Windows Movie Maker is a free (comes with XP and Vista) program to allow you to make homemade videos and DVDs.

While driving this morning I heard a Twitter song to the tune of Let it Be by The Beatles. Almost immediately I was connected with Movie Maker.

Why not have students rewrite lyrics to a song explaining / persuading a topic (explanation / persuasive writing) and create a music video (drama / media / la / art mark).

You’ll see from this video that I’m not the only one creating educational movies!

admin Lesson Ideas computer, DVD, maker, movie, teacher tube, windows

Well, some of our school computers were recently updated. We now have Windows XP running under Novell.

I was especially excited to find a Windows Movie Maker icon on my Novell desktop. A new writing plan has been implemented in our area with expectations of mass cross curricular activities. I decided to have my grade three students complete a weather report in French for their report component of this new framework.

To begin I had students draw and colour a weathery scene based on a given season. I then recorded them (audio only) reading a simple french weather phrase (Oral French mark in grade 3) using a dollar store microphone.

You could hear a pin drop. Everyone was conscious of the recording sessions and respectful of the background noise.

To finish the project, i purchased DVDs and DVD cases, burned them all a copy of the finished movie, with a menu, and conducted a red carpet event in which we all signed each others discs.

If you have an opportunity to use movie maker (i demonstrated it on the SMARTBoard), I would suggest it. Easily cross-curricular and there are a few royalty free music sites kicking around the internet.

You can even use SMART Recorder to record teacher tube videos – or even Google Earth zooming in on a specific country – and import the clip into movie maker.

admin General computer, framework, french, maker, microphone, movie, novell, SMARTBoard, windows