Tuesday, Cohort 2, Week 4

For this week’s session at Tech Club the second grade students worked with iMovie.  I started off the session by asking the students to raise their hand if they had used iMovie before.  Only a couple students had, so iMovie is a completely new program to most of the students.  I made worksheets for the students to complete as they explored iMovie, so that they were given some direction and tried out many of the common features.  Each student was using their own Macbook but were sharing ideas with their neighbors and showing each other what they had found.  I briefly introduced the program to the students and the remainder of the session was for them to explore iMovie so that the students will feel comfortable with it when they are editing their actual video from the puppet performance.  To end the session, I had students volunteer to share what they had found and any fun or cool features that the program has. 

This week was extremely successful.  The students were actively engaged using technology for the whole session.  The worksheet that I made was a really great way to give the students some direction while they were exploring the features of iMovie.  The worksheet had pictures of the different buttons and blanks where the students would fill in the function of those features.  I think that this really helped to keep the students on task and they would share with their neighbor when they had found something cool that was not on the worksheet.  The students were very fascinated by the sound effects that they could put into a movie and this became sort of a distraction, but it was fun for them to see all of the different sounds that they could add to a video.  The biggest struggle that I had this week came before the session started.  I arrived very early so that I could import the video onto each computer.  I was able to get just enough video imported onto enough computers just as the students were entering the room.  This made me a bit nervous but it worked out just right and just a portion of the puppet show film was enough for the students to explore the program. 

For next session, I have the entire puppet performance video cleaned up a little bit and I have it saved in multiple media sources so that it will be easier and faster to import onto the computers.  The students will do their best to create their own video about bullying using the film from the puppet show.  I think it will take a lot of guidance to get them to understand that they are creating a read video and that they must keep that in mind when they are adding transitions and sound effects.  Overall, this week was a lot of fun and I could tell that the students really enjoyed what they were doing.  It is fun to see how fast the students pick up and understand how to use a program.  I am very excited to create actual anti-bullying videos with the students next week. It will be fun to see their individual personalities in each video!