Click on the graphic to view the video with TeacherTube.

Angela from CORE asked me to do a write up for it for the Time4Celebration theme so I had to make up a scholarly dissertation on why I did it but it was really just a bit of fun. Here is the blurb I wrote for @Ageja

• Purpose – The project started out as a bit of fun- it ended up that way too. We thought we would make a collaborative video in a similar style to the http://wherethehellismatt.com video that is wildly popular on You Tube. By having a collaborative dance video we were able to transcend cultural and language barriers as everyone loves to move and dance- it is pretty universal.

• Process –I wanted the video to have an element of New Zealand wide participation but also wanted to include our global audience so I blogged about it on my education blog and on Twitter I also mentioned it when I was moderating the K12OnLine conference These avenues ensured that we got more than just New Zealand videos and added a little cultural diversity.

• I asked that people email their videos to my little used gmail address so as to keep my main email spam free in case it got picked up by a spammer. I had a bit of trouble converting some of the videos as they came from various operating systems and in a variety of formats so I had to use a couple of online video converters and my clever Adobe Flash Video Encoder . I learnt new stuff cos I had to grab a couple of videos from people’s Blogger or Flickr accounts and turn them into movie files on my Apple. I used Orbit Downloader and it was fortunate that I had Parallels on my Mac so I could change the format using the free PC Format Factory to convert the Flash files into something that I could easily edit.

• I used iMovie06 to create the final video as I haven’t got the hang of iMovie08 yet. I then exported it as a Quicktime movie file for uploading into ‘the cloud’. Along the way I either stripped away the original soundtrack or lowered the volume so that a universal sound track from FreePlay Music could go over the whole set to tie the thing together. I also added subtitles so people would know where in the world the videos came from.

• The finished the movie was uploaded to Fileden here so that people could download the 24MB file and save it without having to worry about buffering or viewing on possibly blocked YouTube or Flickr sites. I also uploaded it to Teacher Tube that was less likely to be blocked and YouTube so that kids could actually find it for themselves. In this way people could either view it directly with streaming video or download the higher resolution video if they wanted to to play it back for whole class viewing.

• Product – People were asked to send in up to 20 seconds of video so I could put it together with the final cut off date 7 November- giving people plenty of time to organize themselves. The quality of the resolution of the video varied quite a bit as some teachers did not have access to digital video recorders but all videos were included in the spirit of global collaboration.

• Reflection – It would be great to do a similar kind of thing again as it was so much fun to see what others had come up with and didn’t take very long to complete. It just needed someone with a bit of time on their hands to act as a hub for everyone to send their videos in to. Kids seem to have got into the spirit of it and look forward to seeing the finished published product.

Thank you so much to all the contributers and their classes from around New Zealand, Canada, Bangkok, the United Kingdom, @fionagrant, @charbeck, @kathycassidy, @lisibo, @efreeman, @nzchrissy, @keamac, @teachernz, @leannehough, @lenva, @jaminlietze, @njt24 and to the hundreds of kids and their teachers who enjoy a sense of fun and adventure who like to participate in a community wider than their classroom walls.

You rock!

New lesson for me- Flickr videos are only 1min 30seconds. I will have to cut it up. That’s a pity though so I suggest if you want good quality you go to the Fileden link and download the whole movie in Quicktime – 24MB

I had subscribed to the RSS podcast feed and now have an almost full set of videos from the conference to watch, re-watch and share. Look for the podcast channels link above the cluster map.

I feel humbled to personally know couple of the presenters and conveners…

- Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach who along with Darren Kuropatwa, Wes Fryer and Dean Shareski organised the thing. Thanks people- you did a great job.
- Nelson’s own Elaine Newton ECE ICTPD facilitator did a presentation titled Action Research as Catalyst for Change in Teacher Practice and Outcomes for Children.
- Chris Betcher, a fellow Adobe Educational Leader from Aussie did a presentation title “I Like Delicious Things- an introduction to tagging.

I would encourage you to grab the podcast feed and have a listen to whatever takes your fancy. All presentations are limited to 20 minutes so they won’t take too long to download and learn from. The nice thing about this conference is that all of the media is just sitting there waiting for your attention- all year round- waiting for you to have a moment to learn something new and to reflect on the practice of others.

The final event of the conference was an Elluminate session called “When Night Falls’ where educators from round the world can get together and share what they have learnt and generally discuss issues relating to education. I had volunteered to help moderate a session for an hour or so and found it to be a great way to really get to know how to use this collaborative tool. I have been part of numerous Elluminate sessions before but now I feel a lot less nervous when using it. Sometimes just jumping in at the deep end is the best way to learn how to do something. In the first hour there were over thirty people in the virtual room all chatting away and adding their names and locations to the whiteboard.