Last week they sent me camping with the sixth grade to Pinnacles National Park. Full disclosure, I LOVE camping, but sometimes I am challenged by class trips. I also was struggling to figure out what value I could add to the trip as the "tech guy."
I have an iPhone 4s with iMovie and I have recently been trying to create movies, start to finish, in my iPhone. I have tried to make each movie more complex, exploring the capabilities of the platform. In this video I use slo-mo, voice over, and added sound effects. When I found myself at the back of the pack while camping, I thought I would see what I could do with my phone in a completely unconnected environment.
So I started shooting video clips of between 5 and 30 seconds. I did this throughout the day, making an effort to get each kid in the video, but also not explaining what I was doing or why.
During dinner I imported the clips into iMovie and added titles to a few of them. At this point I put all the footage into the program in order and the movie was 4 minutes long. I showed the movie to the naturalist working with our group and asked if we could modify the evening reflection. -As a bit of context we have been talking about mindfulness as well as mindset with the sixth grade and this was the theme of the lessons on the trip.
After dinner my group hiked off to a quiet space in the camp ground and I gathered them around the table and showed them the movie uncut. I also lead a short discussion about vlogging and blogging, to make sure they had a sense of purpose and audience. It was already dark, otherwise we would have written out our reflections first, since it was dark I asked each of them to mentally compose a sentence or two about anything they did today. We went around the table and each person practiced their reflection out-loud. This practice session allowed me to respond to their reflection and push them further, as well as asking them to use more specific language. Then most of the group started star gazing and I asked them to come to the table one at a time and record. I would give a recording count down out loud so everyone knew when we were recording and no one talked during their classmates recordings.
After I recorded the narration I trimmed the clips down to what we had narrated, letting their voices and decisions shape the length of the movie. I let them talk about whatever they wanted and when one student said "I should talk about the hike because everyone else has talked about rock climbing," I said "talk about what you want to, that is what will make this a good Vlog."
VIDEO ONE
During the second day our naturalist had some great sensory awareness activities planned and she was really open to the idea of having the campers write during these activities. Suddenly I found myself using a lesson I have done almost every year in English. I would have my student s follow me around the school and sit, listen, and write down everything they heard. Then we would write a poem from their word banks.
When it came time to record reflections from day two, which we did the morning of day 3 before the end of the trip, I asked each student to create one standard narration and one narration based on the sensory awareness word banks. This video had almost 5 minutes of raw footage, and after narration was edited down to 2:24.
VIDEO TWO
I have lead many reflection sessions in many contexts and I was really pleased with the results of this one. I am sure I will use it again. I think the video gave their reflections a sense of audience and purpose, and that can make all the difference.
If you want to know more of the how-to, let me know in the comments and I will get a screen cast together.
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