Monday, 3 September 2007

You have been told!

Last week my class just finished our giant (for 6 & 7 year olds) digital stories. It's taken a while but we are all very proud of the finished products and I thought share with you all and have a bit of a brag!

We took our persuasive arguments (written collaboratively last term) and used a combination of Kidpix, Movie Maker and voice recordings to complete our movies.

The result is just gorgeous! It was the first time my students have used Movie Maker independently but they found it relatively easy. Our major trick was having all files etc well named and all stored in one folder on our school server. It was a little hard for them to line the audio up with the correct slides, but with many brains together in the one group, they were able to be victorious with a huge feeling of achievement and accomplishment.

So have a view of one of the eight videos (embedded below)....
the students are quite persuasive & convincing-
so just remember - you have been told!



(Update: The TeacherTube embedded video wont load for everyone so I'm trying our Blogger embed above - fingers crossed)

23 comments:

  1. Hi Rachel - I'm afraid the video keeps timing out for me, is it a really big file?

    ReplyDelete
  2. I can't get the movie to load - can you email me when it is sorted so I can watch.
    xx

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hey Rachel
    I so want to watch these movies! It won't load though. Are you going to post on TeacherTube or blip.tv?
    6-7year olds using MovieMaker - now that's impressive!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Ahhhh! sorry guys... it seems teacher tube was being unkind, I checked and it was playing ok on the site but not here... what a pain.

    Anyway , I have uploaded it using Blogger and it works for me (!) - good that I could have a go at this new function.

    Oh, and Chrissy.. I must confess... I now have 3 eight year olds in my class (birthdays in the last 2 weeks) so I now teach 6, 7 and 8 year olds officially lol ;)

    Cheers, Rachel

    ReplyDelete
  5. It works fine now - what a great job they did! You must be really proud of them :-)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Love it! It is working fine now! I can't wait to share it with my class. Hope you will be posting all 8 of the movies on your class blog so we can leave comments... or let me know if they are all on teacher tube and we can watch them through there. It will be great for my class to see how you used the information we gave you in our skype call. Well done to you for getting this together.

    ReplyDelete
  7. Rachel - This video is awesome! I bet the children are so proud. You should be too! Well done. (I give you an A+)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Thanks Andrew but I will pass the A+ onto that group of 3 kids, they deserve it :)

    ReplyDelete
  9. This is great stuff. Love the graphics and the words. Great work kids.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Enjoyed your "movie," Rachel. I can hardly wrap my mind around how your students will be interacting when they are your age!

    I'll put the word out in our district about what you've done here.

    BTW, I have blogrolled you as a gateway to NZ edubloggers. I figured this was a good jump off spot to explore! (I'm in Oregon, USA)

    ReplyDelete
  11. What a great little digital story! Can't wait to share it with my junior classes (and senior classes too!!)

    ReplyDelete
  12. Another excellent piece of work by your students, Rachel! Thanks so much for sharing it!

    ReplyDelete
  13. Hi Rachel,
    I love the video. I can't wait to share it with my Kindergarten students. I think it will spark a very nice discussion. Thanks for sharing it here. It seems my District blocks some video formats (google video, rockyou). ;-( I am hoping Teacher Tube and Blogger video make the "A" list. Thanks again. Please tell the students I think they did a wonderful job. I am sure my students will think so too.

    ReplyDelete
  14. Hi Rach'

    Go figure! The blogger embed worked for me at home, but is blocked by my corporate gatekeeper. Good thing you put the link to Teachertube, coz now my little darlings are able to be mightily impressed by the work you and your class are doing.

    keep up your great work.

    Mark

    ReplyDelete
  15. fabulous! I love it! you are my inspiration for getting more creative with technology in the classroom.

    ReplyDelete
  16. Well done Rachel. I am impressed and would love to know how you taught your Yr 2's how to use movie maker! You must be a gifted teacher :+)

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hi Jamin,

    No, not a gifted teacher, just a talented scaffolder!

    They wrote their arguments collaboratively through our persuasive writing unit, storyboarded their slides for their movie, used Kidpix to design, type text and draw pictures for each slide, then imported their finished slides into movie maker.

    We then made titles and credits, changing text, colours and animation types and used our digital voice recorders to record the audio.

    I then carefully labelled the audio and the kids inserted it under each slide until it matched up. Most groups were between 2 - 4 kids. The hardest bit was ensuring the picture slides were long enough so that the audio matched up; we did lots of previewing and this is probably the only part where I had to assist.

    The tech part took about 5 weeks (so 5 computer suite sessions; one per week) except the voice recordings were done by the kids in class time.

    The argument writing was key and was a good 3/4 week discovery writing period where we read zillions of persuasive arguments, decided what the features were, looked at and identified the features, wrote our own arguments and then brainstormed and collaboratively wrote our actual persuasive arguments.

    The movie maker process was great as the message of their arguments is so much more powerful in this medium, rather than just in text form.

    We are going to save movie maker for our major termly pieces of work and next week start using photostory for smaller/quicker pieces.

    So yeah, we certainly scaffolded them through the process and the skills they'd need for movie maker, lots of demonstrating and training child experts to help others too.

    Before this we all helped to make a class movie using movie maker earlier this term (everyone took turns at dragging things into the timeline etc). But this was the first time I have properly used it with my class and I'm impressed at how easyish it is to use. It's just when you add transitions and audio that it gets very tricky to make it play correctly... so most groups didn't use any transitions at all.

    Cheers,
    Rachel

    ReplyDelete
  18. 6, 7 and 8 year olds! I am impressed because you've certainly persuaded me! Great stuff class - gosh you've got a very clever scaffolding teacher - I hope you're looking after her!

    ReplyDelete
  19. Dear Rachel,

    My name's Graham Clark and I'm the Senior ICT Trainer at the Melbourne office of Infoxchange Australia. I deliver computer training to adult learners across Victoria and occasionally interstate. I literally fell into your blog about 10 minutes ago. What can I say?! What you're doing with the kids is just amazing. I really enjoyed the video on rubbish put together by Tayla, Thomas and Ben. All I can say is, I wish you had been my teacher when I was in primary school...

    Graham Clark.

    ReplyDelete
  20. Brilliant! I am so inspired by what you have done here. Our third through fifth graders should be able to do this if we can be as skilled at scaffolding as you are.

    ReplyDelete
  21. Hi Rachel,

    I came across your blog and this example of your students' work is so amazing!
    I'm a student teacher here in Christchurch, and it's great to see some of the things you're doing in the classroom with ICT, especially with such young children. Just goes to show that children are capable of so much as long as they have the proper support.

    ReplyDelete
  22. Rachel, I really enjoyed the digital story your class created. I am creating a digital story for my college class. I think its great that the same program can be used for elementary and college students. I think that incorporating new methods of technology into the classroom at a young age is good for students. Now when they are assigned to create a digital story or other technology based assignement they will be more familiar with the programs and beable to create better work in a shorter amount of time.

    ReplyDelete
  23. Rachel, I think its great that you are incorporating digital stories into your classroom at such an early age. This lets your students get familiar with using technology in the classroom so they can create higher quality of work in less time when they are older. I am in a college course currently and we are assigned to create a digital story about curriculum. Had I created digital stories when I was younger I would be more familiar with the program and be able to create a better digital story. It is especially important to get students used to incorporating technology into their studies because technology allows access to a large amount of information previously not available.

    ReplyDelete

THANKS for taking the time to leave me a comment. I genuinely appreciate each and every one of them :)