Excellent way to foster creativity among our students!

How I Use It

I use iMovie in a variety of ways. In general, however, I use it with students in small groups to create a presentation or other display of knowledge learned. For example; I recently co-taught a lesson with a science teacher who was going over lab safety rules. In the past, she completed this lesson by doing some direct instruction with students. Then she used a multiple choice test to assess learning. This year, we used iMovie to enhance both part of this lesson. We used iMovie to create short, informative, and entertaining training videos for students on the proper use of lab equipment. Then, in small groups, students were presented with scenarios and used iMovie to create responses on how to safely treat each scenario based on what they learned in the self-paced training videos.

As a result of this new approach, we can assert that our students learned the material at a deeper, more meaningful level. With the old system, students had a 1 in 4 chance of getting a question correct - if they knew the answer or not. But because they were using iMovie to create an intelligent response to a well-designed prompt, they were "forced" to dig deeper. Also, having the teacher-created training videos was incredibly helpful for review and catching up absent students.