Do you enjoy watching films? Would you like to share your views on what you see on the screen with others? Ever thought of being a film critic?

If so, this year’s Coca-Cola Cinemagic International Film and Television Festival for Young People is currently selecting a jury panel of 10 to 18 year olds to watch and judge short and feature films. The panel will be required to watch all of the films that are being screened in competition during the Festival (18th Nov-4th Dec) and to choose a number of winning entries.

Chris Shaw, Cinemagic Programmer, explains what is involved in the role: “As a jury member you will spend a number of evenings and weekends at the Festival, helping to decide the winners of ‘Best Feature Film for a Children’s Audience’ and ‘Best Short Film for a Children’s Audience’. These categories will be judged by a jury of 10 to 14 year olds, whilst a panel of 15 to 18 year olds will vote for ‘Best Feature for a Teenage Audience’ and ‘Best Short Film for a Teenage Audience. Jury members will have a great opportunity to meet industry professionals and to present the awards at Odeon Cinemas on 4th December. It also offers young people the chance to meet others with a similar passion for film and to make new friends, whilst expanding your understanding of the different genres of film.”

To be in with a chance to sit on the jury simply write an imaginative letter or e-mail, no longer than 300 words, explaining why you would like to be on the jury and send it by Friday 6th Nov to: Jury Competition, Cinemagic, 49 Botanic Avenue, Belfast BT7 1JL or email: claire@cinemagic.org.uk

Please include your name, address, age, contact telephone number and email address. You must have permission from your parent/guardian to be a jury member, be able to attend all of the jury films and be able to arrange your own transport to and from the Festival.

The films in competition are compiled of special UK and Irish premiere screenings of international movies that explore new worlds and cultures. Highlights include the UK Preview of rugged New Zealand drama ‘The Strength of Water’ (23rd Nov); the fantastic French film ‘It’s Not Me, I Swear’ (24th Nov) that explores the bizarre and wonderful world of 10 year old Leon; have you ever wondered what Santa Claus was like as a child?

Find out in the Irish Preview of ‘A Christmas Story’ (29th Nov). ‘The Eagle Hunter’s Son’ (1st Dec) is a breath-taking epic that explores the conflicts that arise when family tradition takes precedent over individual desires; the German comedy ‘The Crocodiles’ (1st Dec) follows horrid gangsters and a group of determined teenagers! Can a boy of nine be a big brother, a father, a mother and a luminary all at once? All will be revealed in the Turkish drama ‘The Bogeyman’ (2nd Dec).

For further information on the opportunities that exist visit www.cinemagic.org.uk to find out more! Tickets for festival films can be purchased online from the Cinemagic website or from the Belfast Welcome Centre, 47 Donegall Place Belfast, Tel: 02890 24 66 09.

Related:

• Festival Serves ‘UP’ A Feast!
• Film Industry Insight
• Arts and Business Partnership
• Belfast Electronic Arts Symposium
• Cinemagic Young Filmmakers

One problem with introducing a Virtual Learning Environment is quite often pupils have signed a School Acceptable Use Policy that doesn’t include this type of learning platform.

Moodle offers a solution that ensures every user agrees to the terms before they are granted access to courses.

Step 1 : Create your VLE AUP

To do this you need to create an html file and upload it to your server or another location on the internet. Here is a reasonable example :

The school offers pupils an online learning environment (VLE) at xxxxxxxx this environment is managed by the teaching staff to support pupil learning while out of school. The VLE is accessible both in school and home and access is considered to be a privilege.

In order to use the platform you must agree to abide by the following rules. You may not access, distribute or place on the VLE material that

is illegal in the UK
is offensive, obscene , encourages or facilitates illegal activities,
is in breach of copyright owners’ statutory rights (you should not use the Internet to plagiarise the work of others, or post any content including images without the permission of the owner/correct licenses). Non-original content must be correctly attributed.
E-mail, messaging or chat must not be used to harass, intimidate, or otherwise annoy another person.

Your use of the platform (including chat and discussions) is logged, and records are kept of all your activities and contributions to the site for a period of 1 year. Students should be aware that in addition to the site administrator, course leaders are able to directly access their students’ files. As with all public sites, you should not regard any of your activity as private or confidential. XXXXX School are not responsible for the content of external sites.

You could copy this and paste it into a text editor saving it as aup.html

Step 2 : Activate the AUP Policy in Moodle

Log on to your Moodle install as the administration and click on the SECURITY option on the left hand menu. Now select  ’Site Policies’ About half way down the page you will see the following entry :

Type the address of your AUP html file and hit save. This means when a user logs in for the first time they will have to agree to these terms. Users only have to agree once, they won’t be asked again but they won’t be able get beyond the AUP page if they do not agree to the terms.

Easy, any questions please ask below.

