The Panasonic DMC-GH1 is a game-changer that provides video power to the people.

The Panasonic GH1

Often the corporate game-changers aren’t the big players. Big players like Canon or Nikon have too much invested to risk radical change, whereas a company like Panasonic doesn’t have the same legacy. Panasonic is more able to offer a radically new product and that new product is the GH1. The GH1 looks like a small SLRD. But it is much more! It can capture digital video at 1080p24 to an inexpensive SD card for fast and easy transfer to a computer. It has a built in stereo microphone, but more importantly it has a microphone input. This means a quality 3^rd party microphone can be added for professional sound.

 

Because of its unique engineering the GH1 is arguably the smallest SLRD with video capacity on the market. It represents the leading edge of the new micro four thirds lens standard. The ability to use a range of lenses allows professional quality video to be shot at a price most people can afford. Its lens standard also allows extremely functional cameras to be built at a fraction of their microwave-sized brethren offered by the other manufacturers. Bigger is not better when you have to pay for it and then lug it around.

 

The DMC-GH1 has a 3 inch LCD screen and a viewfinder. More importantly it offers full manual control when shooting. This feature can give a skilled operator’s video a professional look. The camera also operates in fully automatic mode which is great for introducing students to videos.

 

The camera and kit lens will cost something over $1000; not chicken feed, but a bargain when you consider that you get both an excellent 12 MP still camera and a high-quality video camera. The GH1 will be in the stores by early summer, a good time to buy one and learn how to use it.  You would be ready for an eager new cohort of students in September.

The N86 and the Future of Multimedia Storytelling

The biggest challenge of multimedia storytelling is recording student productions and publishing them to the web as efficiently as possible. Efficiently means fast and half of fast means having the right tools. The other half of fast relates to attitude and skill sets, but more about that on another blog.

Nokia has a new cell phone the N86. It is a minor case of déjà vu, as I recently wrote about the JVC GY-HM100U and Canon 5D Mark II. The N86 caught my attention for a similar reason – convergence. The Canon is an SLRD that records HD video while the JVC is an inexpensive professional video camera that records in a codex native to Final Cut Pro providing ease of editing. I won’t belabour the benefits of these products here, but they point the way to a future where professional quality multimedia video is available at a fraction of the current cost and in a pocket sized package. Nokia’s N86 continues the line of technological evolution. What makes the N86 special is its high quality 8 mp camera (with a Carl Zeiss lens). It has been described as a camera with a cell phone attached. It also captures 640×480 video at 30 frames per second, not good enough for the big screen but fine for the internet. With its ability to record audio and some text, it is a powerful multimedia tool the size of a chocolate bar, all for under $500. And the N86 can directly upload content to the internet wherever you are.

There are similar emerging products like the N86 and together they provide a glimpse of the possibilities for multimedia storytelling in the very foreseeable future. Yes I think I have seen the future of multimedia. Now, if I could only do something really useful and see the future of the stock market!

Why are these the best times to tell multimedia stories?

•  We are seeing undreamed of possibilities for sharing our creations. Through web 2.0 social networking via the internet we can have an audience of thousands and possibly millions. All this with no real cost. Youtube, Twitter, Facebook, WordPress and Del.icio.us provide us with infinite possibilities for meaningful exchange.

 

•   The dramatic drop in the hardware costs of creating multimedia stories brings unprecedented opportunities. Not only has it dropped to affordable levels but it is set to drop a lot further! A dozen years ago a video camera with professional features would cost tens of thousands of dollars. Now cameras such as the Canon XH A1 can out perform those earlier monsters for around $3000. If that still seems too rich for your wallet, take heart; 75 000 people have viewed our 50 odd Cayoosh Kidz videos. These videos were done on a camera costing around $300.

 

• There is the availability of free, or near free multimedia editing software: software for video editing, photoshop-type programs for pictures and Audacity for editing sound. These programs ensure that we can sculpture our raw files into pleasing final products.

 

• We not only have the technical means to produce multimedia stories; we have the evolution of accessible simplified new media grammar. With radical changes in the news industry, new approaches to creating web based media have appeared. These approaches easily transfer from the news-gathering realm to the educational. Educators are under the same constraints of time and budgets as reporters. By learning to tell stories like reporters we can quickly master the skills necessary to both tell our own stories, and assist our students to tell theirs. These emerging resources can be found at sites such as Advancing the Story  or Mastering Multimedia . Here they boil down the process of digital creativity to its simple essence and provide great models to inspire us.

 

We have the tools and we have access to the techniques, now all that’s needed is the creative spark. What are we waiting for?

Media Type 2 – Images

 

Using a couple of photographs on your web page is easy, but have more than a dozen and it starts to become confusing, especially if you want to change them often. Flickr http://www.flickr.com, or other similar photo sharing sites, provide the ease and flexibility that you want to display photographs. Using a media hosting site you can easily display hundreds of photos (and videos), write about them, and link them to blogs, all with a few mouse clicks. Best of all it is free.   

 

Telling Stories

 

The type of images that can be displayed is only limited by your imagination. For example you can display art by taking pictures of student projects. Uploading takes less time than stapling them to a bulletin board. Students can explore photojournalism by explaining and commenting on their photographs; Flickr can become blog-like in its function. Your can see some of the possibilities by looking at http://www.flickr.com/photos/grade5/. Content intended to be displayed for extended periods is worth placing on your webpage http://www.cayooshkidz.net/interviews/mrsay.html .

 

Safety and Legal

 

The wellbeing of students is an absolute priority. Cayoosh Kidz never allows any identifying personal information to be associated with children. First names and photographs never appear together and last names are never used. We encourage students to create a web nickname to protect their identity.

 

Students do not have access to the sites where the information is stored. They present all of their work to a teacher who then posts the information. This prevents any possibility of direct contact between the students and someone who has seen their work online. Make sure that your school has a signed release form for every child that will be part of the multimedia project.

 

The images on the Cayoosh Kidz web site are student created photographs. It is necessary to carefully edit all photos for appropriate content before uploading them. Our resolution is kept low to discourage copying of the photographs.

 

The Canadian government provides an excellent resource to ensure general safety while using the Internet. http://www.safecanada.ca/link_e.asp?category=3&topic=94

 

Links for better photographs and learning ideas:

 

http://www.adobe.com/education/digkids/lessons/index.html

http://www.fujifilmusa.com/JSP/fuji/epartners/LearningLessonPlans.jsphttp://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-locale=en_US&pq-path=317http://www.microsoft.com/education/Pictures.mspx  http://www.shortcourses.com/