Having used digital video with my classes on several occasions, I want to take this opportunity to share a few of my observations. While these observations have been made with middle school students, I believe they are universal to the digital generation (and perhaps all generations).
To begin, I’ve noticed that kids get pretty excited when they know that they are going to be filmed. I don’t think there’s one student out there that doesn’t want to look and sound good on camera. This generally brings a certain enthusiasm to projects that utilize digital video.
Secondly, other students have respect for the filming process. This means that, while they get a little loud when they put their projects together, they are very well behaved when they know that someone is being filmed. So if you have classroom management issues, you’ll see the problems virtually cease while filming is being done. Keep in mind, you must still be well organized and, as a teacher, you must know what you are doing. On the other hand, students are at home with many of these technologies and sometimes it comes easier for them. What does this mean? Expect them to discover new things that you never knew about, and don’t be afraid to ask them to teach you a thing or two. They like that.
Lastly, I’ve done some projects where one group was filmed at a time. I’ve done others where I’ve distributed four cameras and let the students do their thing. What you do depends on your tolerance for a little chaos. If you want more control, record one group at a time. If you feel that your students will stay on task and will be more creative on their own, so be it. In either scenario, it’s a good idea to request a little help from a teacher aid or technology integrator. I never did and I wish I had.
Enough said. On with the examples. The videos you’ll see were created by some of my 8th grade Spanish students. The first is a video self portrait done by a student that just happened to bring his guitar in the day we were filming. You’ll notice that there were subtitles added in English. This was to allow parents to understand what he was saying while his video was being shown at an open house. All video taping and editing was done by the students with a little help from me (adding subtitles was particularly challenging). We used iMovie to add titles pages, credits and music if there was time. Take a look…
This next example was from a group project that was created with the intention of reviewing seventh grade Spanish topics. After deciding on groups, I assigned various topics ranging from personal identification, weather, prepositions, etc. The students in the video you’ll see did a great job with weather expressions. While putting the video together, I noticed there were what you might call “bloopers” spread through the project. Because I thought they added such character and humor to the work, I gave the ok to leave them in. In think you’ll like it….
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