Tuesday, August 02, 2016

Week 4 - "Being Australian" iMovies - not yet!

Despite all my efforts to get the kids to understand why I want them to collect the photos they need in their Public Share folders for the time being, before attempting to make their iMovies, I had one who insisted on going straight to the iPad, another couple who said they had made a start and there were specific iPads with their pictures on them and others who decided to write their scripts without actually having collected any photos yet. Fortunately, we had one of the iPads that had someone's photos on it - they're not supposed to save them there, but he had done a test run for me when I wanted to see if my instruction sheet was able to be followed. And it was unlikely anyone else would play with the photos, but it would have been safer in the class folder on Public Share.

And the one who insisted that his "being Australian" video would have to be all about beaches. Yes, I told him, beaches are very much a part of Australian life, but - is that all? And how do you go about thinking of sound, smell, taste, feel?

He argued that there was the taste of the salty water, the smells of the sea, the feel of the water, the sound of the waves... I sighed and ended up agreeing, provided that his voice track used all that. It wasn't a dumb thing to say, but I am likely to have to sit down with him and talk him through making the film yet again.

I am glad it's such a small class, because I may have to sit down with all of them when it gets to the point where they have to save their iMovies to Public Share. Some of them got the hang of it when they did the test run, but not all.

Tomorrow I have had to book a computer room because the library is unavailable. If any of them are ready to record their voices, I'll need to send them to a corner where it's quiet.

When I did my annual review the other day and showed my own iMovies as "modelling" and "exemplar work" the Vice Principal said he'd love to see the students' work when it was done. Hopefully there will be something good to show him,at least with some of them!

2 comments:

Crystal Collier said...

You are teaching them the art of film? That's epic. I dabbled in that once upon a time, many, many years ago, but but more behind the scenes as a director. The camera does not love me. Unfortunately.

Sue Bursztynski said...

Nothing that elaborate, Crystal, although our Year 10 students do make little movies for History, on a Civil Rights theme. They're amazingly clever too.

All I ask of the Year 8 students is that they put together some photos from the Internet on the theme of "Being Australian" - the subject requirement - and record their voices(hence the scripts). I did a couple to show them. Some are getting the hang of it quicker than others.