As an intermediate teacher at Blacklock Fine Arts, I often experiment with integrating technology into my drama classes. One natural connection for this is iMovie. In the past I have had my students create videos for various curriculum connections: to teach crosswalk safety, to demonstrate the science concepts on their invented instruments, to present news reports as if they are weather reporters from various countries around the world, etc.
For Remembrance Day this year I wanted to use iMovie on our iPads to combine voice, pictures, and music to display mood. My class of 4/5 students has also been learning how to use powerful words to capture mood in our writing. Their task was to use these elements in a video project that juxtaposed war and peace and explored the purpose of Remembrance Day.
Throughout this entire project I encountered many wonderful teaching moments such as discussions of appropriate use of technology, internet safety, and digital citizenship! We began this project by collecting images of war and peace from the internet. This led to some necessary discussions about selecting images that hold powerful emotion yet would still be appropriate to show younger kids in the school. We also talked about what to do if an especially disturbing or inappropriate image accidentally popped up on the screen. As students collected their photos, we paused to talk about copyright and how to know if a photo is protected. This was the first time this group of kids had used iMovie this year, so I stopped them at various points along the way to demonstrate various elements of the program and how to fix various problems that they might be having (for example, if the music was sounding much louder than their recorded voices). At the end of their project we had a viewing time where students were able to respectfully critique one another’s projects. All of the students were very proud of their work, and I selected three of the videos to show during transitions in our Remembrance Day Ceremony.