Category: littlesister

Remembering “Go Green, Go Electric” from Earth Day 2009

brother, littlesister, movies, sister, technology

Last year on Earth Day for the Film on the Fly digital storytelling contest, my kids and I created the three minute and fifty second video, “Go Green, Go Electric!” My son (who was 11 at the time) did some the editing for this video using iMovie, and I did the rest. In following the rules for “Film on the Fly,” we shot all the video for this movie using a cell phone. Since we wanted different people in different scenes (and my son couldn’t legally drive the car) we alternated being the videographer and being actors in the movie.

We actually won first place in the contest. This Flashlight comparison and was a lot of fun to create together, and certainly got us thinking more about the viability of electric car technology. When you want to cut your electricity bills, you should study Energyadviceline dobusiness electricty prices comparison so that you are aware of the electricity service charges of different companies on your area.

If you’re considering purchasing a Ram truck then be sure to schedule a test drive with a local Ram dealer near you today. Thanks to Miles Electric Vehicles of Tulsa, Oklahoma for helping us with this video!

Do you have a favorite student-created video focused on Earth Day and “going green?” If so, please share the link!

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The Night Before Valentine’s Day by Rachel

books, littlesister, technology, writing

“The Night Before Valentine’s Day” is a four page book my six year old wrote today. She is REALLY into writing, and I want to encourage her as an author / illustrator as much as possible. After she shared this with us tonight, we snapped four pictures of the pages using my iPhone, uploaded those photos directly to Flickr using PixelPipe, organized the images into a Flickr set, and then created the VoiceThread together. In all, this production process took about ten minutes. Has it ever been easier for a kindergartner to share their original art and writing with the world?!

It’s fun to see the way she has been influenced by other books we’ve read together, like “The Night Before Christmas.” I love how VoiceThread automatically inserts the linked title of each image when you insert them directly from Flickr!

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Dad’s first episode for The International Cooking Show: Fondue!

dad, food, littlesister, sister

This evening my kids helped me create my first contribution to “The International Cooking Show,” sharing our favorite family recipe for fondue.

We recorded this in one take on my iPhone, and I edited it in iMovie ’09. I used the iMovie settings shown in Steven Sande’s post, “How to make iPhone videos sparkle with iMovie.”

The unedited version of the movie was almost 14 minutes long, with the stirring portions sped up the final video is 8 minutes and 14 seconds long. The free “royalty free music” I chose for this video was “Shiny Tech” from Incompetech.com. I noticed that in the video titles I actually misspelled the name of the recipe, it should be “Yodler’s Fondue” rather than “Yodeler’s Fondue.” I’m not going to go back and make those changes, however, since it would require recompressing and uploading the video again to YouTube!

Sarah recorded the entire video except the last two minutes, which were filmed by Alexander. She still needs to work on keeping the camera still and stable, but this is an improvement over some of her past recording efforts. We’re all continuing to learn together! It’s so fun to be able to put together a quick video like this on the fly, add a few edits, and then publish it online.

Apple technology makes multimedia authoring so easy!

If you have any gourmet chefs or aspiring chefs (we have the latter) in your house, please join The International Cooking Show wiki and add your own contribution!

Cross-posted to “Moving at the Speed of Creativity.”

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Fun playing in our record Oklahoma City snowfall

brother, littlesister, sister, weather

We shared a live webcast over Ustream yesterday on Christmas Eve of our front yard, as a record-breaking 14 inches of snow fell on Edmond and Oklahoma City! We recorded two segments during the day. The “Peaceful Christmas” Pandora channel was streaming as the audio channel for these webcasts.

18.5 minutes: Playing in the snow during the day

2.5 minutes: Playing in the Christmas Eve Snow at Night (with our camcorder’s “Night Shot” feature enabled)

Today we enjoyed a bit of sledding and more playing in the snow in our front yard. This was an image of PURE delight on Rachel’s face as we got ready for another sled run together!

Christmas 2009 - 097

If you’re wanting to order a hat like mine in this photo, I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this was a custom creation I made several years ago when we lived in Lubbock using a stocking cap and a puppet. 🙂

Christmas 2009 - 117

Here is the Flickr slideshow of all the images we took on granddaddy’s camera yesterday and today. His Sony camera ROCKS. Someday we’ll get a camera that takes images this good! We’re fortunate he’s willing to share with us now!

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Cooking Holiday Sausage Balls (Int’l Cooking Show)

cooking, littlesister, sister

Sarah recorded episode #3 of “The International Cooking Show” today, demonstrating how to cook holiday sausage balls. Her sister, Rachel, joined in this episode which runs 7.5 minutes.

Background music for this video is “Malt Shop Bop” from Incompetech Royalty Free Music.

We used the same recipe for these that we’ve used since 2007.

Ingredients:

3 cups Bisquick
1 pound uncooked Jimmy Dean pork sausage
4 cups shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup grated Parmesan cheese
1/2 cup milk
1/2 tsp. dried rosemary leaves
1/2 tsp parsley flakes
Steps:

Cook the sausage in a pan, breaking it up into small pieces.
Combine all ingredients in a large bowl “meatloaf style.”
Form mixture into small balls, and place them evenly on a greased cookie sheet.
Bake for about 15 minutes at 350 degrees F.
Share and eat!

Please create your own cooking videos and add them to The International Cooking Show project wiki!

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Driving along Scenic K-177 in October

littlesister, travel

I took the following four, 90 second videos yesterday driving north along K-177 between Cassoday and Cottonwood Falls, Kansas, enroute from Wichita to Manhattan. This national scenic byway is one of my favorite roads in Kansas. The low clouds and lighting in these videos don’t do justice to the autumn colors of the prairie, unfortunately, which are quite spectacular even though the “peak” of the fall colors seemed to have already passed.

I added these videos to my Flickr set, “Manhattan Fall Colors,” which includes lots of amazing images of autumn colors taken later in the day in Manhattan. These include three panoramic photos from the day, which I linked and discussed in my post, “Beautiful Kansas fall colors and more iPhone panoramic picture fun with Pano.”

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VoiceThread about The Gingerbread Baby

books, littlesister, technology

Rachel created the following VoiceThread today about Jan Brett‘s book, “The Gingerbread Baby,” during the 2009 KATE Conference in Wichita, Kansas. She recorded the first three pages’ comments during the actual conference, in front of about 150 English teachers! She recorded the fourth/last page right after the conference keynote was over. We planned this VoiceThread last night, with Rachel selecting the Creative Commons photos she wanted to use from Compfight. She also practiced what she would say with each photo. Great job Rachel!

I added a link to this VoiceThread on the Great Book Stories project and wiki.

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Lots of Fun at Fright Night 2009

brother, littlesister, mom, travel

One of our favorite October traditions here in central Oklahoma is going to “Fright Night” at Frontier City, a theme park located on I-35 in Edmond. Generally we go later in the month, but this year we needed to go early because of travel schedules. As usual we had a great time, especially watching the show, “Dead Man’s Party.” In the third video below, you’ll see Sarah get up on stage and dance as the construction worker in the song “YMCA” by The Village People. We stayed and danced after the 2nd show– we actually saw it three times! This was a lot of fun! It’s also great that when you order your tickets to Frontier City online in October, they are half price. It’s still expensive at $17.50 each, but much less than “normal” price.

Each of these videos is 90 seconds long, which is the maximum length permitted by Flickr. Some of these songs and the acting in the performance was a little scary, but “a little scary” in moderation can be fun and even healthy. It’s definitely a lot of fun to have a chance to dance like this as a family. We don’t get these opportunities very often!

I shot these videos with my iPhone GS. I apologize for the distortion in the audio at some points. The sound was definitely VERY loud where we were sitting!

This visit to “Fright Night” marked the first time both Sarah and Rachel chose to ride a rollercoaster! We actually all rode the “Steel Lasso” three times, and it was a lot of fun. This was the photo of Rachel and Mom on their last ride. Rachel was pretty excited by the experience!

Rachel and Shelly on the Steel Lasso Rollercoaster at Frontier City

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Rachel does some math

littlesister

Rachel has watched her brother (going into 6th grade) and sister (going into 4th grade) work on their assigned “math packets” from their respective schools this summer. Rachel is about to start kindergarten, and she’s been keen to “do some math” of her own. This is her most recent effort, which is pretty good for a five year old about to turn six next month, who’s just been in preK! She worked out all these problems and answers herself.

Rachel's summer math

Number and letter reversals at her age are very common, so we’re not worried about this right now. It’s great to see her wanting to do math on her own initiative!

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