Vacation

My wife and I took a few days off and journeyed to one of our favorite places: The Hill country of Texas. We stayed in a cottage outside of Gruene that was once a stagecoach stop:

We went shopping in Gruene which had some very nice decorations up for the season. We ate at the Gristmill, a favorite place in the area.

Murphy, our dog, approved of the antique bathroom furniture we found in our cottage.

We found a wonderful little holiday light display in a village called Wimberly. We couldn't resist a few pictures:

The Hill Country is a wonderful quiet place to spend a few days. We also shopped at the Christmas art bazaars in Austin and paid a trip to Bourne. Although the weather was a bit cold it only added to our holiday experience.

Christmas Holiday Program

Everyone had a great time at the Holiday program. Each grade level was represented. I played the Grinch in the 3rd and 4th grade part of the program. Have a Grinchy holiday! See you in 2009.

Holiday Show

Don't forget the Holiday show Thursday night. The 4th grade will serve food and everyone is performing. We hear the Grinch is due to make an appearance. The show starts at 5:30.

Living in a Digital World

Well, even though we didn't make the contest finals with this video (don't get me started on the E-instruction judges, I still feel like this video has a lot to say. These are all third graders in my wife's class. The projects seen in the video were all created by them. Take a look and see what's possible! (In HD)
Living in a Digital World

More on the Glog

This glog thing has been a lot of fun! My wife has found good use for it as an online portfolio for her students. I have set mine up much like a web page with links and embedded videos. The quality is great and it has been very stable for me. I am going to expand the use past the online book reviews and use it as a cool resource page for research. Try it!

Glogging along

I ran across this cool new way to display work. It's called a "glog." I have used it to post many of my videos and my wife is using it with her class to create online video portfolios. It's in beta right now but I love it! Check out what we are doing with online reviews in the library:
Hot Dog reviews

New e-instruction/ Interwrite Contest

My wife and I are in the e-instruction/Interwrite contest again this year. Last year we were finalists and we hope to improve on that this year. The prize this year is $25,000 worth of technology equipment. You can view our video, vote and comment here:
Living in a Digital World

School is goin' on!

Well, it's been awhile since I even had a chance to think about updating the blog. School started with a bang and has not slowed down. I finally got through what I consider a "cycle" in the library and now I hope to get a routine going. I can't complain, things are going well as far as i'm concerned. My wife and I are getting ready to enter the new E-Learning/ Interwrite contest with a video. Last year we were finalists in a very tough competition. We hope to win this year! In the meantime, here is a link to my CHILLER network horror film.


REMOTE CONTROL: CHILLER Network Dare to Direct entry from Doug Valentine on Vimeo.

New contest..oh and school is about to start

It will be tough to start the school year. Even though I really didn't vacation this year I have been able to produce a great many videos and I have learned a lot about production. this will serve me well this school year I am sure. We shot two weddings, a horror movie, a commercial, a song for Librareo, and an orientation video for my new school. We are in a Facebook contest at the moment. You had 30 seconds to talk about denim. That's right...denim. To see the results look at the link below. If you're on Facebook and would like to vote we'd appreciate that as well. Just sign on and add the Kohl's application. Look for Sue De'Nim..


The story of Sue De'Nim: Denifanatic from Doug Valentine on Vimeo.

REMOTE CONTROL

My Chiller film entry is on the way. Here is a trailer from the movie.

New Video contest

This is a movie poster I created for a new video contest i'm entering. It's a real different contest for me because it requires a "horror" movie. Mine is more along the lines of light Sci-fi but it has been a great learning experience. The plot involves a man who has problems and then receives the power to get rid of them. Unfortunately the power doesn't change what he is inside.. I'll post a link as soon as it is done.

New video contest

For some reason I felt compelled to enter another video contest. I'm taking a different turn with this one. The contest is for the "Chiller" network which means it needs to be a horror movie. I have a script, I have a plan, I even have a cast but do I have time? we'll see. I don't know how I have the time to do this but it seems the more I do, the more time I have.

New project from Teachertube

Teachertube is rolling out a new product designed to be an interactive web page for teachers. It is in testing right now. It's an easy to use interface that has a lot of possibility. My wife and I did the help videos to get you started using the product. You can check out the videos at Teachertube Desktop.

