"I like the
way you use videos with us -- you get us moving, talking, writing and speaking.
The problem is you make us think too much."
-- "John," one of our English-Language Learner students(Ferlazzo, 2010)
-- "John," one of our English-Language Learner students
If you are a teacher looking for ways to inspire your
students’ creativity and integrate technology at the same time, creating videos
is the best way to go and it reaches all types of learners, especially English
Language Learners (ELLs). Now, a few may
think “teaching technology is time consuming” or “I don’t want to be
responsible” a mindset that can be a disadvantage for our students.
To get an idea of the process of creating a video, I was
assigned as part of my technology class to create a documentary. What is a
documentary? A documentary is a movie or
television program that tells the facts about actual people and events about
actual people and events (Britannica,
2014) . The documentary I created is about the
training program that took place on the island of Guam, called the Gateway to
Technology. This training was geared
towards educators to introduce them to new types of technology and software
tools. So, taking my observations from work and the different interview video
clips provided, I knew I wanted to use my documentary to inform teachers about
the program, inform them about different resources, and to most of all motivate
them to want to try and use technology more in their classrooms either for
teaching or for personal use.
Starting a Documentary
Now, when I created this documentary I had very limited
resources, an issue that I am sure all of us are facing in our classrooms. So how did I complete this project? Well, all
l I needed was my smartphone, a computer, and software that was free and
allowed me to edit my photos and videos into a movie. I own a PC so it already
had Windows Movie Maker installed. I then had to watch all of the interview
clips and figure out what story I wanted to tell in my documentary. Once I
figured out the story I wanted to present, I created a script or a storyboard
on Google Docs. I actually went back
numerous times to change up my script because of all the other resources I
accumulated and wanted to include in my documentary. So, if you were to do this
in your classroom, provide yourself and your students a lot of time to edit a
script and look for resources. After all the planning was done I began creating
my documentary and had to cut out a lot of footage that was not needed. Like a student, I played around with all the
tabs and buttons to figure out how to do certain things on the software which I
just recently found out was updated. When
I had all my videos, text, and photos in place it was time to add some magic to
the movie and add transitions, edit transition duration, and most of all some
music. This, I would have to say is the
most time consuming and tedious part in creating a documentary or even a video.
When everything was in place, I showed my family and asked for their input as
to what needs to be changed or added. This is something that could be done with
your students when presenting their work.
Creating
documentaries is one way to integrate technology into the classroom. ELLs need
to be given frequent, extended opportunities to speak about content material
and work through complex texts in English with small groups of classmates (Greene, 2013) . Larry Ferlazzo
(2012) provides 8 great ideas of using videos in the classroom with your English
Language Learners and the rest of your class.
Works Cited
Gateway To Technology: Bringing Technology into the
Classroom. (2014). 4:19.
Britannica, E. (2014). Merriam- Webster.
Merriam-Webster Incorporated.
Ferlazzo, L. (2010, October 10). 8 Ways to Use
Video with English Language Learners. Retrieved from
http://www.edutopia.org/blog/ell-engagement-using-video-larry-ferlazzo-katie-hull-sypnieski
Greene, R. (2013, October 25). 5 Key Strategies
for ELL Instruction. Retrieved from
https://www.teachingchannel.org/blog/2013/10/25/strategies-for-ell-instruction/
Hi:
ReplyDeleteNicely done
-j-