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Everyone knows what Google is. However, everyone doesn’t know how to find things most effectively, or all of the hidden tricks that are under Google’s hood. Finding exactly what you’re looking for on-line quickly and effectively is an important tool for academic, professional and personal success. One business consultant who works with the DSA told me once after I asked him what he was looking for in an employee, “Just give me someone who can find things using Google! I can’t find anyone who can get me what I need when I need it.”

Today we’re going to examine the work of George Boole, the inventor of Boolean Logic. Boolean Logic forms the basis of all modern computing and database systems. Primarily we will explore the effect the boolean operators “and”, “or” and “not” have on our searches of the big database that forms the foundation of Google search.

In addition, we’ll look at a cool resource called the Google Cheat Sheet that can help us get the most out of Google. (Did you know you could use google as a calculator? a dictionary?)

Finally, we’ll do some practice with our search skills by doing an Internet Scavenger Hunt.

Hopefully, we’ll be on our way to being able be better students and wasting less time wading through the dredge and gunk that clogs up so much of the web.

Check out these sample resumes from Monster.com’s sample library. While these people have more experience in many areas to you, what I really want you to focus on is how they describe their qualifications. Think about, as you write your resume, how to make your own experiences stand out in this way.

Graphic Designer | Film Production | Art Director

Using your blog, put together a reflection on your day: what you saw and did, who you met, what you learned, and your personal response to these events and people. Also, I’d like you to reflect on where your brain is now, and where what you learned might take you.

Use images form the trip to illustrate your writing. The photos are available at the Digital Safari’s Photostream on Flickr. Make sure to think about size, placement and design as you add images to your post.

The entry should be between 250 and 400 words. You must write in academic English. (Of course, this means punctuation, sentences, paragraphs, and not texting shortcuts unless they are directly relevant to what you’re saying.)

These posts are due Tuesday after our Thanksgiving break.

An important part your preparation for your Histories of Our Families video is preparation of your images. Making sure you have high resolution images to match each part of your story is essential to making an excellent movie. The requirement of high quality images is important for images you scan that need to be repaired and for images you are using from the Internet.

For this assignment you will create a set in Flickr containing all of the images you will be using for your story.

Please use the following guidelines when preparing your images.

• Our videos play at a 4:3 aspect ratio. It will look best if the images you use are using are in this ratio. That way they will fit the screen perfectly without black bars at the sides. However, this will cause you to crop out part of the image so make sure you crop to the area you want as the focus. This is done by setting the aspect ration for the marquee tool in the tool bar. Set the Style to “Fixed Aspect Ratio” and set the width to 4 and the height to 3.
• Make sure images from the Internet are of high quality and are free from logos and other wording. It’s best to use photographs from Flickr or TrekEarth, not clipart. Make sure your images are at least 600 pixels wide.
• Look at your script and plan which images will appear when and organize them accordingly. A good guideline is to plan for pictures appearing for no more than 5 or 6 seconds.
• After your images are done, upload them to your flickr account and create a special set for those images.

As we prepare for the upcoming production of our family histories, it’s time to begin owning the entire creative process rather than relying of the work of others as our starting points. Your learning goals for this assignment are twofold. First, I want you to get comfortable as a photographer both creating excellent, well composed images and beginning to develop the skills to direct your subjects to get the shots you want. Second, I want you to begin to work in Photoshop with your own photography.

The specific requirements are as follows:

• Your beginning digital photography portfolio will comprise 8 – 12 images.
• There are two categories of images you’ll be working with:
  1. images you both shot and edited
  2. images someone else shot, but you edited
• The majority of your portfolio should comprise photos from category 1 above. And, you should be sure to give photographer credit for the images you edit, but didn’t shoot.
• Instead of uploading your images directly to your blog, as we have until now, you will create a Flickr account where all of your images will be posted. When creating this account, it is a good idea to use the same user name, password, and email you use for your other accounts.
• You will learn to embed images from other sources, in this case your Flickr account, into your blog.
• The goal is to create strong, engaging images. There are many, many ways to do this right. And, of course, many ways to do this wrong. Get feedback during the process. And, remember, just because you can do something doesn’t mean you should.

Working with Flickr to add photos to your blog:

• After setting up your account, upload your images. This is a pretty straightforward process that I’m not going to outline here. If you need assistance with uploading, check with Trang or me.
• To add an image to your blog takes several simple steps:
  1. In Flickr, click on the image you want.
  2. At the top of the image click “All Sizes”
  3. Choose medium or small, depending on your blog and how you want to display the images. (FYI: the images below are medium.)
  4. Below the image, copy the address in the “Grab the Photo’s URL” box.
  5. In your blog post, click the button to add an image and click the “From URL”, paste the address in the URL line, and give the image a name.
  6. Repeat as necessary. Easy Peasy.
• I would also like your post to include a link to your flickr photo stream. To add a link in your blog:
  1. Copy the address you wish to link to.
  2. Highlight the text in your blog that will be the link and click on the chain icon above the post window.
  3. Paste the link in the URL line. Again, easy peasy.

So finally, here’s what it might look like:

Of course, under the images you’d write about what you liked or were disappointed with in your images. And, what you learned. What you’re proud of. What you did with photoshop. And so on.

And, link to the rest of your Beginning Digital Portfolio.

A photo essay is a set or series of photographs that are intended to tell a story or evoke a series of emotions in the viewer (Check out these amazing essays by photographer Jan Sochor). Photo essays can be sequential in nature, intended to be viewed in a particular order, or they may consist of non-ordered photographs which may be viewed all at once or in an order chosen by the viewer. These pages will include the photos in your essay as well as captions and a brief introduction.

Using a tripod and the camera’s self-timer you will create a photo essay of 8 – 12 self-portraits spanning 4 – 6 pages in InDesign (2 or 3 spreads). Thus, the topic of the essays will be you and how you see yourself. No one is allowed to shoot the pictures for you, although others may be in the pictures with you. You must be in every image.

After shooting, selecting and editing the images, you will create the spreads in InDesign. The spreads should and be designed to maximize the emotional impact, whether light or heavy, that you are seeking.

Photo Essay InDesign Template – Be sure to use this template as the starting point for your essay. The page size is a non-standard size and includes the set-ups for margins and bleeds. Additionally, the styles for fonts and placement of images and text is included in the template.

The best of the DSA photo essays come from the class of 2009’s Senior Project “Searching for Utopia.” All provide excellent examples of layout and the way to blend text with the imagery. Lisa’s and Mark’s are self-portrait based and, thus, provide good examples of how to approach this assignment.

• Lisa Phan
• Jessica Flores
• Christin Hunter
• Ana Sanchez
• Mark Balancio

I will be creating a schedule for camera checkouts. Every student will be guaranteed several opportunities to check out equipment. Essays are due Wednesday, January 27th.

We just finished creating videos in which we shot and edited with no regard for sound. Then, we learned how to use Garage Band to score videos and synchronize sound to specific action.

For our next step, we will start with the music and then shoot the video. Instead of starting from scratch, the music becomes our script. Our job becomes how to visualize our script and how to make that vision come alive. Unlike our silent films which, possessed shallow or completely undeveloped plots, the “stories” you start with here will be much more developed. Thus, rather than focusing on simple shot making, I want you to make great shots that are connected to the music you are assigned. And, I want you to tell a story.

Here are the best from last year…

girlshapedlovedrug from Digital Safari Academy on Vimeo.

This Year from Digital Safari Academy on Vimeo.

If I Was Santa Claus from Digital Safari Academy on Vimeo.

Finally, here are the tracks in the order of the assigned groups (our gratitude to all of the musicians for allowing us to learn using their music is, of course, great):

1. White Rabbits, “The Plot”
2. Deer Tick, “Easy”
3. James Morrison, “You Give Me Something”
4. Ben Kweller, “Thirteen”
5. John Legend, “Stay With You”
6. The Raconteurs, “Together”
7. Gomez, “Notice”
8. Spoon, “The Underdog”
9. Sia, “Day Too Soon”
10. The Mountain Goats, “Heretic Pride”
11. Frightened Rabbit, “Head Rolls Off”
12. Josh Ritter, “The Temptation of Adam”
13. Jefrey Lewis and the Junkyard, “Broken Broken Broken Heart”
14. The Rocket Summer, “Tell Me Something Good”
15. Iron & Wine, “Belated Promise Ring”

Good Luck.

For reasons discussed throughout the site, the DSA is recommending our students create accounts at Vimeo for sharing video online. To begin sharing videos, first create a free account. Your free account allows you to upload up to 5 GB of video per week (certainly a lot for our purposes). You can also create channels and groups to organize and showcase your videos.

In order to make your videos play as smoothly as possible on-line, please follow the following Vimeo guidelines for compressing your video. (These compression guidelines will work for those of you uploading to YouTube, too.):

In Final Cut Express:

1. File>Export Using Quicktime Conversion
2. Check that the format reads “Quicktime Movie”, then click the “Options” button.
3. In the Movie Settings dialog, click Video Settings and make the following choices:
   • Compression Type: H.264
   • Key Frames Every 30 Frames
   • Data Rate, restrict to 2000 kbits/sec
   • Compression Quality: Best
4. Change the Video Size to 640 x 480, make sure to check the box “Deinterlace Source Video”
5. Under Audio Settings make the following choices:
   • Format: AAC
   • Channels: Stereo
   • Sample Rate: 44.100 kHz
   • Target Bit Rate: 320 kbps
6. Save it. (Note that exporting can take a long time. Sometimes as much as 3 or 4 times as long as the movie you’re exporting.)

The resulting .mov file will be well adapted to streaming on-line.

Upload them. Organize them. Embed them in your blog. Woot.

For the first multimedia component of the Histories of Our Families project we will be turning your beautiful “I am from” poems into a visual art form using Photoshop. When creating this work it’s very important to spend time thinking about what you want to communicate before you start piling things together. Look at your poem and attempt to take the mental imagery it evokes in your mind and fit it within your page. Additionally, it’s important to think about the design of your type. (Remember type’s dual nature of voice and visual.) Our final images will be printed and displayed for our families to see during our Digital Story Festival on December 9 & 10 in the Library.

You will create at least two versions of your image. Your complete images should be 8″ x 10″ and 150 pixels/inch. They may be oriented horizontally and vertically.

I’ve completed three sample versions of my “I am from” poem for you to see:

I am from mountain tops and river beds

I am from flower filled meadows and craggy rocks

Prime numbers of the Earth

My divide between heavens and the soul

I am from a father gone to Florida

I am from a mother by my side

One and one makes one

One and one and one leaves two

I am from Bob Dylan

I am from Tom Waits

Bourbon on my tongue

Leaning back and forth, back and forth

I am from long highways

I am from longer trails

Foot step jump skip run roll on

Eyes in the sun heart in the wind

I am from passion and dreams

I am from belief in you

Born in every moment we meet

Living in the glow of your light

I am from teaching

I am from fatherhood

What is important is not important

I am here you are here we are here

We are here

In the glow of your light

Heart in the wind

Back and forth

The two of us

Heavens and soul

Our next step in developing our skills and art in working with images is to begin taking the lessons we’ve learned about still image composition, and transferring them to motion. In order to take this step each small group will shoot and edit a 2 minute silent movie. As we do this, you will learn more about working with our video cameras and editing with Final Cut Express – important steps in the creation of your own I.D.entity videos later in the semester.

For this assignment, composition, pace, and mood are the most important items to focus on. The “story” should be simple and include very few characters. Don’t get caught up in trying to communicate complex stories, instead think about single “snapshots” that could be part of a larger story.

Upon completing and editing the short film, we will be learning how to score movies in GarageBand. So, as you film, think about how the pace, mood and composition will ultimately drive the music.

Here are a couple of what I think are really good short films to get you thinking about where we’re going…

PETAL – HD from Matthew Brown on Vimeo.

Brooklyn Creative: Kayla Camstra: Lumix Gh1, 720/60p from Mike Kobal on Vimeo.