Lights, Camera, Action

I actually really enjoy using iMovie. It is not a difficult program to learn to use well, and I had previous experience with it. We have to film all our video blogs (vlogs) using iMovie, which means I've had to use the program to film myself and post videos regularly for the past two or so years. It was challenging at first, but not too bad after the first time or two. I also used iMovie for all the videos on my class website. So essentially all my previous experience in iMovie centered around filming myself and uploading to YouTube.

One of my vlogs:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lzs0OT97qhY

I also really enjoyed being able to incorporate my own photos into the classroom. I know my kids that I teach now really get a big kick out of hearing about my life as a "normal person" as opposed to a teacher who lives at school. So I think they will enjoy the photos I put in there of me. I also think using photos of myself allows me to model what "real-life" experiential learning looks like, gives me credibility, and helps make abstract places more concrete. My only regret is that some of my...finer...photos could not make it in the video, for they are not educational in nature. So I will put them here for your enjoyment.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZsN3rSV1zV8

Note: I did try to get iMovie to embed in the blog, but after about an hour of "waiting to upload" I gave up. 

A few things I learned on this project: I was shocked by how well stills work in this format. Before I really only had worked with actual video, but photos work well. I also learned how to make transitions work much better than before. Using audio was much easier than I expected, as well.

The only problem I see is that making this work for a deaf classroom could be challenging. Captions are an option, but the space for text is so small, and there's no way to have it really "scroll" exactly with the words. It is possible to have words scroll, but not necessarily in time with the spoken words. I am not sure how I would modify that except to only use very few words and/or interpret off to the side while the video is being played.

However, in total I really think my kids would enjoy this, if for no other reason than the pictures move and sometimes even adding that much visual interest really helps things along.