Category Archives: multimedia creation

by | June 21, 2023 · 8:45 am

Multimedia Creation: consider the tool for the task

Creating a multimedia presentation for your coursework at UBC is a great way to learn a new digital technology that you might then bring to your practicum class. Rather than relying on an ‘old standard’, consider this as an opportunity to take a risk and/or select a digital technology that might be of interest to your future students! Be sure, as discussed, to think about your objectives before selecting the appropriate digital technology and, remember, technology for creation in the hands of your students is a very powerful thing!

This interactive genially presentation, created by Tamara, Peer Mentor, 2023, models some effective presentation elements while showcasing multiple tools you might use to create your own presentations. Embedded links and examples included!

BEd Teacher Candidates (TCs) will have opportunities to flex their digital technology muscles by creating presentations for course assignments and by planning ways to engage their own students on practicum in using digital (and other) technologies.

For example, elementary and middle years TCs in many sections of LLED 350 Classroom Discourses  may create a multi-media presentation in response to their “Literacy Autobiography Assignment” and LLED 360 secondary TCs will likely be asked to consider multi-literacies and multimedia as part of their summer coursework. These assignments, and others, afford TCs opportunities to develop digital and technological literacy while also considering ways in which multimedia and multimodal teaching and learning tools and approaches might benefit their students.

Bloom's Taxonomy cc image from Wikimedia Commons

By Xristina la [CC BY-SA 3.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0)], from Wikimedia Commons

It is my hope that TCs see this as not simply an opportunity to learn to develop their own skills as students but will see the potential for incorporating this kind of assignment into their own teaching practices to provide their own students with opportunities to CREATE (rather than simply consuming) as a way to achieve higher order thinking (Bloom’s Revised Taxonomy pictured here)

As part of our professional learning, we need to discuss the importance of building digital and media literacy.  Assignments like the one noted above, provide opportunities to do so. Students will likely see a valuable connection between the BC Digital Literacy Framework and the Core Competencies!

Some Considerations

Copyright and media

The use of Creative Commons images by teachers for their presentations models appropriate copyright and digital citizenship for our students. Unsplash and Pixabay are two of my favourite sources of CC images (no attribution required – though they don’t mind if you buy them a coffee once in awhile!)

Tools Choice

In addition to the genially presentation shared at the top of this post, some tools to support multimedia creation are highlighted in the blog post, Digital Storytelling, by a former peer mentor, Janis. As you begin to plan the story you want to tell, you’ll likely consider the affordances of the technologies available to you and how they will enhance your story…

Knitting Literacy by Shania (a clean, simple video slide show with text overlay introducing us to key vocabulary) provides an example of  a video that can be created with pretty well any video editing software or app (iMovie, MovieMaker, Camtasia, Animoto or others)

The Google Slide Deck below offers a few tool suggestions and considerations for choosing the ‘tool for the task and context’ to help you ‘get started’ creating multimedia stories.

A pedagogical note

When working with your own students, you might consider introducing ‘new’ digital technologies to students in an experiential and playful way. Rather than ‘teaching’ whole class ‘how to’ use a particular technology (and risk losing many of your students to boredom or going over their heads), I have always provided my students (of ALL ages from K through secondary) opportunities to play with a given app or tool for a period of time prior to there being an expectation of actually using it for a given purpose. I find this helps lessen anxiety and affords students the opportunity to learn from and teach one another.My ‘general’ process for this:

  1. Show the students a very brief example of the technology ‘in action’
  2. Provide time for the students to play with the technology in  pairs or small groups (with the instruction that they may only ask the teacher to help with tech issues – can’t open, won’t boot, etc – for the first 5 to 15 min depending on the complexity of the tech).
  3. Teacher circulates and invites students to share (or ‘satellite’) their knowledge with others.
    • Once students have had exposure to different ways of representing their learning, I strongly recommend providing them with some choice and agency. Providing the choice of medium, from digital to analogue, helps meet the needs of varied learners and supports a Universal Design for Learning approach to planning and teaching.

