Movie Making 

Movies are a global iconic multimedia that has been used as a communication tool for disseminating information and for entertainment purposes, but also as an important learning tool. Written projects, no matter how big or small, can be transformed easily into a movie. Movies that are created by students  them to use their imaginations to invent a story, plan their stories, organize their ideas, and write a script of dialogue or narration for the story.  These skills, standing alone, are higher level thinking skills used in the movie making process. Students will also thread higher order thinking skills to construct knowledge the concepts and skills related to a unit of study with they are currently learning. These concepts and skills are integrated into their script to tell a story.  Teachers who allow their students to demonstrate their mastery of concept and skills, as well as developing their communication skills through movie making, understand this information on a deeper level and do better on standardized tests.

The Apple IMovie is a great application for creating student projects such as documentaries and training videos for educators.  Video footage can be shot with an Apple mobile device such as an iPhone, iTouch, IPad2, or through photo booth on an Apple desktop or laptop and imported into the iMovie application on an Apple laptop or desktop computer, and edited.  Movies can be saved on a hard drive, thumb drive, burned on a DVD via iDVD , or posted on the web.  Movies made in this way are fast, easy, and fun!

Students can create animated movies by typing in text on Xtranormal MovieMaker  http://www.xtranormal.com/.  Students can create a free account on this website and create short animated movies as projects that can be shared in class.  Students can choose characters, a background and animation to appear in their narratives.  Teachers find this web web application user-friendly, engaging, and a creative way to bring the curriculum alive.

Practical Uses for Movies in Education

Professional Development and Training

Professional development and training videos (Webinars) to be posted on a website for teachers, staff, or students

Informational videos to be posted on a website

Audio-visual workshops to be presented at conferences

Classroom & Student Use:

A class lecture, lesson, or activity made by a teacher

Student created cross curricular, standard-based projects demonstrating mastery of key concepts and skills from a unit of study. Examples include:

      -historical events, places, people, debates

      -performing arts shows such as plays and musical performances

      -science labs, experiments, activities and projects (i.e. science fair project)

      -presentations about books, authors, short stories, and poems.

      -Student news broadcasts/current events

      -role-playing

A documentary about school or student life

Class fieldtrip footage