Gotta Keep Reading Video on Oprah’s Show Today

Got an unusual email from the boss, Dr. Ludgate, this morning saying that she wasn’t going to be able to make today’s graduation ceremony. Bummer. The reason for the absence was because the “Gotta Keep Reading“ video that we’d assisted in creating with Ocoee Middle School was going to be a segment on the Oprah Winfrey show today. What? Oprah’s people set up a satellite connection this morning so that she could talk to Ocoee Middle School principal Sharyn Gabriel, reading coach Janet Bergh and two students about the video, with the student body gathered in the same quad area where the video had been filmed last December. How’s that for a Friday morning wake-up call?

The segment featured a shorter version of the video and a little Q&A between Winfrey, Gabriel, Bergh and the students, and ended with Oprah announcing that Target Stores had been enlisted to help upgrade Ocoee’s library. Below is the original video and beneath that several stills of the 1,285 that I shot during the video shoot.

Hard to imagine that an idea shared last Fall in a downtown Orlando restaurant has resulted in an inspirational video that’ll be a life-long memory for the 1,700 students who participated and now has become part of the national conversation on the importance of reading.

sources:
all images by Joe Bustillos.

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明版的Howard 3-year-old drummer

Three-year-old Howard Wong rocks out on the drums and has a good time at it. Fun. I bet the Asian characters in the title are saying something rude about stupid monolingual americans. jbb

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Gotta Keep Reading – Ocoee Middle School video

Dr. Ludgate, emdt program director wrote: “Ocoee Middle School is the state technology demonstration school for Florida- showcased every year at FETC. A few months ago the EMDT crew met with Sharyn Gabriel (principal) and a few staff to discuss a Flash Mob idea. They were so inspired by the Flash mob scene from the Oprah and Black Eyed Peas show- they wanted to try the same concept – educationally inspired. They hired a professional singer to write and sing lyrics related to reading and literacy to encourage kids to prepare and read for the FCAT test. “The amazing Full Sail Online Production team made this all happen- they even let the Ocoee Middle School production class shadow them and gave them mini-lessons throughout the shooting process.”

I was there taking still photos during the video shoot & the energy was amazing. If you look really carefully at 3:00 in the video I’m the little black dot on the extreme left of the screen by the trees taking pictures. What an amazing day.

Also, now the response videos are beginning to pop up (song pops up 1:40 in..) and I love that they “freeze” when the video stops because of buffering!):

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#1 Music Recording of 2009 That You Can’t Buy

I have no business reviewing music. I gave up on keeping up with what’s hip in music when studio tricks took over for musical talent. Yeah, I’m an old fart. That said, a top 5 list written by Nathan Chase caught my attention because Chase’s #1 recording was a collection that you can’t get at Amazon or Wallmart or iTunes: Kutiman’s “ThruYOU” project.

I previously posted a blog entry about the ThruYou project after a friend sent me a link to the project on the same day that the Buzz Out Loud podcast crew commented on Jonathan Coulton’s blog post about the project. Like Coulton, my first impulse is to go on and on about the tour de force that this project represents and how it reveals how ridiculously broke copyright is. One track from the project, Wait For Me, has almost 140,000 views. After listening to the project I bought his commercially available CD, Escape Route, from Amazon (in DRM-free downloadable MP3 form). That’s one sale of a record that wouldn’t have happened had this artist posted his creation for free on YouTube. As Larry Lessig said in his TED presentation, this is not about taking someone else’s work and passing it off as ones own (piracy), but taking what has gone before and making something completely new: remix culture.

An excellent website has been created listing the Thru-YOU videos and all of the contributing videos: http://thru-you.org

Sources:

* My Top 5 Albums of 2009 – Tortoise, Muse, P.O.S., Mute Math, & Kutiman by Nathan Chase, http://nathanchase.com/2009/12/my-top-5-albums-of-2009-tortoise-muse-p-o-s-mute-math-kutiman/ retrieved 12/31/2009.

