Socially Aware Videos, Spring 2014

This is one of my favorite projects!

My goal was two-fold. One, I wanted students to grapple with tough social issues in the world. At an affluent private school we are somewhat insulated from many issues gripping the globe. I hoped to bring that home to the students. Two, I wanted them to learn some video editing skills.

First, I had them watch a series of videos to make them aware of the needs out there. Next, they broke into small teams to create a video based on one of these social issues. I purposely give them very little instruction about which tools to use. This gives them freedom to use things they have at their disposal or may have played with in the past. It also allows them to explore new tools too.

I found it interesting that two of my three teams used a similar concept, but I liked the way it looked. The soundtrack helped keep things moving.

You can see two of the projects below.

What video projects are your students working on?  

Socially Aware Videos

My middle school students just wrapped up a project called Socially Aware Videos.  I selected five social issues and public service announcement videos to match them. Then, students broke into pairs to create their own videos about one of those same five social issues.

Overall, I'm proud of what they were able to create, mostly sitting in the classroom.  Both groups chose bullying as their issue (though one of them combined bullying with social media).  In the future, I may delete that issue from the project for a couple reasons.  One, there is so much talk these days about bullying that I think it wasn't too enlightening.  There are other topics out there that I would like wake them up with (water conservation, adoption, etc.).  Two, recording videos about bullying opens the doors to students enacting bullying situations, which -- trust me -- can lead to issues with parents and administrators.

The first video is actually a series of videos, strung together by a Prezi. Most of those videos were created on Animoto.  Not a bad idea, but I recommended to the students that it would have been better to use iMovie or Capture to create one big video.



The second video was about bullying and social media.  It is created to be like a talk show with an example of cyberbullying through texting.  Nicely done!



What I love about teaching this middle school course is giving them an assignment and watching them tackle it.  They learn the apps and software they want to use and figure things out as they go. While they are learning about social issues, they are really becoming more comfortable with the technology at their fingertips.  It's a great combination!

Socially Aware Videos

Some lesson ideas spring up from the craziest places.  One day I was planning ahead and looking at a calendar and saw that March 22 was World Water Day.  Not only that, but there was a QR code connecting to a video, and that got me thinking.

Later that day, I saw a video on Facebook. It was a poem written by a guy who was bullied when he was in school.  He was heavy and he like pork chops and he got picked on.  He talked about friends of his who also were bullied.  He talked about how they feel the pain to this day as adults.  And that got me thinking.

I teach at a private school that charges a pretty penny for tuition.  Most of my 7th grade students carry at least one iDevice to class each day -- their own personal device.  These kids don’t know about hunger or thirst or abandonment.  I wanted to give them an opportunity to look into those worlds with videos.  

I selected six social issues and found informative videos them.  Students then had to team up and create a video along a similar topic.

The Original Videos:

1. Bullying
2. World Water Day
3. Feed My Starving Children
4. Show Hope -- Adoption/Foster Care
5. Changing World Population
6. The World of Social Media

The Student Videos:

Adoption/Foster Care:

Dawsyn and Natalie

Bullying:

Abby and Cammy

Cam and Kent

Connor and Sam

Drew and Evan

Harry and Seth

Matt and Maxx

Social Media Overuse:

Evan and Whit

Water Conservation:

James and Matt

In hindsight, I expected too much from them.  I really thought I could tell them to create a video, and they would be able to figure it out.  I really thought I could tell them to upload the video to YouTube and they could do it.  What you see when you watch these videos is a spectrum of ability levels and interpretations of the term “video.”  (Granted, the Google Presentations you see here were originally PowerPoints that ran on timed progressions.  Looking at it like that, we can call it quasi-video.)

What this means is that next year I’ll tweak how I do this.  Instead of assuming they can self-teach and figure it out, I’ll approach this lesson a bit differently.  I guess we’re all learning all the time.

With that said, there are some real gems in this collection.  I hope you found them and enjoyed them.