Back to School Technology Preview...

This year at the IT Academy, students will have the various opportunities to enjoy and learn about all kinds of things!

Here is a list of some of the things we have in store for the Technology Labs:

Poster Mosaic: Each student creates one piece of a whole illustrated poster!
"Campfire Tales": Creative storytelling through digital audio!
Social Justice Social Media: Students bring a cause and learn how to effectively educate others about what they care about!
Self-Portrait: Illustrate your self or your friends in creative ways!
Accessibility and Assistive Technology: Creative journey into how technology can help in many, many ways!

Using AfterEffects in Post-Production: Learn ways to use AfterEffects to adjust the video you've captured and add the subtle visual qualities that can transform the viewer experience. 

Space Text: Moving typography in film using AfterEffects!
Going Green: An exploration of the green movement in technology!
Hack This:  Not that kind of hacking... learn to make technology work for YOU in ways it wasn't necessarily designed for.
Data Visualization: Learn about the unusually fascinating and exciting world of visualizing data!
Audio Equipment Virtualization: Using virtual synthesizers, drum machines, patch cords, and effects racks -- ON A BROWSER! http://audiotool.com/app
Polyvore Magazine Layout: Learn some of the tricks of the trade in magazine page layout, using a super cool and fun website! http://www.polyvore.com/

Commercial Fun! Make short (50 seconds or less) commercials, focusing on storyline and product placement.
How DOES that work? Ever wondered how that worked? Learn some tools to find out!

It's going to be quite a semester! Keep looking out for future updates and see the amazing work of our students as these workshops unfold!

Dear Many Uses Students, Thanks for a Great Audio and Video Day

Ann Tran
- ITA Tech Instructor -

The third day into The Many Uses of Computer Camp started with the students discussing their favorite genre in music. A lot of the students listened to Rock, Oldies, Hip-Hop, and R&B.

Then, they immersed themselves into a free music creation program called "Roc" on aviary.com to compose two measures of rhythm starting with a kick drum, snare, and various other instruments. All of the students, with or without musical background, had their own unique beat. After, they used Sony Acid to add a bass line and record a voice over. In the voice over, the students composed a thank you note to the ITA students and staff for being accepted into the program.

With their audio good to go, the students dived right into Adobe Premiere, a video editing program. After an hour, the students were able to piece the video together with pre-filmed shots of the first couple days of them at ITA!

In only three short hours, the students transformed into music producers and video editors! It was a ton of fun!!

NOTICE: Video coming soon!

2011 Motion Pictures Camp off to a great start!

Today marked the start of the Sophomore Motion Pictures Camp.

In the early morning, students showed up for their first introduction into film making including a range of topics from cinematography to editing to acting. Classes were separated into two halves, so each student could focus in on a particular skill in acting or directing.  

Activities sought to provide the basic opportunities to be creative whether through improv acting exercises or the details of shot composition and the editing essentials of Adobe Premiere. After a short break, the two halves were brought together to collaborate on short "ambiguous dialogues." These are scenes in which all the groups have the same very simple, confusing dialogues and they need to work on their acting and planning skills to make it make sense to the audience. In other words, their interpretation is key to the success of the exercise. We did this in order to not only build their skills, but to create a sense of the team environment, and be a safe outlet for creativity in film making.

It was a lot to digest in a short period of time, but the students were up to the task and getting involved with their projects in preparation for their final films.

We hope we can post some of these dialogues tomorrow, when we expect to have them finished!

Senioritis? Not With These ITA Seniors.

Almost half way through the class of 2011's last year at ITA, the seniors are showing no signs of lack of motivation, procrastination, drop in lab performance, or "coasting" through the afternoon. These symptoms more commonly known as senioritis fail to be observed at ITA with this year's excellent students. The students have already shared their proposals for their project at the Holiday Luncheon. For those of you who could not attend, here is a brief re-cap of what the seniors are doing.

Protein Tubar Video by Thor and Thuy Dan

Thor and Thuy Dan are working with Professor Dave Nelson from the department of biochemistry here on campus. They taped an instructional video of Professor Nelson using the Tubar Protein Modeling Kit for SMART teams at Madison West High School. SMART Teams stand for Students Modeling A Research Topic, an extra-curricular activity that introduces high school students to the field of biomolecular research. This video will be used for teachers in the program as a demo of how to use Tubar Kits.

Flash Animations by Eddie and Jeremy

Eddie and Jeremy are creating complex Flash Animations for Professor Sebastian Bednarek of the department of biochemistry. From the pictures on the side you can see their drawing progress thus far. Eddie is working on cell membrane trafficking (on the left) and Jeremy is working on clathrin mediated endocytosis (on the right).

Scientific Demos by Noah and Maya

Noah and Maya are taping scientific demos for the biochemistry course "Exploring the Biomolecular World" taught by Professors Dave Nelson and Michael Patrick. The two scientific demos that Noah and Maya will be filming is a short video on the hydrophobic effect and an experiemnt using Beta-Galactoside.

ITA Recap by Adrianne, Lakoye, and Jasmine

Adrianne, Lakoye, and Jasmine will be using iMovie to create short video presentations about past ITA projects. These projects will be displayed for recruitment and funding meetings to demonstrate the great work done at ITA.

