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View Full Version : BBC Creative Archive... Source of great resources for AP/AS


markrobinson
04-03-2006, 09:54 AM
The BBC and partners have started to release a large library of specially selected video clips from their many groundbreaking series.

Find out about the scheme at:
http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/

They are free for non-commerical use in schools in the UK which is great news.... :)

The better news is that they can be used and saved as resources in Activprimary and Activstudio with little or no effort. [clap]

1) Get a BBC account (its free)

2) Browse the various collections:

- Science and nature: http://www.bbc.co.uk/calc/sn/
- General clips: http://www.bbc.co.uk/calc/radio1/

3) Download the clips!...

They range in size from around 10-20 meg so they should probably be downloaded in advance.

You can use them in 2 ways straight away... link objects, which just pop up when clicked or embedded in pages using the Video Placeholder function of AP/AS versions 2.1 or 2.5

MPEG is the most useful format, since it can easily be embedded within AS / AP pages... by using the Right Click Button (in design mode in AP) and adding the video with the "Placeholder" selected. You can then drag you new placeholder based video to the resource library for future reuse and add keywords. This also makes a thumbnail of the video. This is the best method if you want to create a full video library in your software (as long as you have space on the hard drive)

Even easier is to simply save the videos to My Documents > ACTIVprimary > My Collections > Folder name... when prompted by the website - then they will be found in the My Collections library when you launch ACTIVprimary.

In Studio you can save them to the My Videos folder if you wished.



I have been working with Year 1 and Year 4 age children and we came up some quick ideas:

- Make them part of your (or their) presentations... to raise issues (How about pictures of glaciers and arctic animals to start a lesson on global warming, or footage of the Apollo mission for a Space topic) or to stimulate create work... (a speeded up video of clouds over the rainforest, or a day in the life of a bluebell field)

- Ask the children to watch the video "very carefully" then on the next pages add activote questions to see if they spotted everything.

- Make interactive, animated backgrounds - stetch an embedded video to fill the whole page and (in design mode in AP) double click the video - so you can then alter the transarency... This allows you to make the video into an animated watermark type background that you can write or type over using the standard AP/AS tools. This looks amazing!

- Be a newsreader.... Embed the video and then have the children rehearse then narrate a voice over using the sound recorder, you can them play the embedded video and the sound at the same time. You can record multiple voice clips and click them at the right times, this way lots of children can be involed.

- Be John Williams... Film music composer extrodinaire....Embed a video and switch on the clock.... You can then write the times of scene changes, etc. Then use the information to compose a soundtrack.

Record the soundtrack using the sound recorder (while watching the video on your iWB if you like - just like they do in the studio for a real film) then you can click the video play and sound object to play them both back.

For the more ambitious:

There are free video editing sofwtare packages such as Microsoft's Windows Movie Maker or IMovie on MAC which can easily be used on your whiteboard to create and edit more complex movies... or used by children in the suite to create videos for whole class display later.

TIP: Both AS and AP have a setting that allows you to put My Collections at a network location... or add network folders as searchable locations. If you have the ability to create a shared network folder, you can use this facility to place the student work done on the network in a central location which can be opened up dircetly from the resource libraries of AS and AP. Virtually any file can be placed there, video, Word, Excel, Images, etc. A great and simple way of organising student work for peer review, etc. Just create a new folder for each lesson in the network folder to keep things organised..

Anyway - I must stop - fwe have found some great footage of Grizzly Bears catching Salmon and Matthew (8) wants the laptop!

invinoveritas
04-03-2006, 09:45 PM
Thank you for this great idea[clap] : I've had a lot of fun trying it out, and can't wait to use it in the classroom.

A couple of queries, please:

when I stretch the video to fill the whole page as a background (AS2.5), the picture loses definition, can I correct this?
how can I have the video looping so that it plays continuously as a background to the whole flipchart?
Many thanks.

Charlotte
07-03-2006, 08:05 PM
Maay thanks Mark for some excellent suggestions for making use of what is an incredible resource. I am having a little difficulty with the quality of the Mpeg files once I put them in ActivStudio. I am running version 2.5 and when I view the movies through Quicktime or Windows Media Player they are of a high quality - is there a setting in AS2.5 that I need to change?? :eek:

markrobinson
07-03-2006, 10:17 PM
You may need to set placeholder embedded video to "high quality"...

Click Promethean Man > Studio Settings > Flipchart Objects and make sure "High Quality" is set to 'on' for the Placeholder.

Put the video back in again and this time a high quality copy is embedded.

Charlotte
07-03-2006, 10:44 PM
That has done the trick!! Thanks [clap]

caryn
12-07-2007, 06:33 PM
Hi Mark, I tried to follow your link to the archive but it seems to have been withdrawn:( What a shame - it seemed like a great idea!!

markrobinson
12-07-2007, 06:39 PM
The BBC trial has ended...

although since I posted this there has been massive web development relating to video...

YouTube, Google Video, BlipTV have video you can use and adapt... (although copyright may often be suspect)

You can get the videos from these websites onto your computer using other websites...

Such as

http://keepvid.com/

caryn
12-07-2007, 06:44 PM
Thanks for the reply. I had looked at some of these sites but quite often the quality isn't great and it is difficult to find what you want!! The BBc seemed from the description more geared to educators.

markrobinson
12-07-2007, 07:21 PM
Perhaps time to subscribe to something like Discovery ... amazing videos and downloadable.