Title: Tasks and activities
Course: AMORES initial learning materials for teachers on interactive ICT tools in teaching national and European literature > Section: Week 1: Using the creation of movies to educate

This book is a user guide of sorts to the topic of using videos. Teachers (course participants) will find information and instructions on the activities/tasks they need to work through, and in what time frame.

Some background on the use of video in education

The phrase "use of video in education" has evolved over the past several decades to incorporate a wide range of tools and technologies.

As an introduction to the topic, please read the following two articles - this one describes the impact of video in education, while this one lists some ways of how to use video in the classroom. The video towards the bottom of the page is particularly interesting in light of what we are attempting to do in AMORES.

Obviously, there are countless articles addressing this topic and this is not meant to give a comprehensive overview, but to start you off with a few ideas which you can refer to in the following activities, if necessary.

Video tools

You will remember that when you posted videos of your school, we asked you to say which video tool you most like to use.

Thanks to all of you who responded we could see that the majority opted for Moviemaker, while the second favorite option is iMovie. One tool which was not on the list was also mentioned - the Danish teachers like using MovieCut.

Here are brief tutorials for each of the video tools listed in the choice activity, so that you can get a glimpse of how easy or otherwise they are to use if you haven't had much experience with them before, or would like to explore alternatives for your class.

How To: iMovie Basics

VideoPad Video Editing Software | Overview Tutorial

How to use Windows Live Movie Maker

Pixorial in Education

Discussion

A forum has been set up where you can discuss the various tools for creating videos and note advantages/disadvantages for your particular teaching situation. This might be particularly useful to colleagues who are considering alternatives to the tool(s) they currently use.

We would like to hear from you what your experiences are with the use of the tools which proved to be most popular in our course survey - Movie Maker and iMovie, as well as MovieCut.

We would also like to hear what you think about the use of video to educate learners by answering the questions in the Video talk forum.

Create a video

During the implementation phase of the project it is definitely the students who will be doing most of the work creating videos, but one of the course outcomes is to ensure that teachers are able to use video editing software sufficiently to guide their students/pupils in recording, editing and producing short video clips.

Over the following two weeks we would like you to create your own video. Some of you have worked with your students to make the videos in which you present your schools, but in some cases the students worked on their own or the video was not made specifically for AMORES.

Your video can be on any topic you like and your students can also be involved, but the editing should be done by you. You can, of course, collaborate with your colleagues. If you feel that you already have sufficient experience with, say, Movie Maker, you could try using another tool.

What are you going to do in class?

In your blog describe how you are going to use video in your classroom once the AMORES implementation phase starts. You don't need to go into many technical details but please share with your colleagues a specific idea on how you intend to use video to teach national literature.

Please use the AMORES blog for this activity.