In my experience, students can and will teach themselves and each other even more complex applications. I followed the above process with a group of grade 1/2 students using Garage Band to learn to create PodCasts. Within about 1/2 hour, all of the students were able to create a file, add loops, add audio and images. After their initial exploration, students storyboarded and created some very informative podcasts about the salmon in our classroom were ready to share with the school!

As a long time elementary teacher, I always try to provide my students with time to ‘play out’ and experiment with any technology – from math manipulative to science equipment to art supplies to digital technologies. Philosophically, I love being able to incorporate the above approach into my co-teaching in the BEd program and hope TCs are reminded to give their own students such opportunities in order to allow them time to co-construct their knowledge and skills! YD

 

 

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by | April 11, 2023 · 3:58 pm

Gaming & Storytelling

“What we can conceive of intellectually and what we’re able to speak about verbally,we may not have the print power for yet” – Angela Stockman

Bringing Stories to Life

Allow students to apply their understanding of story elements (characters, setting, problem, etc.) in a way that can better meet their interests and needs. Through the integration of coding with storytelling, using platforms such as MakeCode, Scratch, and Twine, students can program their stories to come to life, using text and their voice to help tell the story!

Why blend coding with storytelling?

Research conducted in the United States has shown that: (if we could find Canadian statistics, that would be more relevant)

  • Only 27% of 8th and 12th-grade students can write at a proficient level.
  • 40% of college applicants (grade 12) could not write at a college level.
  • Female students scored higher on writing than males at most grade levels.

(SOURCE: U.S. Department of Education, Institute of Education Sciences, National Center for Education Statistics, National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), 2011 Writing Assessment).

Programming is a new form of literacy. Coding and gaming are part of this tradition of blending more traditional literacy practices (text, reading, and narrative) with new digital literacies (hypertext, coding, interaction).

Studies show various benefits:

  • Increased confidence and motivation to write.
  • Media literacy and creative production are necessary for learners to meaningfully engage in our culture today. Encourages students to become producers, rather than simply consumers of content.
  • Women are severely underrepresented in STEM fields. Using coding/ gaming platforms in the Language Arts classroom is a great way to promote engagement and interest among girls.

Getting Started

  1. The first step is to introduce students to the connection between games and stories through mentor texts and read-aloud. Discuss and bring awareness to students, of the story narratives behind the games they already play and are familiar with. Ask them to share the backstories of the video games they play.
  2. Use story mapping and storylines to help students plan their story to be told through video games. Using a storyline, story map, or graphic organizer can break up the writing into manageable steps and help students organize their ideas visually. The more you use story maps (or storylines) as a class, the more students will effectively use them independently. Practice using these organizers after a class read-aloud, showing and discussing the different parts of a story and how they come together. There are a variety of templates online to choose from: Example 1 & Example 2
  3. Choose the tool and introduce students to the coding/ gaming platform they will be using to create their story. There are a variety of free online platforms to choose from as well as the option to use codable robotics whereby students have the robots moving from ‘setting’ to ‘setting’ as they orally narrate the story.                            Examples include:

Some tips for teachers

  1. Allow students plenty of time to practice using the tool and getting used to the platform before they use it to tell their story. If students have a basic proficiency and familiarity with the platform, they will be more effectively able.
  2. Now comes the time for students to share and celebrate their stories! Have the class try out and play some of their peers’ games and/ or have them demonstrate their game to the class.

Slide Resource

Check out these slides for more information:

Gaming & Storytelling

Guest post by Peer Tutor Tamara Jabboour and Ariane Faria dos Santos, October 2023.

 

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by | November 26, 2019 · 3:18 pm

Geering Up! 3D Computer Aided Design (CAD)

STEM learning is more than different subject areas simply threaded together.

