A Voki of the Winning Poem from Eisteddfod 2007

Down in the Darkness



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Year 6 Film Project 2007

This year we ran a transitional Literacy Project between all of the feeder schools and our Local Comprehensive School ( High School). Our oldest pupils (Year 6 - aged 10-11), worked on the project producing a variety of presentations.
The project had just finished when a small group of pupils who are involved in some of my digital media work approached me with a film project based on the book Rose Blanche by Roberto Innocenti.
They had a very clear idea of how they wanted the film to look, in the event we only had lunch time in which to squeeze in rehearsals, shooting, cutting, editing and post production. They were an excellent group to work with - in fact they only needed a quick 'how to' on iMovie and they were away.
We had as you expect in a film many hurdles to overcome - one for me was supervision, I had to be on hand just to know where they were and what they were doing ( at all times - school policy ). One of their problems was the variable weather that we had through May and June, so continuity became an issue.
Thier technical skills improved hugely during the project, from learning how to shoot scenes avoiding huge waste and re-shoots, to adding post production sound ( we have a group of pupils now who would make good Foley Artists - they taught me some things as well which was excellent :).
Their final piece of work was shown at their End of Year Presentation Awards and the Director, Producer and main driving force behind the film rightly became our first "Young FilmMaker of the Year".

Click To Play

* After filming and DVD making I made the fatal error of deleting the working files from the film !!!!! I then had no way of converting the file for upload - Step in the EduBloggersphere - thanks to David Warlick who posted my a link to a conversion download Handbrake which having used I would recommend you to download ( one for the Toolbox - you never know when you may need it.)
Apologies for the quality of the final project - the DVD is 350MB while the Blip.TV file is 53MB hence there is bound to be a loss of quality, I hope that this doesn't spoil your enjoyment of the film.

Tiny Ted Goes back to School

Tiny Ted will begin 3rd grade with Noah on Thursday at Paine Intermediate School in Trussville. His teacher, Mrs. Childs cannot wait for her new students to come. Pictures from the first day of school will be posted on Mrs. Childs' website for everyone to see and learn more about this special students. More to come soon!

Tiny Ted's Summer Vacation in Alabama

Tiny Ted is happy and well in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, with the Chamberlain Family. Because it is summer in America all of the schools are on holidays (vacation). April Chamberlain and her family have taken Tiny Ted on holiday with her family. Here is Noah and Luke with Tiny Ted.


Noah and Luke are taking good care of Tiny Ted and showing him the town and state. Tiny Ted even spent all night at the Birmingham Zoo with Noah for the Harry Potter Zoo Snooze.Here are Noah and Tiny Ted getting ready for the Harry Potter read!
WOW. I hope there is strong glass between Tiny Ted and the white tiger! The white tiger came extremely close to see Tiny Ted up close.

They made troll boggers, petted animals, took a night-time tour of the zoo, a midnight train ride, and fell asleep to Noah's mom reading from the new Harry Potter book. It was great fun!
Here is Tiny Ted making a troll bogger.

Luke was able to visit the zoo during the day with Noah and Tiny Ted.

The Butterfly Encounter was everyone's favorite part of the day.

The Chamberlain Family spent the last weekend before school starts in Mobile, Alabama visiting the USS Alabama. The USS Alabama is a huge navy ship. Look at all those guns!!!!! AK
We can recognise that flag! AK
Tiny Ted got to go in all the cool places. This is the control seat for an anti-aircraft gun. AKTiny Ted needed to get in close to look through the gun site.Tiny Ted sat on this mine. A mine is like an underwater bomb- like those ones in Finding Nemo when Nemo and Dorrie met the sharks. AK
They took a ferry ride.
And explored Fort Gaines and played on the beach.

These are some huge oil rigs they saw off the coast.Tiny Ted will begin 3rd grade with Noah on Thursday at Paine Intermediate School in Trussville. His teacher, Mrs. Childs cannot wait for her new students to come. Pictures from the first day of school will be posted on Mrs. Childs' website for everyone to see and learn more about this special students. More to come soon!
It was great to see Tiny Ted again. Thanks Mrs Chamberlain for sharing him with us.
We will try to keep up with Tiny Ted's time in his new class :) Mr H