For the second year now, I have had the students in my World War One/Two elective make "Common Craft"-style videos explaining different aspects of the First World War.
Without further ado, here they are:
Without further ado, here they are:
The Weapons of World War One from John Fladd on Vimeo.
The Aircraft of World War One from John Fladd on Vimeo.
Lessons Learned:
- Have students help brainstorm video topics - I put a few possible topics on the board - "The Treaty of Versailles in Plain English", "Life in the Trenches in Plain English", "Spanish Influenza in Plain English" - and had students take it from there. My guys came up with some really good topics. Each team got to pick their own topic. All three videos this year turned out to be topics that the students had come up with themselves.
- Pick teams (semi) carefully - Eric Langhorst, the teacher from Missouri who I stole this idea from (indeed, who I steal most of my good ideas from) suggests using teams of five students. Teams of three-four seems to work best for me. Last year, I decided who would be on each team and made a mild-mannered or slacker-y student the team leader. That worked pretty well. This year, I still picked the team leaders and let them pick the members of their team, one at a time, like for a pick-up kickball game. The idea was to give them a little more control and choice in their project (something I always try to do) and it seemed to work well, but as someone who was ALWAYS picked last for everything as a kid, it left a bad taste in my mouth. While I've learned over the years to try and ignore my notoriously unreliable gut-feelings, I think I'll go back to choosing the teams myself next time, perhaps with student input.
- Use a tripod - I mounted my Flip video camera on a standard tripod. I put the tripod on top of a large table and tilted the head forward to not-quite ninety degrees. I taped down a large sheet of poster paper at the end of the table and used the zoom function on the camera to narrow the shot to the center of the paper. This let the students on each team spread themselves around three sides of the workspace.
- Have students do a dry run first - Even teams who have been responsible and practiced their presentation tend to mess up in front of the camera (well, under the camera in this case). I let each team do a dry run before we actually filmed their project. That seems to have worked out well. At the request of the students, I sent other teams out into the hallway to ease the nerves of the team who was shooting.
- Editing is Okay - My policy last year was to film each project in one take and put it online with no editing. The idea was to make students more attentive to details. This year, one of my students has a speech impediment and I ended up adding sub-titles. Under the philosophy of "In for a penny, in for a pound", I added a few more sub-titles in all three videos and trimmed a few seconds of "dead air" from the beginning and end of the movies. Also, an announcement came over the intercom as one team was just finishing, so I edited that out, as well. I tried to use a light hand with the editing, though.
All in all, I'm pleased with how this project went this year and I will definitely do more of these movies.
Your comments are, as always, welcome.
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