When I was in high school, doing video projects were always such a big production. They took lots of time, required lots of different equipment, and most projects required students to meet and work with their groups after school and off campus. And the videos were poorly edited, if at all. With advances in technology, most students now have amazing video cameras and editing software on their cell phones. With the iMovie iOS app, students can quickly and easily make high quality videos to show what they know. They can film people acting things out or can find images online to include into their videos. iMovie is easy to use, and when I first introduce it to my classes, they can create a high quality video in about five 50 minute class periods. After learning how to use iMovie, they can do this in a much shorter amount of time. Here is a set of instructions that I have written up for my students to use. It includes instructions on how to storyboard their project (with templates), directions on how to find creative commons images, create the video, include a voice over, and properly cite their sources, including adding credits. Feel free to make a copy of it and share it with your students.
*I created this slideshow before iMovie updated with iOS 7. There are a few new features in the app, but everything is pretty much the same. Soon, I will update the presentation to match the new iMovie.
This year, when my AVID students researched different colleges, I didn't want to have to sit through 30 boring powerpoint presentations. I have done this project for years with my students, and honestly, it is not fun listening to the same presentations over and over again. I decided to have my students create videos instead. We used iMovie on the iPad and students created trailers. The trailers are only about one minute long, so they wouldn't be able to fit all of the required information in the movie. So I had students use ThingLink to be a home for their video and then they could also use the tags to add the extra information.
To begin with the project, I had students fill out a google form with their top college choices. I then created an instruction document that also would be their document that they took their notes on. I sent it out to all my students using the google script, autocrat. This allowed me to personalize each document with the college name they were assigned, student names, etc. It also named and shared the document with me so I didn't have to worry about the students forgetting to do so. Students took collaborative notes in a Google doc, planned out and created their iMovie, uploaded it to YouTube, and then made their ThingLink. Creating a ThingLink on an iPad is not ideal, many times it would get a little buggy. But it was possible to do using the Chrome browser, with a little frustration of having to shut down the iPad and logging back in to ThingLink. In the last few days, ThingLink just released an iOS app. It looks like it will have great potential for an iPad classroom. As of right now, you can only add videos and text to your image. You can't add URL links, pictures, etc. Hopefully that change will be made soon. But the current version of the app works really well on the iPads, it is very easy to find a picture and add text or a video. I think that this is a great tool to curate information and to be a "home page" for student multimedia projects. Instead of having to give the teacher multiple links to different parts of a project, they can all be embedded on the ThingLink.
STAR testing is coming up this week. My school requires teachers to review material for a week or two before the exam. Instead of giving my students boring packets to complete, I had them create iMovie trailers on their iPads about the standard that they had the toughest time with. Here is an example for evolution:
Before beginning their videos, students took a 50 question practice exam that had questions from each of the California biology standards. They took this online quiz over spring break. When they returned, they looked over their exam scores and recorded the percentage correct for each of the five main standard topics (clusters). I had students fill out a quick online google form where they told me their worst two standard clusters. I assigned topics on the spreadsheet, and then sent out an email to each student with their assigned topic, a copy of the standards, and project instructions. I used a google script, form mule to send out this email. To begin the movie, I showed students the 12 different iMovie trailers. I explained how to add text and showed them how to add images or video. They were instructed to only spend 5 minutes choosing a trailer, because they could easily spend an hour watching all the samples and arguing about which one to use. Students then took one of the storyboards I created. I made one for each of the trailer themes, since the text locations and images are different for each one. They had to fill it out and write a script for a voice over before they started finding images or filming. Here is a link to the storyboards. (Feel free to use them with your classes.) It took them about one 50 minute period to do research in their notes or texts and fill this out. The next day, students put together their video. Some filmed video clips, other chose pictures online. After they finished the trailer, they exported it to the Camera Roll. To add the voiceover, they then created a new project in iMovie, dropped in their trailer, and they were able to record their voice. Most students added their voice in small pieces, instead of recording it all at once. I had them use headphones with a microphone to get rid of extra sound from voices around the room. Most had to adjust the volume of their trailer to make sure the music was not louder than their voice. To do this, you double tap on the movie in the timeline and you can lower the voice. The voice over only took about 10 minutes to complete. Students then uploaded their videos to youtube. They all have GAFE accounts, but it doesn't allow them to upload to youtube, so I typed in my personal youtube channel password. This ended up allowing me to have all of the videos on my channel, and I could make playlists for each period. After all the videos were done, the students had an assignment to watch each video and comment on them. They had rules for commenting - the comments had to be constructive, they had to use proper grammar, etc. I also required that they look over their notes on the topics (or use their text) and they had to add one fact about the topic that wasn't included in the video. And if they found any mistakes in the video, they could "correct" it by writing down the correct information. I provided the students with sentence prompts on how to write comments and corrections. There are some great videos, and some not so great ones... hopefully students will be able to add some extra information in the comments to help with the videos that are lacking. Studnets are currently working on watching and commenting on the videos for homework, so it is fun to see the comments come in right now and see what they are thinking. With this project, students were able to review all the topics from over the school year. They became an expert on one standard, but then had to look through their notes and review all the other topics. They had fun making the videos and reviewing for another test.
Here are the different playlists from each of my periods:
