First Student-Created Videos

I'm impressed. It's just the third day of school and we've already finished our first student-created videos in the Shepard classrooms. The project was to create a tour of the classroom that we'd be able to share with anyone. Here's how we made it happen.

We decided to use the app 30Hands to create the video. If you aren't familiar with the app, you should check it out. It lets you take pictures, add narration, and publish as a movie. Both classes organized their video first by brainstorming the content. They came up with a list of spots in their room that were important for day-to-day operations. Examples were the lunch tub, class library, desks, iPad area, and classroom job board. Then students were assigned expert areas to highlight in the video. That was the hard part.

In both classrooms, we pulled the expert groups to create their segment. The other students had other work to do while they waited. The project was completed on one iPad to make it simpler. Each group only took about five minutes to make their segment, which would have been shorter had we not needed a few minutes to show how the app worked. We had two jobs, the photographer and the speaker(s). One took the pictures, we quickly worked up a short statement, and then recorded. If a mistake was made, it was really easy to rerecord. Of course, they loved listening to their finished segment.

After all the groups were finished, we simply published the video to the camera roll. We then let the class see the finished product via Airserver. It was great. And so easy. I'm heading back there after school to work on publishing the videos to the web. I'll send out the links as soon as we get that part started.