Rather, STEM learning is “a seamless experience for the students that scaffolds the use of disciplinary concepts and practices for solving inter-disciplinary problems” (Dasgupta, Magana, & Vieira, 2019, p. 123). In keeping with that amalgamated spirit, this week’s focus as Create, Make, Innovate! wraps up is Computer Aided Design (CAD). As a hands-on learning activity, CAD is a bit like an assemblage of previous Tuesday sessions this semester – more on that below!

Forty years ago, the rationale for CAD was “… to let the machine, in this case the computer, take over where the task becomes repetitious and non-creative,” freeing up designers from “sheer unadulterated dull work” (Coons, 1966, p. 7) for innovation and creativity. Further, as a matter of efficiency, designers could now “consider more options in greater detail at the earlier stages of design than any manual method would allow… [and also make] modifications… without complete restarts” (Kolesnikoff, 1984, pp. 485, 486).

“… make our lives easier and less frustrating. That is what the process of development is all about” (Axe, 1988, p. 260)

Now a long-standing and widespread approach to design, CAD can be found in fields as diverse as architecture, medicine, and manufacturing, not to mention all different types of engineering. In the classroom, some of its more compelling features include three-dimensional design and drafting (3D CADD) and 3D printing.

Photo by ZMorph Multitool 3D Printer on Unsplash

However, 3D printing means producing more by consuming more even as our focus around the world today needs to be on consuming less by repurposing more. So teachers should weigh this factor into any 3D lesson planning. Moreover, for their novelty, 3D printing and other classroom technologies might give us pause as we consider what kind of tone is desirable for CAD lessons – when it comes to technology and preparing students in the 21st century, there has been a tendency for hyperbole, sometimes euphoric and sometimes fearful of missing out or being left behind. Novelty fades, but students will always need engagement.

For all this, teachers owe their students a judicious assessment of CAD and its contributions to their learning experiences: “Deterministic programs, genetic algorithms, rule-based systems, and… other approaches are promising, but none of them approach the flexibility and thoroughness of a human architect. Computers are not yet ready to take over as chief designers, and they won’t be any time soon.… I must believe… that most architects did not enter architecture to be information managers, but rather, to design buildings” (Johnson, 2002, p. 52).

As Johnson’s remark about architects might apply to teachers, we would be wise to heed his conclusions.

“Technology only provides the backdrop for the twenty-first century. Effective instruction is what directly affects students…” (McCoog, 2007, p. 28)

Create, Make, Innovate: Getting Hands-on with Learning Design

Recap of the session Fall 2019 in the Scarfe Foyer:

As the semester draws to a close, so do our sessions each Tuesday in the foyer.

Looking back at each Create, Make, Innovate! session and the hands-on potential of interdisciplinary learning, maybe the most valuable take-away is the sheer range of topics that converge to spark our interests and kindle our inspiration. No less valuable is that interdisciplinarity encourages us to work alongside other people, and as teachers, we know how important collaboration is to meaningful learning.

At this week’s final Create, Make, Innovate! activity session, on Tuesday, November 26th, 2019, teacher candidates stopped by to learn a little more about TinkerCAD, a website that offers 3D engineering design and modelling. Having learned about VR and AR last week, this look at on-line virtual design was a good step to follow.

In fact, TinkerCAD touches upon a number of our previous Tuesday sessions:

Common Sense Education offers free lesson plans that relate to our previous sessions on Simple Machines and Stop Motion Animation.

Resources

TinkerCAD designs can be integrated with Merge Cube (five free uploads per Miniverse account) as well as CoSpaces.

During our previous session on DBL and Simple Machines, TCs learned about engineering habits of mind and the basic model for approaching design: observe, design, build, experiment, adjust. Unsurprisingly, a basic CAD cycle, with slightly more detail, is essentially the same:

  • Ask / Identify / Understand
  • Invesitigate / Research / Define
  • Predict / Imagine / Envision
  • Plan / Design
  • Build / Create / Make
  • Test
  • Reflect / Revise
  • Improve / Innovate

Seen more generally, a design process is really a learning process: designs are thoughtfully envisioned, tested, and revised. CAD itself has even been proposed as a learning methodology (Cerra et al., 2014). On the other hand, methods and processes can be constraining, even rote, whereas the value and excitement of design derives from original responses to given problems – just like an engineer or an architect! So teachers should plan carefully to give their students parameters but not necessarily limits.

