Journal 6: Kidspiration and iMovie

Kidspiration

I thought that the program was very user friendly. The pictorial representations and audio that accompanies them also make it very age appropriate for the elementary aged students. I did, however, feel like there was something I was missing with the program. I wanted to make my project an interactive activity that the students could complete then create their own, but I didn't like the way that it worked out. The activity, although easy to create, didn't turn out the way I imagined. I wanted the student to be able to drag the correct answer into position and then be told that they were correct or incorrect, but I couldn't figure out how to do that. I researched text, watched videos and explored templates I found on the Internet, but I couldn't find a solution.

I think that this program could be incorporated in any classroom in a variety of ways. It's a great tool for teaching writing and getting thoughts onto paper. I could be used in science to help with mapping ideas about animals or insects. Templates could be made for state reports. Students could make family trees. There are infinite possibilities.

I think video tutorials are very helpful and simple. It's easy to follow along if make the video window small and do it along with the instructions. It's much easier that reading text because of the visual aspect. I used both youtube and Atomic Learning and found them equally as helpful. Youtube requires the user to weed out the things that they don't want, but offers more ideas than the basic tutorials of Atomic Learning.

iMovie

iMovie is such a great tool to use at the elementary level. It's simple and it makes the final project look like a professional piece of work. I learned how to use iMovie five or six years ago, but hadn't used it since. I was impressed with the updates that Apple had made to the program. There were many more titles and transitions to choose from, it didn't automatically give you an audio line that you can accidentally change, there were new audio enhancement features and the ability to open more than one project at once to drag and drop clips is invaluable.

I am, however, a little disenchanted with iMovie. It's great to the classroom, it's great as a introduction to digital video editing, but it's so limited that it stifling. I really would like to learn a new digital media editing program that's more manipulatable.

I could see using iMovie in my classroom very often. It would be great for students to edit interviews, create news broadcasts, or for group presentations. It's also really easy for students to put together a slide show of photographs to audio. It really is easy enough for most K-5 students to use, so it opens up possibilities for almost anything.

I didn't use any sort of tutorial for this projects because I was already aware how to use it. I am going to try out Final Cut now and I'm sure that I'm going to need a lot of tutorial to figure it out. I will most likely use youtube and search for tutorials, demos or introductions to Final Cut Pro. I would much rather watch someone than read a book about it.

My demonstration of iMovie proficiency: