Using Movie Maker

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Permalink Reply by Brian on October 2, 2009 at 2:17pm

Hey Shane--I've done lots of projects (tech resource teacher) for our city. Scroll down all the way to the bottom and there's a list that I made for one of my workshops: http://ppsblogs.net/brianmckee/workshops/

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Permalink Reply by Nanci Greene on October 27, 2009 at 8:04am

Thanks for sharing this page. Not only did I get some good Movie Maker activities, but I found several great tech ideas to share with teachers as well!

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Permalink Reply by Matt McGoldrick on October 2, 2009 at 5:00pm

I did a "Found Poem" for Martin Luther King Jr's speech. I came across the lesson on www.readwritethink.org. I incorporated the use of digital pictures and audio using Movie Maker. After the students created their found poem, they located images related to the ideas in their poem and imported them in to Movie Maker. I then recorded them reading their poems and they layered that over their slide show. It turned out really well and the kids enjoyed themselves. Great way to celebrate Black History month too.

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Permalink Reply by Carolyn on October 3, 2009 at 5:47pm

Our 8th grade social studies teachers do a "Person of the Era" report after kids study the Renaissance. One teacher took the traditional route, and the kids selected an individual from a list of choices (da Vinci, Michelangelo, Gutenberg, etc.), did research, and created a poster with pictures and important information. The other teacher chose to use Windows Movie Maker and had the kids use pictures, music, and narration timed to go along with the selected graphics. The kids enjoyed it, and to craft their scripts, they had to really understand the information they presented about their individual and why he/she should earn the title "Person of the Era." There are several great step-by-step tutorial on using Windows Movie Maker online, so you don't need to reinvent the wheel. The project described above could also have easily been done using PhotoStory3 because there were no video clips, just stills.
Our health teacher is having kids research topics such as abuse of steroids, smoking, marijuana, eating disorders, etc., and she is having them present their findings using Windows Movie Maker. They will include video clips of themselves acting out a script in addition to using title and ending slides and stills. These will serve as public service announcements.

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Permalink Reply by Joe Fatheree on October 27, 2009 at 7:55pm

We just finished shooting our first films in class on cell phones and edited them in Movie Maker. The kids had a blast. It was a great way to teach them the fundamentals of storytelling.
Best,
-joe

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Permalink Reply by Henry Keil on November 1, 2009 at 1:38pm

Tried a similar approach using the camcorder FlipHD - trouble is it outputs to mp4 whilst MS Moviemaker only works with avis and wmv. So we had to rely on the built-in tools of the Flip which were ok though not brilliant.

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Permalink Reply by Christian Thompson on October 30, 2009 at 6:44pm

Hi there. I did a unit on bias in the media using political ads to show how various effects such as music, lighting, etc. can be used to promote or make someone look bad.

After studying examples and analyzing them I had the students create their own videos (in teams of 2). I took some footage of me teaching (just a few minutes) and divided the class. One half of the class got to do a "Pro-Mr. Thompson" video and the other half got to do an "Anti-Mr. Thompson" video. Then we had a final film fest where we showed the videos and evaluated them. It was a fun project for all involved.

Click here to see two examples.

*Note: The students were all in their first year at an English language school, so please overlook any grammatical or spelling errors.

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Permalink Reply by Jeff Ginger on October 31, 2009 at 11:29pm

Shane,

I did a storytelling in stop-motion project at a nearby library that might give you some ideas. The kids I was working with were a bit younger, I think, but I really think the workshop could scale:

http://blog.lis.illinois.edu/imlscic/?p=138 for a blog post about it and http://www.communityinformaticsprojects.com/files/DigitalLearningSe... for the lesson plan.

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Permalink Reply by Johnathan Chase on November 1, 2009 at 5:31am

My middle school social studies students have used the Sony Vegas video software these past two years to make multimedia projects inspired by popular songs.

The song serves as the soundtrack and as a catalyst for web-based research guiding them to historic images, documents, quotes and other content for their project. In Spring 2008 all student teams used the same song "How Far We've Come" and last Spring students chose their own songs.

With any new project or challenge, I strongly recommend you create a sample project for your students to view or feel free to use ours. I have a ceiling mounted LCD projector in my room and worked on both of my sample projects during class and projected my work for others to watch and learn.

This teaching technique worked really well, but also explains why some historic quotes were more popular and appear in many of their projects. I do encourage my students to find their own images and text.

Take a look...

2008 Media Projects

2009 Media Projects

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