Video Tape of the Crystallography Research Facility

Students will be working with one of the post graduate students working with Professor Katrina Forest. Professor Forest uses x-ray crystallography in her research to study the interactions between humans and microbes. our students' task will be to record a 45 minute video of the entire process.

Interviews of Campus Professors

Students will be venturing to different research laboratories on campus to interview professors about their work. The video's goal will be to inform undergraduate students about the various research on campus to help aid them in choosing which lab to join. The first professor the students will be interviewing is Douglas Weibel from the Department of Biochemistry.

Tutorial on Jmol by Leija and Ivan

Ivan and Leija will be using CamStudio to help record a tutorial of how to use Jmol, a protein modeling software program. They will be recording an expert in Jmol give an instructional lesson of how to use the program and then distribute this video to various science professors on campus.

Holiday Greeting Cards by Ashanti and Julie

Ashanti and Julie are using Adobe Photoshop to create custom-made greeting cards for the UW-Madison Children's Hospital. They will be printing out their designs and hand delivering them in the upcoming months.

ITA Digital Yearbook by Eileen and Kiran

Eileen and Kiran will be creating the second ITA digital yearbook. The yearbook will include fun facts about each ITA student and highlight the events from this past year. Currently, the two are in the process of taking the ITA student yearbook pictures and designing a new layout in Adobe InDesign.

Congratulations Seniors!!! Keep up the great work!

Video Commercials -- Choice Session 2

On December 4th and 11th, one choice session was a unit on making video commercials, giving the students a chance to learn something about the art of advertisement. It was good to see that we had an almost 100% attendance, considering the weather, and everyone was bright-eyed and ready to get some video editing done!

We started with a brief primer on advertising concepts, with the students learning about brand recognition and the necessity of economy of information. Commercial makers don't have a lot of time to get their point across to an audience, especially due to cost to buy air time, so we really wanted to enforce a strict time limit on their projects. We followed the lesson with some examples of famous commercials, including the 1979 Mean Joe Greene Coca-Cola ad and the 1984 Macintosh commercial. We talked about the specific principles involved in each ad--what worked, what didn't, what kind of effect the commercial had, etc.

Here's the Coca-Cola ad:


And, the Mac ad:


With all of this information to arm them, the students launched into their projects. To leave enough time for the 11th Annual Holiday Luncheon, the morning session had twice as much time as the afternoon session did, so the afternoon session was really under the gun when it came to their work.

As a result, the morning session went a little higher on concept, with a lot of recording being done, but not a lot of editing. The afternoon session performed with flying colors, all three groups finishing their project by the end of the class. Yay for them! Impressive work!!

Here are the projects that the afternoon class completed:







Great work, everyone!

Sound in Film

Sound in Film is a class that aims to improve all aspects of audio in student films. Students learned about professional film sound, multiple sound layer editing, techniques to help achieve common audio effects and how to put it all together on screen.

Students came into this course knowing little to nothing about professional audio editing. They were first introduced to professional examples of sound design. Here are a couple examples from the film Star Wars.

Students learned how to film dialogue with multiple angles and using multiple takes. This allows for easier audio editing in post-production. Then, the students learned about ADR (Automated Dialogue Replacement) or overdubbing all the dialogue in a film. They learned how to use high quality microphones to produce better sound than what is recorded from internal camera microphones. In this case we used the Zoom - H2 audio recorders, which are a great product and reasonably priced!

The students were then challenged to create their own film project, using their own scripts. Here's the catch: all the audio had to be created in post-production. This means that no audio captured during filming was allowed to be used "as-is." There were 4 groups and only 2 of the groups considered their projects complete. It was a challenging task that required hard work and dedication. It also required time, and sometimes we run out of that fast. And, although some of the final projects didn't turn out in the end, the learning along the way was invaluable. Students also learned the hard work and pre-production required to finish a project for a deadline.

Here is Clara and Lucy's final project, a trailer for an original gripping feature film called Code Red. It's an upcoming thriller (not really) about foiling a planned attempt to assassinate the president. (Spoiler Alert!) We asked, and he ends up being unharmed in the movie.

Thanks for reading!

Film Beginnings: Viewing "Nosferatu"

Film Beginnings was a Choice Session where I, Tony Sanchez, go over the humble beginnings of film-making. We go over significant advances in film-making technology from the late 1800s to the early 1900s. Students get to watch clips of mostly short silent films, like the first video below, and some early "talkies," like the second video below. Hollywood and movie theater history were also addressed in Film Beginnings.

The students got the chance to view a film from the era which they've learned about, the 1922 horror classic, Nosferatu. This film fits in perfectly for this choice session at the end of October, because it is the very first incarnation of Dracula in a motion picture, ever. And, it's a silent film from the 1920's!

Halloween. Nosferatu. Silent films. Two classes... It was a good Saturday!

After watching the film, we had discussions that spanned a bunch of topics. We tackled questions such as, why would this be a scary film for the time? What has changed since this film was made, and what seems to be the same in Hollywood? And, students finished off the day with writing a blog entry about what they learned and what they make of all this.

