional opportunities to enter will be announced on Twitter and Facebook each day, and all entries from previous days will remain in the contest through Dead Day, Dec. 12th.
Drawings will be made at random once a day with winners contacted by Twitter/Facebook. All prizes need to be picked up within 24 hours of notification at the main desk in the Learning Studio before they’re thrown back in the prize pool.
We’ve had a great first full semester working with you on campus, and this is our way of saying thanks. Good luck.
