After a recent #edchat this week on activities to try with our students in the new school year, the topic of video production came up. I love having my students create videos and I have compiled a list of a dozen different video projects I have done with my students that can be adapted in any content area classroom.
Majority of my students have smart phones and use the video camera on the phone to make their movies. We have come to love Vimeo, iMovie, and VideoStar apps for easy movie making, editing, and uploading onto the web. Students upload their videos directly to youtube or email me their video file to add to our class playlist. I usually offer a video project every month with some that are two day projects and other’s can take weeks.
1. Book Trailers – The first month of school I had students make a book trailer for their favorite summer reading book. Here are a few of my student’s trailers.
2. Character Music Videos – When we read Agatha Christie’s And Then There Were None students selected one of the characters, choose a theme song for the character, and created a music video to convey the character. Here is the assignment:
3. Art Comes to Life – Inspired by a wordless picture book, students used an image from Chris Van Allsberg’s The Mysteries of Harris Burdick as a catalyst to create a video that expanded on the mystery of the picture presented in the book. Here is one student example:
4. Films Genre Project- A lot of times I give my students choices with the projects they create in my classroom. When students were studying Shakespeare I gave them the option to present a scene as a silent film, rap, or musical. You can have students reenact a scene using any film genre.
5. TED Talks – We all watch them. What if we had our students create a short TED Talk about their own passion and interests.
6. Prezi Screencasts – Take a prezi or powerpoint and screencast the presentation part.
Here is an example one of my students did on mobile learning for our Flat Connections global collaborative project this past spring.
7. Lego Movies – My son is obsessed with legos and he watches many lego movies online. This inspired me to get him to help me create a lego version of a few scenes from MidSummer Night’s Dream. We took still pictures of different lego scenes and screencasted the images and text together. I showed the video in class to help my students better understand the text.
8. Common Craft Videos – I love the ideas and images presented in many the Common Craft videos. Technically this is a screen cast of an illustrated presentation. You can have your students create Common Craft style videos on their own or using the Common Craft build program (depending on your budget).
9. Choose Your Own Adventure Video – Youtube has a feature that allows you to link videos within videos. Last spring my students created a series of videos that analyzed critical theories of gender, race, and class in Disney animation. We linked all the videos together allowing the viewer to choose what he or she wants to learn about. Here is the original blog post with more information how to create your own CYOA videos.
10. Stop Motion Animation – This is inspired by one of my student’s Genius Hour projects. She wanted to learn how to create a stop motion animation. Here is her video but think about the possibility of students creating a stop motion animation to explain a math or science concept. Sounds like a cool idea to me.
The Teaching Factor 