Learning Technology - Flip Video

It's been a while since my last post so to quickly catch you up, I've been to Boston and back, survived a broken down bus and a 5 hour wait at a Pennsylvania truck stop for a replacement and I still haven't finished my grown up book. That means I haven't read any kid lit for while and honestly, I miss it! Any way, I haven't been doing nothing, I'm still working on my summer goal of learning technology to use with the kids in the library next year. As much as I love my books, they will always come first as I have said many times, I realize I'm doing a disservice to the students of Bailey by not including some very cool technology to help them look at the books in an entirely different way. The thing I've been working with lately is a Flip video camera. Franki put me onto this thing, so I bought one to play with over the summer to see if I think I can use it with students next year.

Over the Fourth of July I was in my hometown of Ashland, Ohio where they host a hot air balloon festival every year. It's very cool to see these gentle giants up close and my middle sister and her daughter actually crew for one of the balloons. This has allowed my daughter to participate as well, and two years ago, she actually got to fly in the balloon. Yes, the lovely Mrs. Prosser and I are a bit jealous of this fact. Anyway, I took the Flip camera along and just shot a bunch of short clips of balloons taking off and then in the evening they do a "balloon glow" where the pilots shoot flames into the grounded balloons and light them up, very cool. I edited the film using iMovie and added the song Flying from the Peter Pan soundtrack I believe, pretty easy and fun. Have a look and let me know what you think. If you're interested, the balloon my family is involved with is called Conglomeration and is black with various colors running vertically down the sides.