I wrote yesterday about my adventures with the Institute for Education and the Arts newsletter.   I wanted to share a few of the items we included in this week’s “publication”.  Unfortunately for me, they’re only for high school students … but check out the Sony grant, which offers FREE SOFTWARE to schools who pre-qualify!

TECHNOLOGY IN MOTION: VISION OF THE FUTURE
Sony Creative Software, Intel, Edutopia, and ISTE
Proposal entry deadline: 2/22/08 ***COMING SOON!***
“The Technology in Motion contest is designed to engage students in professional video and audio production. By participating, your school will receive everything needed to produce a film or films that will be entered into a contest for a chance to win one of three $20,000 multimedia hardware and software prize packages. The film contest encourages high school students (grades 9-12) to share their vision of how technology will shape the future. Every school that submits a qualifying Call for Entries form will receive a Technology in Motion launch kit, which includes a free copy of Sony® Vegas™ Pro 8 Promotional Edition video editing software; free Sony Vegas Pro 8 video tutorials; a free copy of the Digital Video and Audio Production Vegas Pro 8 teaching guide; [and a] free 1 year subscription to Edutopia magazine.
Learn more>>

THE PURPOSE PRIZE
Civic Ventures
Nominations Close: 3/1/08 ***COMING SOON!***
“The Purpose Prize provides five awards of $100,000 each to people over 60 who are taking on society’s biggest challenges. It’s for those with the passion and experience to discover new opportunities, create new programs, and make lasting change.”
Learn more>>

DRIVING SAFETY FILM CONTEST
Bridgestone Firestone 2008 Safety Scholars
Deadline: 6/24/08
“It’s your turn to take the director’s chair. Make a short video (25 or 55 seconds) related to safe driving. Enter it in the Safety Scholars Competition and your video may be aired as a commercial for Bridgestone Firestone. The three top filmmakers also will each win a $5,000 college scholarship and the ten finalists win a new set of tires.” For high school students.
Learn more>>

It’s Midwinter Break, so I’ve packed up my car and am spending a few days at my cottage “Up North,” as we Michiganders say. 

Though I had 12″ of snow in my driveway when I arrived, I don’t have an Internet connection at the cottage.  A friend once suggested that I could really use a techno-break from time to time, so no phone, no TV, no Internet.  I always bring my laptop so I can drive to the next town and access the Wifi when I need it, and I can watch DVDs on it after a long day of yard work. All of this works great … usually. 

This time, I packed the laptop but not the charger!  On deadline to write the weekly newsletter for the Institute for Education and the Arts, one of my free-lance gigs, I wasn’t sure how I was going to accomplish this.  My usual strategy is to compose the newsletter in Word, then paste the text into an email document for the listserv and again into Blogger for archiving. 

But no power cord = no Word.  Hmmmm ….

Then I remembered Google Docs.  I hopped over to my lovely little community library (about half the size of my own school library), composed the newsletter in Google Docs, and was even able to send the document directly from Google Docs to be posted in my blog.  I could even have emailed it straight from Google Docs to the listserv if I used the same Gmail account for everything … something easily remedied for next time!

Whoever it is that said that necessity was the mother of invention was right.  I’ll use Google Docs from now on for this weekly project.

Just read on LM_NET about CuePrompter.com, a free Web-based service that turns your computer monitor into a video prompter.  Kids can cut and paste their scripts from Word into the Web page, then play.  A friend of mine uses PowerPoin tthe same way.

This is just the kind of fun invention that my Video Club kids will love exploring for their next broadcast.