imovie Apple Meet Up

It is always an exciting day when I get an email from an Apple Distinguished Educator at my school inviting me to an Apple Meetup! This Friday was an incredibly exciting topic, imovie, as I have created several projects this year. I was eager to hear some ideas from other educators on the philosophy behind imovie and the impact it can have on education. Upon arriving, I found about 20 other excited educators ready to discuss imovie. As we shared movies we’d made, a little part of me was really hoping to have a deeper discussion on why we use imovie and what benefits or difficulties we see in it. 

Because I wanted more, I went online and found some interesting commentary on using imovie. But mostly I’ve realized that each educator can use technology differently and for various purposes. I think the key is the word purpose. Technology is as effective as the purpose behind using it. 

I’ve enjoyed exploring imovie with my students. Here are some of the ways I’ve utilized imovie in my grade 5 classroom: 

1. Autobiography movies—students write an autobiography essay, record an audio file with quicktime or screencastomatic, import it to imovie along with pictures and make a digital movie of their life. 


2. Book Trailers—students are in groups and together create a review of a novel they just read together discussing the importance of matching pictures to their audio recording. Great site for examples and resources. 


3. How To Videos—a fun way to let kids be the teachers is to have them construct their own how to videos. Check out a great contest to enter called Next Vista for Learning based in California. 

Ideas for the future:

1. News Shows—we’ll be doing a weather unit and I would like to have students create imovies as weather reporters


2. Math review movies—we’ll soon be trying out imovie as a way to review for our math chapter test

Tools I want to try in relation to movie making:

1. Xtranormal—create a 3D animation


2. Go Animate—create an animation


3. Sock Puppets—turn your narrative into a fun story told by sock puppets


4. imotion HD—explore the world of stop motion animation