When I heard our next assignment was a digital story I quickly started to brain storm on how I could use my movie as a teaching tool for my Italian classes. While I began to brain storm with my fellow language teacher we paused to view sample digital stories in our class. I have to admit that while watching the digital stories in class I began to feel a bit intimidated. They were moving, had great pictures and music and so well done! Could I get my video match up to the sample ones?
After thinking about various topics such as a day in the life of an Italian teacher, creating a cooking segment or even making a collage of family pictures to share with family over the holidays. I decided to create a digital story for my 8th grade Italian class.
Since we had just completed a chapter on the home I decided to have students view my digital story as an example. The language I use is basic and understandable for a middle school language class. I also repeat words often so students have ample opportunity to listening to vocabulary words they have already learned. I also turned the digital story into a listening activity and students wrote down all the action verbs and rooms of the house they heard.
Students are now making their own digital story using iMovie. They are taking pictures of their home with their iPads and with cues that I provided, students are also writing up a script on google docs. We will share the videos in class at the end of the month. I am certain their digital stories will be creative and well put together!
I used iMovie on my iPad to make my digital story. The process was fairly straight forward and user friendly once I figured out how to time my script to the pictures. I decided not to add music because I was excited to have my voice actually record and I was scared that adding on another layer I would get stuck fiddling with it for hours. In my next film I will try to use music.
Uploading is where I found problems. I tried to upload the video on to YouTube. This did not work the first time so I went to a tech person and she advised me to upload it to my Google drive. From there we created a link on the class Wiki page. We tested the link a couple of times, I also asked a fellow teacher to see if she could see it on the Wiki page. She could. I was happy the assignment was complete! Fast forward 4 hours later and I notice that the video does not start from the beginning and the link seems to be broken. At this point I was in class, frustrated, and just ready to go home. When I got home that night I tried up load it up to YouTube again. Listening to the instructor in class that evening I realized I had YouTube account since I have a school Google account. In class I also learned where the embed button was on YouTube. I was then able it uploaded it to YouTube and then went on to embed it to the Wiki page by 10pm that night. Better late then never, I guess. I am happy I was able to figure it out myself even if it was after class. I was also excited to be able to use this project in my classroom. On to the next technical adventure!
Oh my goodness! I love that your students are making movies!! Please share how this went in class with us- I'd love to have you speak to it with your colleagues.
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