Related:

• Language Learning – Keep Your Word
• Pupil Email : Debate
• Glossaries in Moodle
• 5 Steps to Moodle Success
• 2nd Life and Moodle

Being a teacher by profession I know just how important it is for children to learn a second language. Sadly as a pupil I always struggled with the labourious action of learning French and German ‘vocab’ and spent more time learning langages such as Basic and Pascal which is something I now actually regret.

Following the recent European Day of Languages I have been encouraging my own children to learn a second language and despite having never actually visited Spain they have progressed beyond counting to creating their own short sentences.

A new application for Mac has been released that is going to make language learning that little bit easier in the form of “Keep Your Word” (KYW).  Keep Your Word lets you build your own dictionaries, classifying and grouping the terms exactly how you want to, but at the same time helps you learn a large vocabulary thanks to its brilliant exercise modes.

If the thought of starting your dictionary from scratch is a complete turn off then panic not. KYW offers the ability to import downloaded user created dictionaries from http://www.wordsparade.com and these offer a really quick and easy way to get KYW up and going.

It should be noted that Wordsparade site is a community so once you get to the stage of creating your own word banks it is worth considering adding them to the website for others to use.

To get started I downloaded the French to English dictionary and loaded the file with KYW. I was surprised just how many words were included in this dictionary, almost 2000 French words with their direct English translation.

A large list of nearly 2000 words can be particularly daunting but KYW allows you to manage your dictionary easily :

• Manually classify vocabulary.
  Drag and drop words to and from any of the default categories. Add, delete, rename, relocate categories as you wish.
• Automatically classify vocabulary.
  Smart Groups, similar to iTunes smart lists, are your friends. Tag your words, add comments, and let the app do the rest.

Keep Your Word offers four methods of revising and testing your knowledge of your dictionary. Flash Cards, Quick Quiz, Printed Test and Written Test.

My particular favourite option is the Quick Quiz. KYW word uses a really nice graphical system a little like iTunes Cover Flow to scan through the questions for revision.

Keep Your Word offers a really nice way to learn but better still if offers an almost hidden Gem for Language teachers (and I am going to ask a few colleagues to post in the comments on this app) as once you have built your various word dictionaries homeworks and class tests are about to become even easier.

Click the Printed Test button and Keep Your Word creates a printable version of your vocabulary list.

In the example below I was given the option of printing the French word (so the pupils give the English), but KYW offers the the ability to print the English words so pupils have the give the French or even both permutations.

Running the test on my imported dictionary  created a test of the full 1900 words which is a particularly cruel test even by my standards.

To create smaller more manageable tests you can use the Smart Groups system to reduce the list down to any number of questions.

Better still you can create any number of Smart Groups so theoretically you can produce a test  for each year group you teach using the same dictionary.

The fact OSX offers the ability to print to PDF means vocabulary tests can be created in Portable Document Format for inclusion on school networks or better Virtual Learning Environments such as Moodle. (Five Steps to Moodle Success).

• Printable bingo games.
• Printable flash cards.
• Words and flashcards support audio and images.
• Twitter integration.
• iChat Theater integration.
• iPhone client.
• You don’t need to be a computer expert to use it.

Keep Your Word is a really nice Flash Card revision system that although particularly advantageous for Language education could equally be useful in any subject where definitions need to be revised.

Input is very simple but the added advantage of being able to download dictionaries online makes KYW a real useful application for any learner

Related:

• Adding an AUP to Moodle
• Pupil Email : Debate
• Glossaries in Moodle
• 5 Steps to Moodle Success
• 2nd Life and Moodle

Young people, aged 16-25, keen to get an inside track on the film industry can do just that in December, as the Cinemagic ‘Talent Lab’, sponsored by Invest Northern Ireland, returns to Belfast as part of the annual Coca-Cola Cinemagic Film and Television Festival for Young People.

Promising to be a fantastic mix of creativity, fun and learning, the ‘Talent Lab’ will offer young people the chance to participate in a unique series of industry masterclasses on 3rd and 4th December, culminating in a special awards ceremony in Odeon Cinemas.

Masterclasses include Fights for Stage and Screen with Youngblood’s fight director Tim Klotz (Shakespeare’s Globe, Lyric Hammersmith, Royal Festival Hall), Make-up for Film with Academy Award winning hair and make-up artist Christine Blundell (Topsy Turvy, Casino Royale, Sherlock Holmes), …..

……..Costume Design with Academy Award winning designer Jenny Beavan (A Room with a View, Gosford Park, Alexander), Script Writing with Ryan Rowe (Tapeheads, Run’s House, I’m on Fire), Film Production with Terry Bamber (Casino Royale, Quantum of Solace, Phantom of the Opera) and David Cain (Thunderbirds, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, Hannibal Rising),……

……Casting with highly acclaimed casting director Ros Hubbard (The Commitments, The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Bourne Ultimatum), and Location Management with Andrew Wilson (City of Ember, Middletown, Breakfast on Pluto).