* YouTube video: Kutiman-Thru-you – 06 – Wait For Me by Kutiman, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i88CKr6Shn4 retrieved 12/31/2009.

* TED Talks: Larry Lessig on laws that choke creativity by Larry Lessig, http://www.ted.com/talks/lang/eng/larry_lessig_says_the_law_is_strangling_creativity.html retrieved on 12/31/2009

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Street Meets… Pedestrian: Christian Side Hug

When the rapper begins screaming, “Are you ready to party?!” the crowd goes wild. Apparently there’s a lot of pent up energy here. Then for the life of me I couldn’t figure out if this was straight or parody. I think it’s both… This video is totally def with an “A”… ack.

Sources:
youtube video: “Christian Side Hug” by 1337ven0m07. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g91J37qcRfI retrieved on 12/13/2009

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Oh, That We Could All Be This Happy in Retail

Steve Jobs was once fond of quoting Picasso when Picasso said, “Bad artists copy, great artists steal.” Having attended several Apple events at various Apple Stores I can attest to the sense of Fun and Community that happens at these events. I think I would have concluded that the Apple Store employees were on drugs if they would have “spontaneously” broke into dance. Having copied everything else that one can find in an Apple Store, Microsoft Store employees demonstrate why “Cool” is NEVER used when referring to the Microsoft experience. (Well, except for the cute girl in the green T-shirt…)

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Carl Sagan – ‘A Glorious Dawn’ ft Stephen Hawking (Cosmos Remixed)

Thanks to Dr. Kiki for tweeting about this remix: “”Carl Sagan Remixed is the best use of auto-tuning ever! I have watched this about 100 times today” – Dr. Kiki Sanford (@drkiki). We lost a good one when CS passed on, but I guess his words and thoughts live on in video tape and remixes. Amazing.

Following is a video montage from the day Carl Sagan died:

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New Neva Video: Things I’ll Never Be

Except for my Twitter feed, I haven’t been posting on my blog hardly at all over the past couple months because I’ve been moving and crazy busy at work. And I am way behind posting photos to my flickr account because I haven’t had the time to edit the shuttle launch clips. Ack. I was able to launch a demo version of a website/blog for my friend Neva. As I was updating her gig calendar I saw that she had a new YouTube video… I miss having the chance to stroll down the street and catch this girls shows. Damn. Enjoy.

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Show Me What You Learned (blog, blog, blog) – An FSO Student Music Video

Sorry, self-indulgent, no doubt, but damn funny… well, at least for my students who have to suffer through my course, Media Asset Creation. Thanks Abram Siegel

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What the Heck is edm613 Media Asset Creation – A Student’s View

Last week I was all proud of the presentation I’d given to my fellow course directors explaining what my class was all about. I had intended to make a video version of that presentation and post it here to help spread the Full Sail/EMDTMS love. Then one of my students turned in the following piece as his “Show Me What You Learned” project. Yeah, upstaged by my own students. I’m getting very used to this…


My parody of E-40 and Keak the Sneak’s song “Tell Me When To Go”

No video, just a static picture.

The lyrics can be found here

On a serious note, knowing more specifics about convergent culture and copyright law will help me as the collaboration is a goal of mine for my final project, and the law part will help me stay legal. The book “The Art of Possibility” probably had the greatest impact on me that will not only help me going into the media project and finishing the thesis, but with my teaching as well. – Abram Siegel

Actually, I’ll do the video presentation later, but I just had to share this version because it is so fracking creative and right on! Sorry, self-indulgent? No doubt, but damn funny… well, at least for my students who have to suffer through my course. I love my job and the folks I get to work with. jbb

Sources

Blog gang sign. (n.d.) http://blog.theavclub.tv

Jenkins, H. (2006). Convergence culture: Where old and new media collide. New York: New York University Press

Zander, R. & Zander, B. (2002). The art of possibility: Transforming professional and personal life. New York: Penguin Books.

Music: The Golden Age by Mark Heard from the Mosaics CD (out of print)

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