Keeping the "We" in WeVideo

I am lucky enough to work in a school district that uses WeVideo as part of our 1:1 Chromebook approach to blended learning. If you aren't already familiar with WeVideo, it is a fantastic tool that let's students create, edit and publish videos in the cloud. Students can collaborate on projects and teachers can create sets of media for students to use for video projects. Finished videos can be downloaded or uploaded directly to Google Classroom. It has been loads of fun getting to know this powerful tool for student creativity this year. I have been a part of really innovative WeVideos and I've been a part of WeVideos that felt like any other school assignment that gets completed just because it was assigned. Here are some of my observations of what makes a WeVideo stand out in terms of the student learning experience.

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Collaboration. An obvious plus to WeVideo is the ability for multiple students to work on a video project at the same time. In the world of Google Docs and Google Slides, students have come to expect to be able to share a project with a classmate and have dual editing rights. WeVideo is a little tricky this way since only one student can be editing one video clip at any one time. This can be a great benefit though since it creates the need for more coordination, communication and planning among the students. For instance, if two students are making a Google Slide presentation together, two things often happen. One, the students divide up the slides and they each make their slides without checking in with each other about the content or style of their slides. Two, one student does all the work. With WeVideo, students need to plan out the video into media and video edits. Some students can be responsible for gathering the media needed: images, video filmed via phones, photos, music, audio. Other students can be responsible for assembling the media into a video edit. This creates a natural need for students to truly collaborate and not just divide up the work. The editor needs to be able to tell the media managers what they need. The media managers need to check back in with the editors to see how the media works in the videos. Being intentional with students about this is essential, helping students understand how the program works and how to communicate with other students will make the video project much more enjoyable and the final product much more meaningful for all.

Student Created Rubrics. Let's face it. Our students are huge consumers of video. They know what makes a good video and what makes a great video. Make sure to take some time to have students brainstorm what makes a quality learning video. Ask students to work in pairs to identify the characteristics of videos that are informative while fun to watch. Use their thoughts and ideas to build your rubric. Of course, you likely will have to add some components that students might not consider but having their buy-in on what the final products should look like will pay off in the long run. As you do more and more video products, be sure to save the quality examples. Show these to students and have them evaluate what makes them good. You will see an exponential increase in the quality of what students produce. They will feel much more connected to the project when they have helped build the rubric.

Student Reflection. Here's the great news, you've already laid the ground work for this one! Remember that student-built rubric you made with the students? Now, they can look at the rubric and reflect on what they did. In addition to checklist types of reflection questions (did you do this? did you have this?) be sure to include questions about what they learned from the project and, most importantly, what they would do differently next time. I always find that I learn as much from what students put in their project reflections as I do actually viewing the project itself. This also gives students another opportunity to share their view of the project. As educators we need to keep our focus on how students are experiencing the learning opportunities we provide in our classrooms.

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Celebration. There is nothing worse than working really hard on a project and having your teacher move right on to the next topic, or the next project. Be sure to take time to celebrate the products students have created. Whether you have a movie day where you watch each of the projects or you have an evening presentation where parents are invited, be sure to plan time to view and celebrate the projects. This is a great opportunity to invite your administrators in or at least the tech coaches (we love this stuff!!). Consider having students write positive notes to their peers about each video. While sharing a glow and a grow is common practice, I find letting students just focus on the "glow" provides a more positive flow in the room and gives us all a chance to go full circle back to that original question of what makes a quality learning video.

I'm sure it is very intentional that the first ISTE Standard for Students is Empowered Learner. The Empowered Learner is one that "takes an active role in choosing, achieving and demonstrating competency in their learning goals, informed by the learning sciences."* Keeping this in the forefront of our minds when planning video creation lessons will ensure that students see themselves as part of the process, not something the process happens to.

*2016 ISTE Standards for Students, ©2016, ISTE® (International Society for Technology in Education), iste.org. All rights reserved.

Messing around with Green Screens

We been having a fun time these last few weeks messing around with green screen technology. It has been a lot of fun and we've learned a lot. (And it gave me a reason to clean out our "studio" - yea!).

If you've never tried green screen before, there are lots of ways to do it. In fact, when we do it, it isn't even a green screen, it is a blue one! The first step is to have a blue curtain or to paint a wall blue. In the past, I've even taped a blue sheet up to a wall and got pretty good results.

Next you add some code to Windows Movie Maker. If you aren't a computer programmer or if coding sounds intimidating to you, don't worry. I found the instructions here: http://www.wikihow.com/Chroma-Key-in-Windows-Movie-Maker super easy to follow. You do need to have the older version of Movie Maker though, the one for Windows 7 doesn't seem to work.

Once you add the Chroma Key, all the rest is a matter of editing in Movie Maker. The directions above take you through the rest of the steps. I've also written them out here: Greenscreen Directions if you are interested.

So besides feeling like a rock star when you figure out how this works, watching to kids videotape and edit is really fantastic!

The class I worked with had prepared skits ahead of time and came in "the studio" ready to film. I had a camera and tripod set up, but they did the rest. The filmed, transfered files from the camera to the computer and followed the directions for editing in Movie Maker.

They loved, loved, loved filming. Their skits were clever and creative and they could have recorded and re-recorded themselves all day. Gotta love 6th graders. TIP: tell students they only get 1 take!

The also loved, loved, loved finding images for their background. We found that color pictures worked best and that anyone that wore a blue shirt in front of the blue curtain disappeared when we applied the green screen! TIP: make sure students wear clothes that are a different color than your background!

Now, when it came to the editing, it definitely required more attention to detail and not all the kids were up for that. But, there were a few kids in each group that shined at this part. Maybe they hadn't been the ham in the skit or the director that remembered all the props, but when it came to understanding the editing process, they were experts. It was really interesting to notice how hard this part was for many students. It made me continue to think deeply about how we can offer more technology process opportunities for students in schools. More students need to be good at this step, understanding how the program works and that they can conquer it.

There is nothing like watching kids create a video that they've created start to finish. Greenscreen is no small undertaking but the outcomes are worth it!

I'd love to hear how others have used greenscreen and their ideas and tips about it!