Monday, May 21, 2012

Movie Magic...

Tonight was PJ night. The entire computer club (me included) came to the meeting dressed in our pajamas. :-)

I introduced our new SCC (Sunridge Computer Club) project tonight. The plan is to create a promotional video of Sunridge Primary using cell phones.  This video will be uploaded to YouTube for all to learn about our wonderful school and Sunshine family.

We started off by watching a view YouTube Videos of other schools - both local and abroad - to get some ideas. Here are three of the videos if you'd like to see what we're aiming for. Simply click on the schools' names below.
The idea is for the computer club members to go around the school armed with their cell phones, cameras, and other recording devices to record footage of... well anything really. Then the really hard work starts - putting it all together. Splicing, stitching, narrating, adding special effects, transitions, etc. We would like to include scenes from:
  • Sporting events - matches and practices
  • The hustle and bustle as learners swap classes after the bell goes
  • Interactive moments in Grade 1 classes
  • Playground activities, learners kicking balls around, girls sitting on the benches eating their lunch and chatting
  • Art class
  • Science class
  • Computer classes
  • Music class
  • Band practice
  • Learners queuing at the tuck shop
 I will arrange with the staff to give the computer club members some freedom with their cell phones as this is usually not allowed. I'm hoping that the following 2 weeks will be enough time to collect plenty of footage which we can use in the video.

Diary
Please note that our next club meeting will be in 3 weeks time to allow me time to mark the computer literacy and Cami maths test our learners are writing as of today. The next club meeting thus, will be on 11 June 2012.

Until then...

Monday, May 7, 2012

Serving Servers


We had an interesting talk by our very own on-site technician. We visited Chris in our server room where he gave us a rundown of the six Sunridge servers.  He also covered topics like: how the firewall works; the operation of the switches; rooting; and explained our new 6KVA Uninterrupted Power Supply which maintains power to our server in the event of a power failure.  There were plenty of questions asked – one of the most popular questions was “on which machine is scadsys kept?” For those of you who don’t know, scadsys is the software which we use for – amongst other things – to record detention point.  I think we might have a prospective saboteur in our midst. J
Thank you Chris