Joan Burney Keatings, Cinemagic Chief Executive, encourages young people aged 16 -25 to get involved: “With valued support from Invest NI, Cinemagic is once again able to offer a fantastic series of ‘Talent Lab’ masterclasses for young people interested in learning about the film industry. All of the masterclass participants will be given first-hand advice and gain new skills from the film professionals over the two days. It’s a chance to network with other like-minded people and pick up top tips on how to succeed in the industry.”

Sharon Polson, Invest NI’s Head of Entrepreneurship Development, said: “The creative industries including film and television offer a wealth of business and career opportunities, and it is important that our young people are made aware of these possibilities as they consider their future professions. By supporting the development of skills in these sectors we can further strengthen the reputation of Northern Ireland as a global hub for screen production.”

Ingrid Arthurs, Moving Image Arts Subject Officer, CCEA said: “CCEA is delighted to be hosting three exciting Cinemagic ‘Talent Lab’ masterclasses. Each of the film craft-based workshops will be of particular value to CCEA’s Moving Image Arts, Art & Design and Drama students, who will benefit greatly from this dynamic and hands-on learning opportunity.”

For further information on cost/venues and to apply for any of the ‘Talent Lab’ Masterclasses, sponsored by Invest Northern Ireland, please email HYPERLINK “mailto:shauna@cinemagic.org.uk” shauna@cinemagic.org.uk requesting a Registration Form, Tel 028 90 311 900 or write to Shauna Shivers, Cinemagic, 49 Botanic Avenue, Belfast, BT7 1JL.

The Coca-Cola Cinemagic International Film and Television Festival runs in Belfast from 18th November- 4th December 2009 and it includes more than 100 film screenings and over 50 different workshops, competitions, masterclasses and film-related events.

For programme information visit the Cinemagic Website.

Related:

• Film Critics Needed
• Festival Serves ‘UP’ A Feast!
• Arts and Business Partnership
• Cinemagic Young Filmmakers
• Call for Submissions

There hasn’t been a massive amount of education technology news posted this week but I thought you might like to know about a new Mac and iPhone related posts that are currently particularly popular on the TotalApps site. Not specifically focused at education they still might be of use to the avid ICT user.

1. Tweetie 2

The Twitterverse has come alive with news of the release of Tweetie 2 for iPhone and iPod Touch. (link)

2. EyeTV App for iPhone

A video tutorial on how to set up EyeTV App for iPhone and iPod Touch. (link).

3. Eye-Fi Coming to the UK

Eye-Fi have just announced they are releasing their brilliant wireless SD cards in the UK. the Eye-Fi card allows you to store images and immediately transfer them to your computer (or websites such as Facebook) instantly over a wireless network. (link).

4. Adding winter with Photoshop

My first ever Photoshop tutorial, I thought it looked well but a few reader comments suggest otherwise. (link).

5. Overview / How To use FlipShare

This tutorial looks at the Flipshare application that ships with Flip cameras. It is a brilliant and powerful application that allows direct export to YouTube. (link).

Related:

• My 10 Daily Apps
• Mac Mini Media Heaven ?
• EyeTV Sat Review
• EyeTV in Education
• 5 Point iPhoto Workflow

September was a bit of a turning point for DigMo! Having made the decision to focus purely on education it was great to see the learning technology content featuring favourably in the top ten posts of the month.  The top article (10 educational uses for flip video) has seen over 60 re-tweets and over 80 delicious bookmarks.

1. 10 Educational uses for Flip Video
2. 7 Free Apps for Education
3. Apple Motion : 3D Shadows
4. Teachers and Social Networks
5. Prizmo : OCR via Camera
6. Concert Photo Guide
7. LiveTV Comes to iPhone
8. Easy Presets in Lightroom 2
9. Flickr Comes to iPhone
10. Video Education and the VLE

Now that we are keeping DigMo! education focused the Mac and iPhone content can now be found over at www.totalapps.net

Related:

• No Related Post

TotalApps has a copy of the brilliant “wallet” application to give away to one of their RSS subscribers and it isn’t too late to enter. All you have to do is subscribe to their RSS feed (here) and post the special code at the bottom of the competition article on their website. Visit the site for full details.

In terms of what wallet can do, well here is the quote : “I have been looking for an password / serial number application for Mac for a few years now and Wallet goes a very long way in meeting all my password and security needs. The additional benefit of Mac to Mac syncing via MobileMe as well as the ability to sync with the iPod Touch and iPhone make Wallet a perfect serial number storage solution for any user. The application is definitely well deserving of our 5/5 rating.”

Read the full review here.

