About two months ago, my intermediate class put together a video to help students coming to International House Newcastle, by answering some of the questions they thought new students might have. This was the result:
To get to the final product, this is what happened:
- The students talked to each other about what questions they had before they came to the school and in the first couple of weeks, as well as how they tried to find out the answers.
- They wrote their questions on small pieces of paper – one question per piece of paper – and stuck them to two whiteboards.
- I divided the class in half. Each group had one whiteboard. They had to divide the questions into categories of their own choosing.
- They then compared the categories they had with the other group, merged any which were the same, and moved round any which were different.
- This resulted, quite conveniently, in 5 categories, which was exactly how many pairs there were.
- With their partner, students selected the most important/interesting questions from their category, so that they had 3-4 questions per pair.
- They came up with possible answers themselves, supplemented with information from the internet and from me. They decided how they would turn their questions/answers into video form.
- The pairs took turns going into an empty classroom with my digital camera and mini tripod to make their section of the video. After each, we transferred it to my computer so I could start editing while the next pair filmed.
- By the end of a two-hour lesson every pair had finished filming. As each pair finished, they came and told me what they wanted me to do in terms of the editing. They also found any pictures that they wanted to add to the video.
- At home, I spent quite a few hours editing the video, then sent it to my students for approval and to see if there was anything else that needed changing. I made the necessary changes and then reuploaded it to vimeo, which I think is a lot better than YouTube for things like this because it feels more intuitive, and the advertising is more subtle.
- Hopefully it will appear on the school website somewhere soon 😉
Sandy Millin 