Week 8 Video Project and Video in the Classroom

Through out the entire PSA project, I was pretty excited.  During the prep class, I was fascinated with all the cool ways you could manipulate video and sound.  At the same time, I was suprised with the amount of work that goes into editing.  Our group worked really well together.  Prior to the filming & editing class, we communicated real well and constructed a strategy.  Initially I was hesitant of the storyboards, I questioned how useful they would be, but while filming and editing, I found them to be VERY valuable.  Our initial planning and preparing of our storyboards helped us to stay on track, take specific video & to focus on our message.  During filming, our individual personalities complimented one another, from our actress, to our videographer and the producer.  The software was completely new to 2 members of our group, and yet we all had an opportunity to edit and work our video into the great finished project that we envisioned.  I think one could spend a ton of time playing and tweaking in Moviemaker, in that respect it's kind fun but kind of challenging since the goal was to finish the project in 1 class.  We had a great piece of music at our disposal, in just a few minutes time we used Audacity to speed it up to match our video, a little repeat at the end and viola...good java tunes.  If only the music would have imported into our video without frustration, I'd say there were no issues.  I'm excited to see the complete finished project.

With respect to video in the classroom, I do think it has value.  There is value in making learning fun, and children LOVE to see themselves in video.  Creating a video also teaches responsibility to portray the facts accurately & it can serve as a motivator to conduct research prior to creating a video.  Furthermore, through video, a shy child can gain confidence and can shine in the classroom. 

What does it teach students?  I think for students creating a video, they see a different avenue for learning and documenting information other than paper and pencil.  I think it encourages interaction and engagement in the subject at hand.  It also allows them to showcase their creativity.  Also, when I reflect on the Educause readings, specifically, the part about kids believing what they read on the internet even if it's not from a creditable source, I also think kids believe what they see in video and on tv.  When students create a video, they can see how you can be truthful, and well informed and create a video that is factual, and on the flip side, they can see how you could do just the opposite.  Perhaps, in doing so, students would start to question the validity of what they see and read.

Once concern I have about incorporating video in the classroom is the editing component.  There's a lot of work that goes into editing such a small clip.  I'm wondering how possible it is to have students produce and edit video, with the time constraints that exist in the curriculum.  Perhaps I will need to do most of the editing or the degree to which their videos are edited will be different from what we did in our PSA project.  I guess this would be the challenge I may face in doing the video project.  In my classroom I would use video to make the learning authentic.  For example, if we're discussing seasons and changes in fall, I could have students capture video of a change they witness.  Perhaps a student would film some Canadian Geese.  That student could then find some interesting facts about that animal and create a video.  He/she may address migration, the resident population, geography and temperature changes etc, these would be the learner outcomes.  These videos could be used as a learning center, so all students would circulate through and learn how other students captured the changes in the season.   Multiple disciplines, intelligences and levels of thinking would be incorporated into this project.  The student will work on language arts skills (researching, reading, writing, speaking), science (habitat, adaptations, migration, temperature), technology (filming and editing), social sciences etc.