Podcasting Entry 4

I am simply amazed at how the students absorbed iMovie 8!  This past school week was 3.5 days.  There was really no time that I could meet with all the 4th grader experts and 4 teachers to show a new cool trick to the movie program.  I was disappointed and wondered how this grade was going to accomplish the weekly news report podcasting task.  They had taken the previous week off, since they had their ERB tests.  The classes were allowed to work with the students on writing the script.  So this past week they were to record about the testing week.  None of the classes had emailed me on when we were going to meet, and I was floored with my other techie duties to email them with reminders.  Then suddenly on Wednesday, late morning, a kid came into my office and asked if I could come down and help out with the recording.  This specific class had only made one video before and I thought that "helping" was going to be very time consuming.  When I got to the room the experts had the computer open but not much more.  I showed them how to find the program, reviewed how to capture the footage, and then stepped back and allowed the experts to teach to this week's reporters on what to do.  They recorded twice.  Then the experts showed how to edit the footage, make the new project, taught the newbies about how to make and tweek the title card, and how to add the two transitions. It was pretty simple.  The experts had really caught on with only one time of me teaching them!  The little sponges!  :-) Since they had impressed me with how well they had learned everything I was inspired to figure out with them sitting there how to add a little intro and wrap it up music.  We dove into the iLife music packages and found what we liked.  Together we figured out how to drop the music in the area we liked, and trimmed the music some.  They loved it!  After 45 minutes I walked out of their room with the finished project for me to upload to the PDS Podcast page.  

Now for the really impressive part!  Later that day and on the half day Thursday, I had the 3 other classes come ask for my help.  I couldn't help.  I was swamped.  I was sorry, but then said to go ask the expert boys I had helped earlier.  The experts were on Cloud 9!  By Thursday mid morning I had the 2 laptops with finished projects on my desk to upload.  This new teacher being the facilitator, students being the teacher worked!  Without my being there and available, the students utilized eachother's knowledge and blossomed!  I am so proud of the work they produced.  I am amazed at how easy this task was accomplished.  I am pleased with the ownership and "impressed and proud" of themselves feeling these 8 to 9 year old students expressed. 

Here is the link to the PDS Podcast page.  The latest podcasts are 4C, 4D (Quicktime link not working but will be fixed on Tuesday) and 4A TV - February 11.  4B finished also, but I did not have a chance to send that file up to the podcast page yet.  4D class was the first class, and the class that became the experts for the other 4th grade classes.  

(Side note:  One of the experts from the 4D class brought his personal laptop to school on Thursday.  He recently had a birthday party and wanted help on making his video.  He and I played around, showing him how to search on the Internet for free music downloads, download it to his laptop, insert that sound wave on to his movie, and tweak the volume levels of both the music and audio on the live footage.  I can't wait to see what he did over the weekend with this!)