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Teens archive at infodoodads

Archive for the 'Teens' Category

Library Video - Trends and Tips

Published by Sam on February 2, 2009
Categories: How-to, Instructional, Teens, Video and Visual 4 Comments

The start of a month of posts and discussion about video - trends, tips, tools, experiences, etc.

At Internet Librarian last year, there were several sessions dedicated to different aspects of library video creation - some encouraged librarians and staff to just start making stuff with whatever they have, and others encouraged people to shoot for higher standards before releasing what they made to the world.   I’d like to advocate for a little of both.  Some projects will require higher production values than others, so picking a project that’s right for your budget and experience can be a good way to avoid getting overwhelmed.

First, some trends.  There are a couple of standard library videos that you can find en masse on YouTube: Library Tours and Teen Library Videos.  The Library Tour seems to be a popular choice for libraries wanting to experiment with video because it’s a subject they already know a lot about, they have a good sense of what areas of the library are popular, what people coming to the library are looking for, etc.  Teen videos tend to be a lot more creative, a little spastic, and aiming to be humorous.

Library Tour Videos:
A library tour video is basically a little advertisement, or a piece of marketing, or an invitation to computer users to visit and take advantage of more library services, so I think that production values should be as high as one can make them.  I don’t mean you should go buy a $2,000 camera and some lights and microphones and all that jazz, just to make one video.  But I do think that unless you have access to equipment and people with at least some knowledge of the movie-making process, you should probably start with another project, or give yourself ample time to research and prepare for making the video.

My favorite library tour video (so far!)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHljR4LYmOA[/youtube]

Teen Library Videos:
I think viewers are more forgiving of technical limitations in a teen library video - it’s not generally meant to be taken too seriously, for one thing, and for another, teen programs are supposed to be fun, so the videos try and make whatever they’re promoting seem fun.

My favorite Teen Library video (until you make one better)
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vLmtkD1kiK0[/youtube]

Now for some tips:

Most types of videos require some pre-production work:

  • Write a script.
  • See what kind of equipment and resources you have.
  • See what kind of talent you have.
  • See what kind of scheduling issues you will be working around.
  • Re-write your script.
  • Story-board your script - even if it’s stick figures and boxes with words on them, story-board it out - It will help!

Two factors that can make an otherwise great video difficult to watch (and therefore opposite to your goal) are light and sound - if the people watching the video are thinking about the lighting or the sound, then they aren’t absorbing any of the content, no matter how awesome it is.  Most average and low-end video cameras have microphones on them, but the microphones are generally not super great.  If you video someone speaking from too great a distance, the sound becomes very fuzzy.  From too close, it becomes muffled and waffly.  ‘Waffly’ is a technical term meaning “like you are hitting the microphone with a waffle.”  If you are shooting outdoors, there is the added level of ambient noise and wind:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X6r9zC-nVqU[/youtube]

Some workarounds:
You don’t have to shoot a video to make a video.  What I mean is that there are a lot of tools out there to help make videos with photos, powerpoints, screencasts, etc.  Watch ten library tour videos, and you’re likely to see a variety of video, photos, voice overlay, musical intros and outros, and more.

Here’s a great teen library PSA that makes great use of audio overlay, basic video effects, and simple filming to make a nice little ad:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gbKsWqOJnD0[/youtube]

Send me some links to your library videos, and I’ll watch them and give you honest, constructive feedback.  Unless it’s really awful, in which case I’ll pretend I didn’t get it.  Just kidding.  :)

Also, what are some of your favorite tools, apps, and sites for creating and uploading videos?


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Aniboom

Published by Sam on July 7, 2008
Categories: Games, Services, Teens, Video and Visual 0 Comments

Here is an animation that I made as an experiment for this post:

I know, it’s not terribly creative, but I never claimed to be a master cartoonist. Although given the type of stuff that you can watch on Adult Swim these days, maybe I could be!

So, the fun part of Aniboom is making your own animation. They have a free tool that you can use, called Shapeshifter http://www.aniboom.com/ShapeshifterMain/ – it’s pretty fun, and as you get more familiar with the way it works, there are a lot of fun things you can do with it. You can move basic shapes around the screen, changing their colors, sizes, relationships, rotations, etc. It’s a lot of fun once you get the hang of it. I found that doing the basic animation first and doing the colors and things like that afterwards kind of streamlined the process for me.

You can check out my profile: http://www.aniboom.com/boomzones/crashsolo

I could see this being a fun challenge for teens, to make a short animation on a chosen theme, or to advertise the library or something like that.