Image by clausabraham from Pixabay

“Students who used CAD software and 3D printing during a STEM summer camp increased their perception of the incorporation of creativity and problem solving skills in STEM fields regardless of their gender or ethnic background.” (Bicer et al., 2017)

Thanks to 3D CADD and 3D printing, students have a chance to assume greater self-direction and spontaneity during hands-on learning activities (Ng & Chan, 2019; Popelka & Langlois, 2018).

The Cost of Hands-on Interdisciplinary Learning

One reason to consider TinkerCAD is its robust potential for helping students to render their ideas more tangibly, if still not physically. However, on that note is another more pressing concern that CAD approaches help to address.

As we now know, plastic usage and disposal have become epidemic, and we must do our best to avoid increasing the pile of little things that collect dust on our mantles, desks, and refrigerator doors. Although the effort to make 3D printing filaments more sustainable is underway, CAD provides an alternative to repeated 3D printing, at least until a physical testing stage is unavoidable. By the same token, we must be wary of our electricity usage, which taxes the environment in its own vast way.

Have a look back at October’s Recycling / Upcycling session – how can you make use of things that you already have rather than tossing them out and replacing them?

As for the proliferation of e-devices, themselves, and all their accompanying gadgetry and accessories – from their manufacturing and delivery to consumers through to their usage and salvage or disposal – all this must weigh upon our conscious decision-making or else we do not live up to our responsibility as stewards of our own environment. We have wondrous tools at our disposal, thanks to technological innovation, but at what cost are we willing to develop them, use them, shelve them, cast them aside? How indiscriminate can we afford to be before the tools of learning defeat the purpose of learning? We must not come to depend on our tools any more than we should grow so enamoured of them that tools become ends in themselves.

Image by ZMorph3D from Pixabay

Without doubt, education is the most sustainable tool we will ever have. Like any tool, it is inert until someone decides to use it, but where that decision falls again and again to each one of us, education is an enduring responsibility shouldered by every one of us.

And interdisciplinarity, more than a buzzword, more than just a singular concept, is a measurement: the degree to which all of us, all at once, act on purpose. More than just themes and theories, collaboration and interdisciplinarity are descriptions of our tangibility and the way we actually live our lives. We must respect our interconnectivity to each other and to the places where we live and that enable us to live.

We all make decisions and take action every single day, yet how coordinated are we? How much might we actually be working unwittingly at crossed purposes to each other? Since we will be making decisions and taking action anyway, we should strive to make all our cross-overs as interdisciplinary as possible. At stake is nothing less than our future itself.

Acknowledgement: post author, Scott Robertson; editor, Yvonne Dawydiak

Special thanks this week to UBC Engineering’s Geering up Team!

Interdisciplinarity, collaboration, hands-on learning – that’s the spirit of Create, Make, Innovate! We want to promote enthusiasm for sharing and learning across age groups and across subject disciplines.

Make, Create, Innovate sessions took place during the Fall 2019 in the foyer of the Neville B. Scarfe building and were hosted by Scott Robertson, a project assistant on a small TLEF grant with Dr. Lorrie Miller, Dr. Marina-Milner Bolotin and Yvonne Dawydiak, Teacher Education.

If you have an idea or an inspiration for a resource or future session, please let us know! scarfe.sandbox@ubc.ca

References

Axe, R. (1988). CAD (Computer aided design) in British industry. RSA Journal, 136(5380), 249–261.

Bicer, A., Nite, S. B., Capraro, R. M., Barroso, L. R., Capraro, M. M., & Lee, Y. (2017). Moving from STEM to STEAM: The effects of informal STEM learning on students’ creativity and problem solving skills with 3D printing. In 2017 IEEE Frontiers in Education Conference Proceedings. Retrieved from https://ieeexplore-ieee-org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/servlet/opac?punumber=8124740

Cerra, P., González, J., Parra, B., Ortiz, D., & Peñín, P. (2014). Can interactive web-based CAD tools improve the learning of engineering drawing? A case study. Journal of Science Education and Technology, 23(3), 398–411.

Coons, S. A. (1966). Computer-aided design. Design Quarterly, (66/67), 6–13.

Dasgupta, C., Magana, A. J., & Vieira, C. (2019). Investigating the affordances of a CAD enabled learning environment for promoting integrated STEM learning. Computers & Education, 129, 122–142.

Johnson, S. (2002). The slow and incremental “Revolution”. Journal of Architectural Education (1984-), 56(2), 49–54.

Kolesnikoff, N. (1984). Computer aided design breaks through. The Military Engineer, 76(497), 484–487.

McCoog, I. (2007). Integrated instruction: Multiple Intelligences and technology. The Clearing House, 81(1), 25–28.

Ng, O. & Chan, T. (2019). Learning as Making: Using 3D computer-aided design to enhance the learning of shape and space in STEM-integrated ways. British Journal of Educational Technology, 50(1), 294–308.

Popelka, S. R. & Langlois, J. (2018). Getting out of Flatland. The Mathematics Teacher, 111(5), 352–359.

 

Feature Photo Credit: Photo by Adrien Olichon from Pexels

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by | October 8, 2019 · 3:21 pm

Multimodal Learning and Multimedia Technologies

Multimodal and multimedia – are they the same?

Multimodalities comprise symbols and our decisions to use them as well as our interpretations of them. For instance, the letters and words of this blog entry represent a visual mode of language that, taken together, present a text to an audience – it’s something we read!

As teachers plan for literacy instruction, we need to keep in mind the visual, textual, kinesthetic and auditory modes of communication. Literacy and the development of the communication competencies are not just about reading and writing!

Multimedia comprises the various types of presentations that we can select to exhibit our chosen symbols – instead of a blog entry or some other print media, it could be an audiobook, which is an aural mode of language, or a video, which is both visual and aural.

Jason Tham from Texas Tech offers a great explanation for differentiating multimodal from multimedia while Claire Lauer (2009) concludes that how we use each word is perhaps better understood contextually.

Just as every square is a rectangle but not every rectangle is a square, so every multimodal project is multimedia but not every multimedia project is multimodal. (Tham, 2015)

Transfer

Alongside multimodal learning is the concept of learning transfer. By relating “past knowledge” to a “current challenge,” we facilitate for ourselves a more general theory, which helps us to transpose or “transfer” something previously learned into new situations (Shepherd, 2018, p. 109). Sometimes, the transfer seems fairly obvious: we understand the words of this blog entry after learning how to read and write.

Other times, though, multimodal learning is not so taken for granted. It can become challenging if it requires more intentional reflection or speculation, such as when students are asked to remember something from last year or imagine how today’s lessons might help in the future.

Multimodal learning might even require students to connect seemingly unrelated experiences, whether literally or metaphorically. For example, Shepherd (2018) likens driving a car to driving a truck, which is fairly obvious, and then to skiing, which requires a more studious comparison. That can be challenging if students don’t readily see any relevance or similarity between these experiences. And the comparisons don’t need to be immediately scholarly. Could reading a meme, posting on Instagram, or playing Guitar Hero count as experience for coursework?

Of course, students will bring more to the classroom than video games and social media. But it’s by helping students, on their own terms, to build upon what they already know that teachers can facilitate multimodal transfer of learning. At the same time, using multimodal and multimedia tools, teachers can expand their own repertoire, maybe even in ways they didn’t know were possible (Savage & Vogel, 1996).

