In The Classroom
It’s all about the talking pictures! Children love movies these days, and thanks to iMovie, now they can enjoy making their very own. For years the concept of producing a movie has been daunting. Even the products created within the past decade were complex and convoluted. Finally we have a program that is kid friendly as well as adult friendly.
In this particular post, we will focus on the aspect of the iMovie Trailers. While the program does have a full movie production room, leave that for another project. Today we talk about how to utilize a trailer in your classroom.
If you ask anyone, they will tell you that in a lesson plan you need a great hook. If you can catch the children’s interest early and create a want/need to learn, your lesson will be more successful. Trailers are a great way to introduce a unit and really draw the kids in.
Let’s say you are getting ready to teach a unit on World War II. While this topic is already interesting and remains relevant, how do you add the wow factor to get the kids excited? You guessed it, a Trailer. Here is an example of my World War II trailer…
Now that you have the children’s attention, you can launch right into your lesson. Of course your projects do not have to be limited to history. You can create a trailer for any subject or topic you wish to use in the classroom. You can also use this for student projects. How many times have you been looking for some fun way that the students could present something? Now you have your answer. Assigning the students a topic and allowing them to create their own trailer is a fun and easy way to get kids excited about school.
How does the app work? Let’s explore…
App Review
The iMovie app can be located in iTunes for only $4.99. This is a steal considering how expensive other film programs are. This program is user focused and great quality at a low cost. The app has 2 different areas to work with, Trailers and Movies. This review is focused on the trailers
To begin, the program has a number of pre set styles of trailers, all you have to do is insert your media and words. The selection has every thing from dramatic to adventure. simply select the style of trailer you want and get started.
Trailer Style Examples
The creation process is the easy part. You simply select an opening sequence from the bank, insert your media into preset time slots, add your captions and within a few moments your trailer is complete. When you are inserting your media, you can use both video and pictures. The boxes display the amount of time that frame is on screen. If you are uploading a picture, it adds a camera movement, and if you add video you can edit where in the clip you wish to start.
Once your trailer is finished, you can export it not only to your iPad, but to most social media pages, including youtube. If you utilize videos in the classroom often, it becomes a great tool to have a youtube channel at your disposal.
Overall this app is very much worth the cost. It is user friendly to the point where children can figure it out easily. I have used it on a personal level as well as a professional one. I designed a trailer for an upcoming vacation with a group of friends. There are so many ways to use iMovie in the classroom. How will you?
Update 6/7/15
This time around I explored the actual movie portion of the app. Much like the trailer, it is designed with you in mind. It is very easy to insert photos, videos and audio. Simply store the items in your camera roll and then you will be able to drop them into your video where ever you please.
Once they are in place, you simply have to hold the edge of a clip and drag it one way or the next to make it longer or shorter. You can add text on top of your media as well as sound effects and different filters. These features make it easy to turn a simple project into a fun masterpiece.
The program also has a set of pre recorded background music that you can input at any time. All features can be edited for the duration as well as their volume level. It becomes easy to adjust a voice over while still having music in the background.
In the classroom, this works much like the trailer does. You can expand the project to make it a much larger one of course. Giving the students freedom to create their own video often yields some fun results. Below you will find a video I produced about Dwight D. Eisenhower in conjuncture with Voices of Kansas.