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Rocketbook: go watch your homework

Published by Kate on March 16, 2008
Categories: Academic, Books, Instructional, Teens and Video 2 Comments

While toting around a copy of 1984 and analyzing The Great Gatsby are time-honored high school traditions, Rocketbook’s study guides for these classics are definitely an update from the ones available when I was in high school. Rocketbook’s study guides take full advantage of all the web makes possible. Are you a visual learner? Check out the video study guides that include graphics, text, and narration. Auditory more your style? You can download free (for now, anyway) mp3 versions of study guides ranging from Animal Farm to Jane Eyre. There are wikis for the books that include character descriptions and quizzes in addition to thorough summaries of the material. Rocketbook claims these are written by college professors and grad students, which might be true in the beginning. However, since the pages are wikis I’m not sure how they’ll maintain that in the future. There appear to be .pdf versions of the study guides as well, though I didn’t have much luck getting them to open.

Rocketbook is still in beta so glitches with technology and some unanswered questions don’t seem like deal-breakers to me. There is some advertising, but nothing unusual for a freely available web service and nothing that was distracting enough that it seemed to take away from the task at hand. This seems like a great supplement to assigned reading and a nice way to make some classic literature more accessible to people with different learning styles.

Apparently back in the day there was also an eBook reader called RocketBook; if there’s any connection between the two I couldn’t find it.


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Tafiti - do research

Published by Margaret on August 29, 2007
Categories: Academic, Searching, Teens and Visual 1 Comment

Tafiti means to “do research” in Swahili. This Microsoft search environment helps users visualize, store and share research results. The twist is that Tafiti works across platforms (works with Mac) and across browsers including Firefox and Safari as well as IE. It requires downloading the Microsoft® Silverlight™ plug-in and uses the Live Search search engine.

There are some neat features in Tafiti. The look and feel of the site is tafiti2distinctive and inviting and plays on both old and new symbols of research. When you enter the site, a single simple search box is displayed in a pseudo index card, reminiscent of a catalog card, complete with aging. Results are displayed in a card catalog drawer with your search terms in the label. When you click “Go” some magic happens, and you get a display of your original search, your search results, a “carousel” of search options and a “glass shelf” where you can drag and stack results you want to keep. tafiti8

The search carousel shows different categories of results from the web, inside books, news, images, RSS feeds, and videos. When you click on a result type on the carousel, it rotates and gives you that type of result. At the time I tested it, the books option was apparently inactive, but the carousel is a really effective way of moving around inside results.
tafiti5

Saving results you like to a stack is simple, just drag the link to the glass shelf, stack things up, and add a label if you like. If you log in with your LiveID, Tafiti allows you to store your results and your stacks for another session, or to share with others by e-mailing the stacks or posting to a blog.

tafiti9Clicking on the small tree at the top of the results view gives you a visual representation of your results and their relationships.tafiti6

Tafiti would be great for students just learning the research process, especially visual learners. It shows the connections between concepts, and it helps students move easily around within results. One missing piece is a way to help students to cite their references and/or create bibliographies from the results in their stacks.


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Flipbooks make me wish I was 16 again (well, sort of)

Published by Kate on July 20, 2007
Categories: Publishing, Social and Teens 1 Comment

fliplogoFlip.com might be old news to teens (or people who work with teens) but it’s new to me. Brought to you by Condé Nast (yup, the magazine people), Flip.com is a social site centered around a digital scrapbook called a “flipbook“.

Flipbooks are a sort of a cross between a scrapbook and a slideshow, and flipbook topics range from the student who started a (very successful!) club to HelpDarfurNow to the person who just wanted to share how “Movies Move [Her].” Flipbooks can include music, photos, videos, text, and all kinds of graphics, and members can rate and comment on flipbooks.

Since Flip.com is free to users it’s not surprising that advertising is prominent on the site but there are advertisements worked into the flipbooks in both expected and surprising places. Among the illustrations available to decorate your flipbook are little cartoon drawings of very specific items like Bumble & bumble hair products and Vera Wang “Princess” perfume. When setting up your profile you can choose which advertiser appears on your profile but not *if* an advertiser will appear on your profile. Also, I was a little disappointed to find that although my email won’t be sold, it will be “shared” unless I contact Condé Nast specifically to request that it be kept private. There’s no “opt out” radio button, just an email address buried in the FAQs, so it seems unlikely that many of their members take that step.

Flip.com definitely has a “teens only” feel to it, but in a good way; it doesn’t feel like they’re trying too hard. They focus on safety without being alarmist by letting teens know how they can either solve problems on their own (by deleting comments, blocking users, etc.) or take it to the next level (by reporting it to Flip.com or to the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children’s CyberTipline.) Flipbooks seem like a fun, useful way for teens to share information, whether it be about vegetarianism or vacations.


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