In this first week of CEP 811, we’ve learned about how deep down we are all makers. Watching Dale Daughtry’s TED@ Motor City video, set the stage for this course and this week’s assignment: Making a Mozilla Popcorn Maker remix video on an educational buzzword!
First, we learned about remixing from Kirby Ferguson’s videos “Everything is a Remix” where he showed the intersecting ideas of various artists and where or whom they inspired from. Interestingly, Ferguson explains how everyone’s ideas are influenced from something else and therefore, everything is a remix of something already created. He goes into the legality of copyright and patents and the history of these came to be. This makes sense as teachers are constantly having to re-purpose and therefore remix how to teach content with the integration of technology. This is also evident in Lawrence Lessig’s definition of remix where one takes snippets and clips of various things (videos, audio, images, etc.) and puts them together in a way to inspire others. Thus, I have created a remix video to inspire others on the buzzword: Individualized learning.
My remix video can be found here: https://mrsbirbal.makes.org/popcorn/1idb
To remix, I had to find various images, video clips, and audio. I took clips from a McGraw-Hill 1945 video on Teacher Education taken from https://archive.org/details/Maintain1947, as well as photos from google images using Creative Commons search tools. The audio is from Clint Mansell’s “Memories Someone Will Never Know” (http://soundcloud.com/clint-mansell/memories-someone-well-never-know) and “The Exciting Music Time” by Melih Duman (http://soundcloud.com/melihduman/the-exciting-music-time). All of this was remixed together to demonstrate the value of individualized learning in the classroom.
I found the Mozilla Popcorn Maker somewhat frustrating to use. While it is nice that it is cloud based, and allows you to search right within the program to find video, images, and sound clips, I felt like the video editing options were a bit too simple. I would not consider myself anywhere near a master at editing videos, but this program’s options of deleting partial clips was difficult. I feel like the pop-up options were a neat way to remix words into the video, but again were structured and simple which sometimes took away from the message of the video. Although, it did bring me back to my VH1 days when I would watch “Pop-Up Video”!
Resources:
Lessig, L. (2008). Remix: Making art and commerce thrive in the hybrid economy. Penguin Press.
Ferguson, K. (2011). Everything is a Remix. http://everythingisaremix.info/about/
Mrs. Birbal 
Hi Allison – loved the remix! I like the archival footage you found for the beginning. I looked for a while for some to use in mine, but couldn’t really find anything that fit the bill for me. Great use the thought bubbles on the students, too. I think you hit the “big three” for me when I’m considering student perspectives in the classroom.
I had a really hard time getting used to Popcorn Maker as well (I think a few people did). Most of my experience is in video editing, so I had a really hard time getting my brain away from “video clips” and into “media.” I’m still not sure I can really verbalize my understanding of Popcorn, but it’s something I’ll keep my eye on as it’s developed.
Thanks for the comment, Brian! I really liked how you mentioned thinking of Popcorn Maker as using “media” as oppose to a video editor! I do like the pop-ups (kind of frustrated that I couldn’t control which direction the little bubbles went, but maybe that’s too nit-picky?)
I started following you on Twitter this summer after watching your presentation at Flipcon13! When I saw you posting with #CEP811 I kind of felt like we have an EdTech celebrity in our class! 🙂 I’m flipping my classroom this year–so far I (and my students) are loving it!