Create, Make, Innovate: Getting Hands-on with Learning Design

Recap of the session in the Scarfe Foyer Fall 2019:

Lights, camera… action! And action. And action. And action!

At this week’s Create, Make, Innovate! activity session, on Tuesday, October 8th, 2019, Teacher Candidates had the chance to take the Director’s chair and make some fun animated movies using a downloadable moviemaking app called Stop Motion Studio.

After just a few minutes of play and experimentation, this app readily offers users plenty of potential for conveying ideas visually to an audience. And, of course, time invested in a more meticulous approach soon demonstrates just how precise that decision-making can become. The results can be spectacular, as seen in this little mashup video put together by Eric Lee to showcase some lovely examples of stop motion video.

Resources

Check out the Scarfe Digital Sandbox for a variety of other multimodal tools, including Explain Everything, ShowMe, and ScribJab, as well as multimedia technologies such as Haiku Deck, Animoto, and Book Creator.

Each of these apps has its own focus, which can help teachers conduct specific assessments and meet particular objectives. By complementing, supplementing, and extending our approaches to teaching and learning, all of these apps can help students learn to express themselves independently in engaging, creative ways.

“To glimpse the promise of multimedia and judge the extent to which we should invest our energies in it, we need to look beyond current applications… [and consider] the potential range of its uses.” (Savage & Vogel, 1996, p. 127)

Acknowledgement: post author, Scott Robertson; editor, Yvonne Dawydiak

Interdisciplinarity, collaboration, hands-on learning – that’s the spirit of Create, Make, Innovate! We want to promote enthusiasm for sharing and learning across age groups and across subject disciplines.

Make, Create, Innovate sessions took place during the Fall 2019 in the foyer of the Neville B. Scarfe building and were hosted by Scott Robertson, a project assistant on a small TLEF grant with Dr. Lorrie Miller, Dr. Marina-Milner Bolotin and Yvonne Dawydiak, Teacher Education.

If you have an idea or an inspiration for a resource or future session, please let us know! scarfe.sandbox@ubc.ca

References

Lauer, C. (2009, December). Contending with terms: “Multimodal” and “Multimedia” in the academic and public spheres. Computers and Composition, 26(4), 225–239. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2009.09.001

Savage, T. M. & Vogel, K. E. (1996, Fall). Multimedia: A revolution in higher education? College Teaching, 44(4), 127–131. http://www.jstor.org.ezproxy.library.ubc.ca/stable/27558793

Shepherd, R. P. (2018, June). Digital writing, multimodality, and learning transfer: Crafting connections between composition and online composing. Computers and Composition, 48, 103–114. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.compcom.2018.03.001

Feature Photo Credit: Mohamed Hassan on Stockvault

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by | August 4, 2019 · 1:53 pm

StoryWeaver

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A digital story platform that hosts numerous multilingual stories so that students can have access to an endless stream of stories in their home language to read and enjoy independently or with others. It is also an Open Educational Resource!

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Students from multilingual backgrounds deserve to read books in their home language and digital dual language stories are a way to provide access from them. Storyweaver contains stories in 20 different languages so that students can read but also translate stories into their home language, a great opportunity for collaboration with peers or with families.

It also allows students to create stories, similar to Storybird, where students have access to illustrations from artists when writing. It also allows them to write words phonetically which is a benefit for early learners who may not have studied for multiple years in their home language.

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Visit the Storyweaver website.

Read a few stories and then learn to create and translate!

 

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Pratham Books (2015) Storyweaver Tutorial: Translate

 

Pratham Books (2015) Storyweaver English

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by | May 2, 2019 · 11:15 am

Stop Motion Studio

Stop motion animation can be created in many different ways. Today, there are some helpful apps to make the often time-consuming task more streamlined! You can, however, just set transition between clips in any slide show or movie app to 0 or .5 to create a stop motion effect (similar to a no-tech ‘flip book’ (link to Youtube example))

I have long enjoyed using Stop Motion Studio but recently came across some browser-based apps I’m interested in exploring further including Stop Motion Animator (for Chrome books).

Stop Motion Studio is an app that facilitates the process of creating stop motion animations with clay, cut-outs, LEGO, you name it! It’s a great way to explore storytelling and multimedia. There’s a free and a paid version, and this is what you can do with them:

Some of the features of the ‘free’ version:

  • Adjustable timer
  • Camera settings
  • Auto focus
  • Auto exposure
  • High definition exporting

Although any video editor can do what Stop Motion Studio does, this app narrows down the functionalities to what is relevant in creating stop motion animations and automates parts of the process for efficiency e.g. you can easily adjusts the number of frames for each still shot to suit stop motion better. The app also saves videos in high definition by default.

Creating a stop motion video might reinforce the creative thinking core competency, especially when used in a second language classroom such as French Immersion, Core French, etc. 

Alternatives: You might try using iMovie, QuickTime Pro or Camtasia (free to UBC students) to create stop motion!

It’s really simple to get started with Stop Motion Studio, you just have to download the app and start clicking away. There are a few tips that can make the process of creating an animation run smoother:
  • Use a stand or tripod, or even anything to stabilize the camera and fix the angle
  • Use the timer function, so you don’t have to push the camera buttons, and with that you’ll avoid pushing the camera out of place
  • Play a bit with the auto-focus and auto-exposure settings to see if they’re going to create dramatic differences between frames. You might want to turn it off if they do.
  • Get good lighting, videos love light and good contrast
  • Storyboard, or at least plan ahead what each scene is going to look like. That will save you editing time and make the story more coherent.

Here’s our Quick Start Guide you can share with other Teachers and Students

Stop Motion Studio Instructions One Page Handout

You may also wish to review a resource created by a UBC instructor showing how they incorporate stop motion to share lecture/class material (where they also share some tips and ‘basics’ to help you get started)

‘SlowMation’ is another term you might come across for stop motion. Slowmation.com has a series of PDF tutorials on getting started with various applications to create ‘slowmation movies’.

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by | August 16, 2017 · 10:19 am

iMovie

iMovie is an IOS and MacOS based video-editing tool. With iMovie, you can choose and edit previously shot videos, add titles, music and effects in only a few steps. In addition, you can access your creations from any Mac device, and you can publish or share it on various social media platforms such as Facebook, Vimeo, and YouTube.

Features include:

  • various built-in music and sound effects
  • 10 creative video filters
  • voice-over recording
  • speed-changing effect
  • picture-in-picture effect
  • split-screen effect

With iMovie, you and your students can create engaging videos that can be shared with the class and that incorporate topics relevant to the lesson. iMovie allows you to use different effects and features to edit and add different elements to your video. For example, as an instructor you can add titles and record voice-overs that can be useful when trying to guide your students or provide additional information.

In addition, with iMovie’s effects, students can add a broadcast feel to their productions with picture-in-picture and split-screen effects. They can also place their characters “on location” in exotic places using green-screen effects. Last but not least, using the built-in filters, you and your students can easily make videos look more professional.

Click here for more detailed information about iMovie’s features.

  1. Download iMovie here or from the iTunes store on your iPhone/iPad. After downloading the app, choose to create a new project with your app.
  2. Name your video and set the aspect ratio. The widescreen ratio (16:9) is recommended.
  3. Choose the theme you wish to use. Take the time to play with the theme before making your decision. Of course, you can always switch to a different theme while editing as long as you ensure the “Automatically Add Transitions and Slides” option is unchecked; otherwise, you will need to do some tedious work on manually setting up the timeline.
  4. In order to import your video, go to “File” in the menu bar, select “Import”, and click on “Movies…”. From here, you will choose the video files that you would like to import into iMovie.
  5. Now you need to select which clips you would like to add into your video. Once  your clips are loaded into the iMovie project database, select which clips you would like to add into your video. Click on each clip and drag it into the timeline. While adding your clips, make sure to put them in the right order.

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