Digital Video

After this weeks tutorial I was keen to try my hand at Movie Maker (even though I am not quite up to that week). The year 4 class that I assist in a couple of times a week have been studying World Explorers in SOSE. As a cross curriculum project they have worked in small groups to design and construct a background and setting in which to take digital photographs of miniature characters in action, representing their chosen explorer. They are to create a representation of an event in history using information they have gathered and then use Movie Maker as their tool to create their digital video.

I was going to wait and learn alongside the year 4 students however I felt that I would like to familiarise myself with the tool first. One thing led to another and I spent the next three hours creating a 30 minute DVD of our recent trip to Cape York. I used still digital photographs, digital video and created a title page with publisher and saved as a JPG file and imported it to the digital video. All this was set to music (I even worked out how to turn the sound on the video off and fade from one song to another without waiting for the song to completely end) and used various transition styles. I am mighty proud of my efforts and can see myself using this tool at home on a regular basis.

However back to it's use in an educational setting. I can see this tool being able to be used in most year levels through primary (even lower primary)and definitely through secondary and across many curriculum areas including SOSE, Science, English, Drama and even with a little creative thinking Math. It uses could vary from showing a procedure, an experiment, oral presentation of story writing, recounts, reports, an alternative to the traditional oral speech, holiday journals, improvement and development of oral language or as a method of presenting assignments(research). It encourages collaboration between learners in small groups. Clear planning and direction for the storyboard will assist with overcoming creative differences in production.

As a teacher this tool could be used to make digital video that could be used as the initial 'hook' to a new topic,  to pose a question to the students in an interesting format or development of social skills/class rules.

I have created a small digital video using some digital video footage my daughter made a few years ago whilst on a road trip. I hope you enjoy the video and her creativity as much as I have enjoyed learning about and using this tool.