We all talked about how we like to watch this type of film, but that it certainly can bring about sleepiness. We felt it too bad that our current culture is all about fast-moving films that focus more on special FX rather than straight-up acting talent. It was also pointed out that most of us only encounter older films in the classroom, rather than at home, or in the theaters.

Morning Highlights:

The Film Beginnings Saturday double-header started out with the sleepy freshmen and juniors. Though groggy and silent, they showed that they were interested by being attentive. They also asked great questions during the lecture.

Nosferatu racked up half the class, but was worth every minute. The post-screening discussion was riveting. There was a mixed response to the film, but in the end, students appreciated its importance. Carrie brought up Nosferatu's ears, Jon made good observations about some of the effects and techniques that were used in the film. Everyone was riffing off each other and holding an intriguing discussion. Arissa was the only one who dozed off for a few minutes during the film.

Afternoon Highlights:

The sophomores and seniors were in class the second half of the day. Their attentiveness during lecture was not as high as the morning class, but they were picking up on most of the same points (similar questions on similar material).

Nosferatu was widely accepted by the students, but they were more on the negative side. I heard Thuy Dan say "wow, that was a LONG movie!" but really it was only an hour and a half long... There were a bunch of late arrivals today, due to many Seniors taking the ACT in the morning, but the discussion went pretty well. In the afternoon, we had two dozers, but everyone got the point of the movie.

-Tony Sanchez

PS - If you have a netflix account, you can stream a version of Nosferatu to watch for yourself!

The Skype Protocol

Dear Reader:

On October 23rd, two classrooms of select ITA students learned the basics of Skype, a multi-faceted piece of software capable of connecting people in tons of ways! Our students learned how to screen share, text, chat, play games, voice chat, video chat, change avatars, invite friends, download the client, and call phones, all using the Skype software and protocol.

They also learned the background to the internet -- how bits are transferred, how to use "speedtest.net" to see your how fast your internet connection uploads and downloads, examples of the different applications (e.g. Skype and WWW).

The afternoon group also learned about "Yuuguu", a collaboration tool that allows multiple screens (unlike Skype) to view a single shared screen. Collin showed a youtube video recorded at lunch of a Barack Obama halloween costume. Illa was so amazed, he took out his iPhone and recorded a video of the screen sharing of the video that was recorded at lunch. He also was unimpressed when someone pointed out the video could have just been forwarded as a link, and the screen sharing business avoided altogether. But, I think we all get the point :)

Skype was quite fun at times: everyone calling each other from across the room, having to end calls to accept others, starting group chats with the whole room, reeling from the microphone feedback. The morning group especially took a very hands on approach; instead of asking "how do I do this?" they looked almost everything up themselves -- from configuring their microphones to how many bits are in ASCII code.

All in all, the Sky Protocol was a nerdy success!

Slide Me To Vietnam

With the IT Academy's new curriculum in high motion, the students were divided up into classrooms for three and five session custom mini-course workshops. For the "Slide Me To Vietnam" workshop, the end product was a highlight video for the non-profit organization, the University of Wisconsin-Madison's Vietnam Health Project.

Ten students enrolled in this workshop and they each had their own section to the movie. Using iMovie on Macs, they sorted through 12GB's worth of pictures, animated a slideshow, and recorded their voices to tell the story.

Session 1 was sweet and simple. During the morning survey, the lead instructor Ann asked the students what exactly is a landfill community? They had a vague interpretation to the extent of "people that live in a landfill." By the end of the three hours, the students understood that these families live and work on the landfill. They sort through garbage for 12 hours a day while earning only 7 dollars for the day, and their children cannot attend public schools, as their parents never had the access to acquire birth certificates for them. By the end of the session, the students developed sympathy to help these families and could not wait until next session to begin their portion of the video.

Session 2 started with an introduction to iMovie. iMovie is a program we've never had a chance to teach at ITA. The students' energy drained as they sorted through hundreds of pictures. When they needed to record their voice-over, the fatigue echoed through their voices.

The students temporarily lost the sense of teamwork and instead of working together to make sure the video contained consistent transitions and text, they went on with their own creativity. The hectic rush at the end of the day to upload to YouTube the preliminary draft, made the environment even more stressful. At the end of the day the students anxiously wanted to leave, but before they left Ann asked them why they were doing this project. Ashanti simply replied "to help those children." Suddenly the purpose behind the project became the focal point, which showed as we shifted gears in the third, and final, day of the workshop...

Here is one student's draft from the end of day two:



Session 3 came two weeks later and the students knew they HAD to finish the video. Before they began to work, Ann distributed Thank You cards created by the children of the landfill community. Even though they lived over five thousand miles away, at that moment the distance did not seem so far. As a class, the students did a peer critique of each draft. They understood that consistency was the key to allow the videos to piece together and forced each other to perfect their section. In only forty minutes, they finished. The students rendered their final product and Ann pieced together the video simply by clicking and dragging. Watching the video as a class, the students were proud of their new creation that would be donated to the organization.

And now, you can view the product of all the hard work and effort to make the following video slide show: