Quick Link to Photo Story 3 Tutorial
During the 2004 - 2005 school year we worked with 3 students on a History Day Project. During this project they created a Video Documentary about the Vietnam War. Here is a minute of the opening scene of their video. It is presented in Windows Media Player. The download can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx
The video should appear above you. It is a 1 minute preview. Give it a minute to start. If it doesn't start click here. Movie
This website is divided into 3 parts.
Part 1 is the research for primary sources material for the History Day Project.
Part 2 is the use of technology. This includes Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1, Microsoft Sound Recorder, and Microsoft Photo Story 3. These are all free programs we found useful. We also used parts of DVD movies in the documentary. A discussion of how this takes place will be found in Part 2.
Part 3 is the things we learned
Part 1: Primary Sources
The video was made with Adobe After Effects and Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1. After Effects allow the user to use special effects and manipulate video. Movie Maker 2.1 has wider applications to educators because of its ease of use. The subject was The Vietnam War.
Here are the primary links for the History Day Competition. It explains the rules and procedures for competing.
National Contest http://www.nationalhistoryday.org/
State Contest http://www.crf-usa.org/history_day/HistoryDay.html
Riverside County Contest http://www.rcoe.k12.ca.us/news/2004_05/hd_05.html
We helped students search out primary sources on the Internet. We sent them to the Kent State University Website and many others. We also learned how to find better primary sources as we went through this journey with them. Not only did we search out primary sources having to do with text we sought primary sources of audio and video. We found this challenging but we were able to overcome. We found web pages created by PBS held interviews from the past from Walter Cronkite and other interviews. There were other videos we found online that were placed in the documentary.
The primary sources are out there on the net but it takes time to find them.
Part 2: The use of technology
All programs discussed in this section are free downloads.
The topics covered here are:
Microsoft Movie Maker 2.1
Microsoft Sound Recorder
DVD Skrink
Auto Gordian Knot
Microsoft Photo Story 3 (tutorial included)
Movie Maker 2.1 is used for assembling videos together. The History Day students used a digital video camera to interview adults. They took the video and placed it into Movie Maker 2.1. Movie Maker 2.1 is similar to I-Movie. The interface is quite intuitive and easy to learn. They also placed pictures and primary source video into the documentary.
Microsoft Sound Recorder is used for recording sound. When we found primary source audio we faced the difficulty of transferring the audio into a usable file format. Some audio was in Real Audio, Windows Media Audio, MP3, or something else. We found our computer could play the audio but we couldn't place the audio in our movie. The following is our solution. It worked quite well. We brought two computers together. One computer would play the audio. The other computer had a microphone attached to it. With the microphone attached to the computer we could record high quality audio. The only down side was that Sound Recorder could only record two minutes at a time.
DVD Shrink is used for taking a copyrighted DVD and making parts of it editable. More information can be found at www.dvdshrink.org. The opening scene of the documentary is taken from the movie We Were Brothers. This is legal under the Fair Use of Copyright Law. DVD shrink decodes a DVD and places it on the hard drive of a computer. At this point the video is still not usable in Movie Maker. One more step is needed.
Auto Gordian Knot takes the DVD files found on the hard drive and converts them to a file format called avi. At this point the DVD movie is now editable. The students were able to take small portions of the DVD and place them in the documentary. The website can be found at http://www.autogk.me.uk/index.php.
Photo Story 3 was a program we discovered after the documentary was completed. Microsoft has made the program free to everyone that will upgrade to Windows XP Service Pack 2. This is a free upgrade as long as you have Windows XP. You can find a tutorial on downloading and using the website by clicking Photo Story. This program lets you turn pictures into mini movies. It puts a professional touch on photos that a person wants to turn into a short video. Mrs. Lafferty and I built a video about Civil War Women. If you will wait the video will appear on the next line. It is presented in Windows Media Player. The download for Media Player can be found here: http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/default.aspx
Place your mouse over the movie to begin.
If the video does not appear please click Civil War Women to view.
Part 3: What we learned
Our 3 students entered the History Day competition for Riverside County. Students from several other school entered the contest also. Our students' History Day Competition ended with Riverside County while others went onto the State Competition.
Competing in the History Day Competition takes a big effort from the students and teachers.
The technology is available and the students are able to make good use of it.
The students relied too heavily on the Internet for their primary sources. They should have sought out primary sources at the local library and other places.