Build a better mouse trap and the world may never know about it.

A mouse trap placed on top of your alarm clock will prevent you from rolling over and going back to sleep

Back some months ago when this blog first began, I had no illusions about having information so important that the world would beat a path to my "digital" door.  Funny thing happened on the way to here though, I began to enjoy it and realize that there was information I could share that would be a resource to other digital media teachers and beneficial to novice media producers wanting to get started.  This left one piece of the puzzle, how do I get the world to take notice?
In the class that I am taking that was the genesis of this blog, we shared methods to drive people to our blogs.  Truly, some of the most simple and possible effective ones, I hadn't considered.  After some reflection I've chosen a couple of methods I think will help me.  I've added my blog address to my email.  I make so many contacts that I think this would have been very beneficial had I done it earlier.  I believe this exposure will pay dividends down the road.  I've also posted the blog address with a brief description on Classroom 2.0 and got almost instant results.  This is a forum where teachers can find other teachers from all over the country and the world for that fact in the same or similar content areas.  Within 1 hour of posting at Classroom 2.0 I had received two replies and both we excited to see the blog......wonderful.
This process has been a truly educational experience for me in several ways.  First it's gotten me out of my digital rut.  I've been using many high end video production software's for some time and just resisted the unknown...i.e. Twitter, blogs and Ning's...O My!  (that was an earlier entry).  Its also helped me see the power of connection.  In my presentation to the class, I said that this had shown me that we are smarter than I.  Well I may have come late to the dance, but I'm going to use these new tools to help build my content knowledge, professional community and resource base.  This can only help my students to see a world of content that is much larger than it would have been without this experience. As Martha Stewart says, "It's a good thing."

Just follow the manual

The secret to getting ahead is getting started

 

Did you ever wonder how to use Photoshop?

Check out these beginner tutorials I am posting on YouTube.

http://www.youtube.com/user/videoteacher100?feature=mhum

Franken-camera

Civilization is the limitless multiplication of unnecessary necessities.

It's a digital camera....it's a camcorder, no its both.  This has been the confusing state of digital image capture devices for the last couple of years.  Remember when digital camcorders starting to be able to record still images to a memory stick?  Trust me this did happen back almost 9 years ago and the image quality was what you'd expect from technology that was from almost a decade ago.  The reason was that still images were not the camcorder's thing, it was all about video. 
The Single Lens Reflex Camera, has been around for decades, stable, very high quality but it cost a lot for film and processing.  Next arrives the Digital Camera, exit film and processing, but lacking the quality of their stodgy old ancestors.  Then the light bulb goes off in the collective minds of both the camcorder and the camera manufacturers .  "We've got all this technology, high resolution sensors and oodles of snappy software, we can do everything!" and they did. 
In the last two years, Canon has produced a digital camera ( Demo Video ) that takes incredible quality HD movies and most of the major camcorder manufacturers finally accessed the true power of their progressive image sensors for razor sharp HD quality stills.  
Holy Crap, do I need a camcorder or a digital camera?  Yes. The truth is for most people either may work fine.  Digital still cameras offer most consumers the option of video as well as stills, although not much available recording time.  Most camcorders can record high quality still images and also offer the possibility to record your daughters dance recital.  If you're a professional the choices get harder.  There are media workflows to consider and where the finished footage will need to end up (on broadcast TV or in someones home DVD player).
The bottom line is that the consumer, the prosumer and the professional have never had more choices at a lower cost than today.  I have people ask me to suggest a camcorder occasionally.  That question merits questions in return.  Do they want to edit their videos?  Do they want to not bother?  Do the need long lenght record times?  There are different consumer camcorders and yes even digital still camera to fit almost every need and price range so whatever your need you're probably in luck.  As we always say in the video production field, "It ain't the gun, its the gunner".  Shoot away!