Related:

• No Related Post

This week @colinnapier has produced an invaluable resource for our students. Seven completely free applications to replace their expensive commercial counterparts. These applications have been put on CD for those pupils who would face problems downloading over 600MB of software. We tried to select applications that offered both Windows and Mac support.

The good news is this isn’t a list of applications with special offers for education, they are free for everyone to use.

So here is the list….. (Titles are clickable links).

1. Audacity (Windows and Mac)
Audacity is an open source free audio editing program, useful for working with music files and podcasts etc. We recommend you also install the Lame plugin included to enable you to export your files as MP3s.

2. Dia (Windows only)
Brilliant diagram software for making flowcharts etc. The application has great support via the community forums and is very easy to use with a large number of preset shapes to start from. This is the only application on the list with no Mac version though.

3. GIMP (Windows and Mac)
The GNU Image Manipulation Program is an advanced editor for images, in the same league as Photoshop but completely free. The application is really easy to use and has all the tools and features we need for image manipulation for animation, ICT websites and multimedia presentations. Definitely a worthy alternative to Photoshop in schools.

4. Kompozer (Windows and Mac)
Kompozer is a free fully featured HTML web site creation program. WYSIWYG allows easy site creation but you can also use the advanced code editor to make custom changes. Kompozer is very similar to Dreamweaver in operation.

5. Open Office (Windows and Mac)
Open Office is a complete replacement for Microsoft Office. It contains free versions to replace Word (Writer), Excel (Calc) and Powerpoint (Impress). All programs give the option to “save as” in MS Office formats.

6. XMind (Windows and Mac)
Free “Mind mapping” program to get ideas down for essays and coursework. Xmind can export maps as images making it perfect for inserting into Word, Pages or even webpages. Xmind is fully featured and we use it in both ICT and Moving Image Arts as an ideas manager for coursework.

7. Google Sketchup (Windows and Mac)
This is a fully featured 3d modeling program. Information and help videos are available on the web site.

If we have missed any great free applications that you currently use with your pupils please do post suggestions in the comments.

While you are at it why not take a look at TotalApps a new Mac and iPhone website offering RSS subscriber competitions.

Related:

• Pupil Email : Debate
• Teachers and Social Networks
• ICT : Creativity and Communication
• 10 Educational uses for Flip Video
• An iPhonic Year

I have seen a number of students in Moving Image Arts painstakingly overlay and position video footage in FCP to achieve the split screen effect. It takes hours and the time is spent not in being creative but in nudging, adjusting and aligning. Things just might be getting easier with a plugin effect called SplitScreen.

SplitScreen, an effect for Final Cut Pro that lets busy editors create complex split-screen shapes by just dragging and dropping. SplitScreen works right on the Final Cut Pro timeline, without requiring a trip to another application. With SplitScreen, you can choose from among 35 different pre-made split-screens, or mix and match a set of smaller split-screen components to create your own. SplitScreen allows you to easily draw any custom split-screen shape, drop in video clips, and re-center, all within Final Cut Pro.

Because SplitScreen is based on Apple’s Master Template architecture, busy editors can use SplitScreen right inside of Final Cut Pro, saving the time and expense of a visit to a VFX shop.

CrumplePop SplitScreen let you grab any video clip in your project and drop it into whatever part of the split-screen you like. Then, you just click and drag to re-center your clip, framing just your subject’s eyes, hands, or whatever part of the frame you want. That’s it – render and you’re done.

SplitScreen supports 35 different video codecs, resolutions, and framerates including XDCAMEX, XDCAMHD, DVCProHD, HDV, DV, PAL, 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 480i, 24fps, 30fps, 25fps, 50fps, and 60fps. SplitScreen works with both Final Cut Pro 6 and Final Cut Pro 7.

The plugin costs $69 (USD) but given the time it will save I would say that is a bit of a bargain. The plugin is by CrumblePop who also have a range of free downloads available.

Links:
CrumplePop

Related:

• My 10 Daily Apps
• Final Cut – Reversing Clips
• Time Freeze in Final Cut
• Post Production Saves Blackadder?
• Final Cut Server Update

With the new Apple Final Cut Studio comes Motion4 packed with even more features, Jerry Leer takes us step my step through generating and working with 3D shadows. This is the first of our tutorials to be in High Definition which we are pretty excited about.

About the Author
Jerry is an Apple certified trainer and Adobe certified instructor with over 16 years experience in post production and training. He is a freelance trainer for video and motion graphics and is currently presenting on Propeller TV (Sky 195).

If you are new to Motion check out the Motion Templates website where you will find 6 more free templates that show the new features of Motion4. Also to keep up with the latest Motion news why not follow Jerry on Twitter.

Links:
Free Motion Templates

Related:

• Motion Tutorial : Reflections
• Apple Motion : Drop Zones
• Customising Apple Motion Templates
• Free Apple Motion Die
• Free Apple Motion Templates