How to address violence in the news with your students.
Start with the WeVideo Academy to orient yourself on how the program works and to access inspiration, tutorials, and lesson ideas. There's also a Resource Hub that includes lesson plans and project examples across all school subjects, and an Educator's Guide that walks you through the interface and shows how to use it for a few types of projects. For students new to video editing, having them watch a few of the Academy videos would be a great way to orient them. Then have them begin a short project, such as adding narration to a video, or dive in with something larger, such as a personal narrative, photo essay, or digital story.
You can assign short WeVideo projects for students to create during class time, or have them form small groups to collaborate on larger projects completed over a longer time period. Since everything is stored in the cloud, students can pick up where they left off in class when they're doing homework at home. Aim project assignments at your students' level. If they've never created video projects before, start by challenging them to learn just a couple of features of WeVideo. Those with more experience can focus on making a more professional or involved product.
The teacher dashboard area allows you to add users (students, teachers, and admins), assign users to groups, and see reporting and analytics for individuals. Teachers can also turn on or off sharing options for each user role, and set where users can gather media from.
Continue readingWeVideo is a video creation site (and Chrome and mobile app) that lets students create, edit, and share video content all in one place. It's cloud-based, which means that multiple people can collaborate on the same video from different locations, or students can work on it at school and finish it up for homework.
Depending on students' video editing skills, WeVideo has two editing modes: Storyboard and Timeline. Storyboard is best for beginners or younger students, but students can switch between modes if they change their mind later. Timeline allows students to add extra features like custom fonts and effects. They can upload images, video clips, and audio, and put them together with voice-over or text, or choose from the million licensed media options available within WeVideo. Additional features include green screen effects, screencasting, motion effects, exporting only audio to create a podcast, audio editing, and templates. Themes let students put a stylish filter over the entire video, while the Invite feature makes it possible to grant others access and editing capabilities. Students can edit transitions between pieces of media and put together a polished end product.
The WeVideo site uses JumpStart technology, which allows users to begin editing right away without waiting for their files to upload (which happens in the background). This helps keep things moving in the classroom, regardless of file size.
Students will learn video editing skills, from basic to advanced, with WeVideo. To create content, students express themselves through video, still images, audio, and their own personal style. Or, they can gather information, photos, and video and audio clips from online sources or the huge built-in library accessible from inside their account. Then during the editing phase, they'll learn how to turn these disparate raw materials into a finished product, ready for sharing. They'll learn to visualize information and organize their stories -- from personal tales to reports on historical events -- into impressive presentations, podcast episodes, or mini-movies.
WeVideo makes it easy to create professional-looking videos quickly. The themes are really fun to experiment with, the green screen option allows students to insert themselves into any scene or background, and students will enjoy changing their video's tone with the different filters. In addition to the built-in media library, kids have the option to upload media directly from other websites like Flickr or Dropbox, or from their own computer. Help is also easy to find, all accessible from a single button in the upper right corner of the editing screen. Overall, WeVideo is a solid editing program whose focus on collaboration sets it apart.