How Do We Really Get to Know Our Students? iMovie!

Because all of Ms. Bo's students are new to the middle school, Ms. Bo knows that helping them to feel known is key to a successful start. So, the first unit of Ms. Bo's history class investigates primary sources. The class talks about the ways their identities impact their understanding of history, and they talk about the fact that they are the best sources for information about themselves.

In the past, Ms. Bo has had each student create a collage that demonstrates investigation into the source that is their self. Then, the students write an 8-10 sentence paragraph about the collage and the interpretation of their self.

This year, Ms. Bo decided to incorporate iMovie as a digital collage, so I had the chance to collaborate with her. To keep the project manageable, we came up with this list of criteria that we shared with the students as a Google Doc:

We asked for one minute so it was easy to share, and we had students stick to pictures they took and stock music and sound because we didn't want to compound what they needed to know about citation for the project. Since each student had a computer with iMovie already, we didn't have to worry about access, but Ms. Bo made sure to schedule plenty of in-class time to work so she could identify potential hiccups students had with using the program.

When Ms. Bo introduced the project, she first asked the students what you need to make a movie. The students shouted out ideas like a script, actors, scenery, music. Ms. Bo pointed out that they had a script: the paragraph they had already completed, and they had an actor: themselves, and they had scenery: the music. Then, I did a mini-lesson on how to use iMovie, and we let them work. We posted the instructions to Moodle as well:

The students had a lot of questions about whose picture they could use - they REALLY wanted to use photos from the internet. They also REALLY wanted to use copyrighted music. We stuck with no.

When the students went home to work on the projects, they sent Ms. Bo a lot of alarmed emails about the project, which surprised us because in class, they had seemed so on top of it. The next day, in class, it turned out that the students completely had the hang of using iMovie. We weren't entirely sure why they panicked . . . maybe because it was new to them and they were still adjusting to the middle school?

To complete the project, Ms. Bo had each student show their movie, one after another. She used the expectations as her assessment rubric, and graded them as the students showed the movies. Sitting in the classroom, listening to the students say, "Awwww!" and, "I love horses, too!" was amazing. All the students' personalities piled up on top of each other, and you could feel the group coming together as a class that cared about their classmates because each one was known. 

I thought about including some samples of the videos, but then I thought about how personal each one was. Even though the students gave me permission to share their work, I didn't want to publish videos with that much personal information. That said, here's a photo of students watching the videos during class: