Sunday, March 09, 2008
Flip Video/ Small Wonder its great for students!
I have had my Flip video camera for about a year ever since I was at a conference with Will Richardson and he showed how easy it was to use and upload to youtube. I totally agree with him. I love how easy to use it is and I can really see the possibilities of using the camera with students. Well, I have been trying to get my tech department to get these great little video cameras for my elementary school to no avail. The proprietary software on the cameras is something my tech department abhors. Well, thanks to a twitter conversation with Kathy Schrock, I may have solved the dilemma of the proprietary software. According to Kathy the newer version (Flip Ultra) of the camera does not need that special software to download the files to MovieMaker. That would be the only argument I need. I of course will have to get one and check it out for myself (yeah… I can get a new color Flip… maybe Orange for the Syracuse Orange? My old camera was plain silver… and boy is it scratched up from living in my purse for a year!). I was also reminded again how wonderful these little gems are when I came across a School Library Journal video comparison of the Flip and RCA’s Small Wonder. The two are pretty much the same with the RCA having an extra slot for a Secure Digital card. Do I have to buy one of each? I also was very impressed at PETE &C with what other schools in Pennsylvania are doing with students operating Flips and Small Wonders. Now for the begging and/or the grant writing to begin!
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2 comments:
The RCA Small Wonder is a bit less expensive, and I do not have personal experience with it, but I do have experience with many other $100-$150 models and I have not seen any that rival the quality of the Flip. It is truly awesome!
Now, if you can choose to send the video to the SD card in the Small Wonder instead of the hard drive, that would offer another solution to your particular problem of loading the software on the school computers, since you would be able to use a card-reader to move the movie files from device to computer.
However, when you plug the Flip in, it can just act as a "flash drive" and you can easily move the files to the computer in AVI format on either a Mac or Windows machine. (You need to install the software to export converted files from the camera in WMV (Win) or MOV (Mac) format.
AVI format is good for me. Thanks so much for clearing that up. I can't wait to get my new Flip and give it a try at school! :-)
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