Creating a Digital Video

Making a Movie

Today I created a short movie using Windows Movie Maker using some photos I had on the computer of our dog and her litter of puppies.  It was a very simple process, simply importing pictures and using a drag and drop function to sequence them.  I then recorded an audio file using my iPhone and inserted that over the video, made a title credit page and selected a transition effect.  I then saved it to my desktop (in the Broadband 525 kbps format) and voila!  1 minute movie.  Simple stuff, absolutely nothing special but gets the point across.  

View my cinematic masterpiece below.

Well I did warn you it was nothing special... 

Uploading the video to Blogger was a nightmare.  For some reason when I tried to upload it from my computer it would get stuck on the 'processing video' part, then tell me there was an error uploading my video.  Tried again.  And again.  Compressed the video and resaved it.  Same result.  Tried again.  Suppressed my bubbling rage.  Lost my patience, saved this post as a draft and walked away.  Came back 24 hours later and tried again.  SAME PROBLEM.  

Finally I went down another path and uploaded the video to YouTube, then embedded it from YouTube to Blogger.  It uploaded almost instantly, which I found both a massive relief and incredibly annoying (because I wasted a whole day in a technological hissy fit when the answer was so painfully simple and I didn't think of it yesterday).   

Now that I'm over that little hurdle, I have no problem envisioning primary school aged children making their own movie.  And since I am now so very skilled at analytic thinking, I shall perform a dazzling SWOT analysis on the use of digital video in the classroom:

Strengths:

• Having students create their own digital videos is an engaging activity which encourages students to utilise their skills in ICT's.
• Creating a digital video is a simple yet effective way for students to display and narrate images or video.
• Digital video files can be created collaboratively between students or classes, and shared online with others.

Weaknesses: 

• While digital video files can be created collaboratively, they do not allow other students to contribute to them after they are made.
• Like any ICT tool, they require access to a computer which not all students may have outside of school hours (if prescribing the creation of a video as homework or as a project).
• There is always the issue of good online ethics and proper attribution of sources when working online, which can be difficult to monitor.

Opportunities:

• Digital video files are an engaging way to display student's work or school experiences (for example, students could make a movie using images or video taken on a school excursion, then add audio explaining what they saw or learnt).
• Students could take photos of their artwork, and at the end of the term make a movie using the pictures whilst explaining their favourite piece, and how their skills evolved over time.
• Teachers could have pictures of a process (such as the process of making bread; seed to a seedling, to a plant, to a mill, to grain, to bread) and have younger students enter them into the timeline in the correct sequence to create a movie.

Thoughts:

• While I can see many uses for digital video files in the classroom, I do wonder how effective they will be with younger students.  I would be interested to see how quickly they would pick up the skills required to create them in an actual classroom situation.

Overall, I think that digital video files could be used effectively in the classroom as long as like with any ICT tool, students are provided with appropriate scaffolding and teachers utilise appropriate pedagogy for the activity.