Multimedia for Everyone

This video comes from my experience working with a year 4 class for most of this term. We have been getting used to incorporating technology into ‘the way we do things’. We got the students to make a multimedia presentation to demonstrate knowledge of capital cities of Australia. We practiced Movie Maker skills in class but because of time constraints and also a desire to see how far the students could go in a short time frame with this technology we also allowed them to work on it as part of homework. The key learnings, some of which are covered in this video include:

• The parents got involved. Some of them even creating their own holiday videos.
• The students gained knowledge of the cities they didn’t research by watching other students videos
• The videos are now reusable by other grades who can watch them
• The creators had such pride in their work and were able to bring their real-life experiences and learning to the activity

It was really a fantastic experience for everyone. And it didn’t take alot of time to get started.

The video was shot over a few different sessions. Non-rehearsed interviews with the teacher and students. I first had discussions with the teacher and student and talked about the project. I then took lots of footage. It was difficult at times for the participants to get their ideas clear. For some of it we took notes and then tried to talk to the notes but it didn’t seem to make a big difference. Often the first discussion we had was the one we want to have captured. It’s a bit long but I think most of the elements are important to tell the story. A bit more time on re-recording and editing and I could reduce the time of the video and make the points clearer and more powerful.

If I do some editing to this video it will be to include more examples of kids work (recommended by the teacher) and change the teacher video to some narration. Also I’d probably work on the lighting. Still find it hard to get the lighting just right so it’s not distracting.