Monthly Archives: February 2012

Teach With video is a blog to help teachers integrate digital video projects in the classes they teach. The podcast provides tips for classroom management, unit and lesson design, and various resources to help teachers guide students toward the successful creation of curriculum-based videos.

Stop Motion Animation Challenge 3

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This is the third challenge for my middle school movie-making club that is creating stop motion animations. This challenge is “Draw Something.” Below is the animation I created as an example for this challenge. You can also take a look at Challenge 1, Challenge 2, and the Movie-Making Club wiki, where I am documenting what we are doing.

The way I created this was to print out a simple drawing of Homer Simpson. (I’m not much of an artist.) I taped it to the desk with another paper over the top so I could do my tracing. I propped my MacBook up with a book stand from the library, like I have when I’ve used my laptop as a document camera.

Me creating the animation.

I recommend using a good, thick pen. Unfortunately, the permanent marker I was using bleeds. This made it difficult to make small lines that look like a continuation of the previous line. Towards the end I figured out that if I started drawing over the end of the previous line it looked better, but never made a really smooth line. Also, it was a little difficult drawing upside down, but the image I was tracing was fairly simple. I’m excited to see what my students create. One, in particular, is an excellent artist.

The book stand.

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How To Turn Off Ken Burns Effect in iMovie

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Turning off the Ken Burns Effect can save you a lot of time when you need to import several photos to your iMovie project. Turning it off one photo at a time can take a while. Here’s how to turn off the effect so you can import photos without it:

1. Click on File > Project Properties
2. Click on Initial Photo Placement
3. Select either Fit in Frame or Crop, depending on your needs



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Fix Editing Problems After WordPress 3.3.1 Update

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After updating to WordPress 3.3.1 I lost a significant amount of functionality for editing my blog posts. I could only edit in HTML, and did not have any tools in the tool bar. Apparently I am not the only one this happened to, and I read several articles in the support forums. After a lot of headaches two people in my PLN came to my rescue. Thank you Carol Broos & Ross Parker!!!

The solution that finally worked was to install the plugin Use Google Libraries. I saw it mentioned in several places, including this forum post.

The power of my PLN. :)

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