We won!

Well, we ended up winning the Librareo contest sponsored by Gale. As a part of the prize my wife and I will be flying out to Anaheim this weekend to appear in their booth at the American Library Association convention. How cool is that? We had to juggle a few things but I think we are ready to go!

Librareo Finals Information

Voting goes on all this week in the Librareo video contest finals. You can vote once per day per computer. Just go to: http://www.gale.cengage.com/librareo/
and find Lily's Purple Plastic Purse. Vote to the right and then hit the vote button at the bottom. Spread the word and come back the next day!
Thanks.

Librareo Video Finals

I just found out yesterday that my MouseSpace video made the final five in the Librareo competition. The voting starts Monday and lasts a week. I'd love to win this because the prize is $2500 to me and $2500 to my new library! I'll post voting info when Monday rolls around.

Last day of school

You know it's funny, I've been out of school for many, MANY years and yet since I've gotten into teaching I can still feel that excitement mixed with regret that happens that final day of school. This is a special last day for me because I am changing districts and opening a whole new library in a school that is being built as I write. It's a large task, made larger by all of the small things that have to be done this summer to get the new library up and running. It's tough to leave here but change can be a good thing. It can re-motivate you and reset your goals. I've spent four years at my current school and I have to say that it's been some of the best time in my life. One can get complacent however and when that happens it's really time to move on and start again. So here's to a happy ending and a new beautiful beginning.

The 4th Science video

In our 4th video we covered "Planetary Forces." We started out with a question about building a model of the earth-moon-sun system and ended up covering some very simple physics.

Blinding you with Science #4 Planetary forces from Doug Valentine on Vimeo.

More Science videos

The third video in my Blinding You With Science series covered learned and instinctive behaviors in animals. We had a lot of fun with this one and found a use for all those old Beanie Babies we had been saving up.

Blinding you with Science #3 Learned and Instinctive Behaviors from Doug Valentine on Vimeo.

Mars

Does anyone else find it as amazing as I do that I can sit here and download images directly from Mars? What an amazing accomplishment and it seems so many people just take it for granted.

Smart Board Contest

Another contest we recently entered asked that you show an "extraordinary moment" using a Smartboard in a lesson. The time limit was 30 seconds! This is more difficult than it sounds. Since neither my wife nor I have a Smartboard we decided to do a commercial based on what a Smartboard might mean for a class science lesson. Here is the result.

SMART board video contest FINALIST from Doug Valentine on Vimeo.

Librareo Contest

We've entered a video into the Librareo video contest sponsored by Gale. The rules stated they wanted a 2 minute music video about a favorite book or author. We decided to put a video together based on our mutual experience in the school library. And so I present: MouseSpace:

Hello World!

I am Dr. Loopy. I am an elementary school librarian in the state of Tejas. I have a great many interests that I hope to write about here but lately I have been doing a lot of video. Over the last four years I have put together a series called "Blinding you with Science." In it, my wife and I teach science concepts in an unusual and hopefully amusing way. Most of my work is up on Teachertube and I am posting it here as well. I think my work got better as I went along, but here is the first episode of BLINDING YOU WITH SCIENCE. (No, my dog was not injured in the making of this video.)

Blinding you with Science: #1 Density from Doug Valentine on Vimeo.

My second video was about the concept of Layers and Erosion. Remember, each video was produced ONE WEEK APART throughout the season. so there is that "rushed" feeling to them. I have to say that the kids loved them and requested to see them over and over. Not coincidentally, our science test scores rose over the last four years and we went from being a school with an "acceptable" rating to one with an "exemplary" rating.

Blinding you with Science: #2 Layers and Erosion from Doug Valentine on Vimeo.

Not all of our work has been in science. Since I am a librarian and my wife is a teacher we decided to create a video about collaboration and the problems that sometimes arise. I have been fortunate to have a great staff that buys in to what I do. I know this is not always the case. Here are a couple of clips from our Classroom Teacher/Librarian collaboration video.

Librarian and Classroom Teacher Collaboration from Doug Valentine on Vimeo.