Week Three - Movie Making

This week, in our first session with Collette, we joined up with our group and began writing our storyboard for our movie. I was not looking forward to making our own movie as there had been a lack of communication in our group. We had come up with a few ideas and I knew we were sticking to a Scottish food theme but I was not entirely clear about what we were doing.
On our storyboard we wrote a rough plan. The host, Mandy, was going to Tesco to buy our ingredients to make haggis, neeps and tatties. Then in the style of Come Dine with Me, the meal was going to be a disaster and she would have to resort to plan B, a microwave meal. We would then all sit down to have dinner and rate the meal out of ten.

To start filming our movie, we drove to Tesco where Mandy would be filmed buying the ingredients for our meal. However, when we arrived at Tesco, the Flip camera we had wouldn't turn on despite us testing it before we left! As we didn't have time to collect another camera, we decided just to buy the ingredients and leave this part out of our movie.
I was concerned that our movie would not be long enough with this part cut off, however, we collected another camera and got straight into the filming part. I was in charge of filming and was surprises at just how easy the camera was to use. It was simply a case of pressing the red button to begin recording and once again to stop. Each time I stopped and started the camera, a new video clip is stored so that when they are uploaded to a computer, there are individual clips ready to be edited.

Despite not looking forward to this task, I really enjoyed it and I was able to see some of the problems which may have occured if I had used this in the classroom with children. For example, you always have to be aware that there may be some technical difficulties and so you must always have a back-up plan. It was difficult for us as we had gone to Tesco, however, in school, the children would always be within close proximity of their teacher and they would be able to collect a replacement camera.
When I have been in school, the teacher often allow the children to do a news report; I think these cameras would be ideal for the children to use and film their own TV news report. This is just one idea, there are several ways in which we could implement the use of Flip cameras into our lessons.
Not only are they a good way of introducing new technology, they allow the children to improve their skills using Windows Movie Maker (see next post for more details).

When I was at secondary school, I took Higher PE and my teacher used a similar camera to video me playing badminton and skiing. This was used so that my teacher was able to point out my strengths and weaknesses as well as using it for assessment purposes and giving me my final grade. At the time I was not keen on the idea of being filmed, however, I am now able to see the benefits of using such technology.

In the text, Primary ICT - Knowledge, Understanding and Practice (2007, page 171), Allen, J., Potter, J., Sharp, J. and Turvey, K. have included a "Mind map of possible issues around the use of Video for Learning" which I think is well worth a look at and has some great ideas: the cameras can be used for assessment purposes or for the children to create their own personalised portfolios.

Also, I found the following video taken from Teacher's TV, very useful. Although set in a secondary school, the ideas are still relevant and could be transferred to the primary school. In particular, I like the idea of using the cameras to video science experiments which are perhaps too dangerous or time consuming to do in the primary classroom.