Let's make a movie...

So I took over teaching duties this past week for a science teacher who just had surgery. Anatomy and Physiology, and Biology. A&P is going to be a bit of a stretch for me, but I have pretty good kids so that helps tremendously. I also have a pretty good bunch of sophomores in my biology class. Once I finish off a few projects for Ashland I should be in good shape to really devote a lot of attention to the lessons I've been left to teach my classes.

One nice thing this week is that I was able to borrow a pretty nice digital SLR and shoot some photos of a chemistry class working in the lab. I then used iMovie on my Mac to slap together a movie, complete with f/x and soundtrack, using those photos. I don't think the movie itself is all that special (it would have been nice to use some actual video footage) but I think it presents a decent picture of lab work. I don't know that I'll use iMovie much for my own teaching, but I think it will be an effective tool for allowing students to shoot videos or pictures and then put together something meaningful. Movie-making certainly is a very nice, creative outlet for kids to put together neat presentations that they can have fun with (I know it was fun for me!). Like anything else tech-related, making this movie was initially a painfully-slow learning process, but it was really exciting in the end to see what a little bit of time and effort could produce.

I don't know how long it will be available, but here is the link for my movie if anyone cares to see it: http://www.teachertube.com/view_video.php?viewkey=83948d11f68baa8ae4a6

Until next time...