Moviemaker experience....

I finally got this posted to my blog at 11:15pm on Saturday night, couldn't think of anything better to be doing on a Saturday night!! This weeks web tools I found to be very challenging. Especially the final task of creating a movie in moviemaker. The most time consuming task was getting audio onto my movie as I did not have any audio files suitable for my movie. I had a great deal of difficulty trying to use itunes music for my music in moviemaker, as the files where not compatible. I eventually overcame this by using my sound recorder on the computer to record my music from itunes, which I though was pretty creative on my behalf!! Once I had my movie made this process to post it to my blog, wiki and web page was very quick and easy for me, and I really like the fact my students will be able to upload their work onto the web with such ease and quickness for my assessment. (No more excuses of I left the CD at home or saved it to my home computer.)

For the purpose of these task I used my 5 year old son who is in prep to help with the making of the movie and to see if he could use and understand the movie making process. He absolutely loved the process and especially the finished product which he watches over and over again with pride, as he created it. This would be a great project for many learning areas and many grade levels. My task for my grade 2 class would be to loan an ipad and take photo's of their pets at home (if no pets then they can make pet rocks or find pictures of pets they would like). They would then add the photo's to movie maker. Next step is to find background music for their movie and add it to the movie. The focus and learning outcome of the project is poetry and rhyming poetry. My students would then use the pictures to inspire them to come up with rhyming poetry to add to the slides of their pets. I would then get the students to add their movie to our class wiki page to view others work and ideas on the project. This project using moviemaker is a great example of using student centred learning as the students are creating their own learning based on their interests and ideas, relevant to them . By sharing their work on the wiki and watching other classmates movies they are learning about different concepts that the other children have created.

Other great ways of using video for learning include digital storytelling, other forms of poetry, maths- geometric shapes, campaign ads, project based learning and social studies. This website readwritethink has some great ways of using moviemaker in the classroom for great learning. It also goes through the processes for children of using moviemaker to gauge what they are capable of doing with the software. A great slide show that explains the learning benefits of video in the classroom can be found here.

Video allows our students to be creative in a way that pen and paper cannot do alone. By the use of audio and visual we are using sensory modalities and  catering for our digital learners to understand in a higher order processing way the material that is being taught. If we use a sound pedagogy with instructions for the use of creating movies for learning it should allow our students to summarise their findings and then evaluate the videos of there own and also importantly others video material.
Video seems to be a good example of constructivism model of learning.  Social constructivist Vygotsky (1962) explains that social interaction has a large influence on learning, and that individuals learn within a zone of close proximal development. He suggests that learners move beyond what is already known through the support of others. By allowing our students access to fellow classmates movies on a wikispace they are able to learn as a social network using one another findings in their videos to enhance their own learning and understanding of the topics.

References

L. Vygotsky, "Social Development Theory" 1962 retrieved from http://www.instructionaldesign.org/theories/social-development.html