Digital Video

The first thing I thought of during the week of Digital Videos was an earlier assessment task during first year. Not only was I completely overwhelmed when I discovered that we had to make a movie of "Our Arts Journey" but also extremely excited! Take a quick look at the movie I made for my assessment task. It may not be the most advanced or even polished movie but the satisfaction that I felt was a highlight of my first year at university. Having never made a movie (I had not long learned how to upload a photo) I spent hours at home playing around learning how to add music and voice overs and the best part was I got to star in my own movie!!

Enough about me and more about the context....well I know if I enjoyed using PhotoStory3 to create this movie, my Grade 3 class would love it too! As I have mentioned in previous posts, our unit this term is heavily art based so I have been taking many photos of the pieces of art that the children have created throughout the unit. I plan to collate the pictures at the end of the unit to play at the final week of term as a tool for analysis and reflection. This will provide the perfect arena for the students to get an overview of their growth throughout the term.

Throughout the movie we are creating on my student's 'Art Journey' I am asking the students to use voice overs to list pros and cons of specific art and consider alternative perspectives of other audiences and cultures. Recording this information and using it again as a reflection tool promotes higher-order thinking and critical analysis. The decision to use PhotoStory3 over Movie Maker was purely a logistical one. My grade three class has 6 digital cameras available to us at any time where there is only 1 digital video camera in the whole school. Once we have completed the movie in this unit using PhotoStory3 I will progress to Movie Maker and use video footage as well.

I am especially eager to use digital video as a reflection tool at the end of this unit. I am also extremely happy with the motivation and engagement level in the classroom when we are using this tool throughout the learning experiences.

Digital video gets a big tick for opportunities in my context!