Introduction
Under
the direction of Joe Morris, Apple Distinguised Educator
and Educational Technology Director, students at Gillispie
Elementary School in LaJolla, California have created
a variety of amazing productions using MediaWorks.
Mr. Morris works with the classroom teachers to identify
where technology can be most effectively integrated, and
MediaWorks has been used to create clay animations,
interactive stories and multimedia reports
in their Math, History and English classes.
"When
I assign a digital multimedia projects to my students
(3-6 graders) I believe the process is as important as
the result. There is not a lot of thinking or creativity
needed to let the wizard in other software programs bang
out a linear slide show, where the presenter clicks the
mouse over and over again to fly through it. In my opinion,
creating interactive, non-linear multimedia projects promote
higher level critical thinking skills. In other words,
I prefer that my students create a project that others
can navigate themselves through, clicking buttons and
making choices based on what they want to see or know.
More planning and creativity is required, and the results
are more interesting and engaging.
MediaWorks is the best program I know to create such projects.
It's easy for a third grader to use, yet powerful enough
for business and industry needs. It has all the tools
needed, including a paint program, an animation program,
a sound editor, and a program for capturing and trimming
video. Furthermore, it is QuickTime-based, so it's very
stable and easy to sync the video with other content,"
according to Morris.
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Joe
Morris
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MediaWorks'
Projects Created in Math, History and English Classes
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Clay
Animations
Linda
Davis, teacher for Gillispie School's third-grade class, asked
Mr. Morris to help them learn more about American colonial
times. MediaWorks was the tool of choice for the students
who
produced 14 segments that were combined into a 16 minute clay
animation demonstrating their research on colonial America
in this five month project. In the left column are a few select
segments.
| In
keeping with the California
State Education Standard for 3rd grade, Mrs. Davis'
students were first tasked with conducting primary research
on early American colonial trades. Students honed their
research skills with visits to the school library and
wrote individual reports on the various types of jobs
people did during American colonial times. Next, each
student chose a trade in which to write a short dialog
or script of what their chosen tradesperson might have
said or done. Once the research and scriptwriging was
complete, the students modeled the characters, constructed
a miniature colonial village, shot the digital still photos
that would be sequenced into the final animated movie,
and recorded their scripts in small digital audio segments
using the MediaWorks Sound editor. Students also used
iPhoto to preview their photos and delete those unfit
for the project. |
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| Once
the pictures and audio segments were complete, everything
was put togther using Author - the main application in
the MediaWorks suite. According to Mr. Morris,
Author has some powerful features that makes assembling
the final animated movie fast and easy! Each segment of
the final 16 minute production was comprised of approximately
50 - 100 still photos, so automating the importanting
and sequencing of these photos was an important consideration.
Author allows these pictures to be imported in a "batch"
by simply dropping the folder of pictures on the project
window. They are imported in numerical order, so it is
important that the pictures are numbered appropriately.
Author also allows you to set a default duration for the
pictures prior to importing and this was set to 1 second.
Next, each audio segment was imported, and using the Author's
Sequencer window, was positioned at the desired point
in time. |
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| Any
segment of the movie could be easily previewed so that
you can make sure everything is perfectly timed. There
is no need to render to another format prior to previewing
in real-time, and if you hold the Shift-key down prior
to pressing the Play button, it will play from the current
time, rather than rewinding to the beginning each time.
This saves valuable time when tweaking the timing between
the audio segments and pictures. Once everything has been
sequenced, the final masterpiece was exported as a QuickTime
movie for playing on a computer or uploading to a web
page, a DV file for burning to DVD and in a format that
could be loaded onto an iPod. |
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According
to Mrs. Davis, "there was no need to motivate
the students to achieve. They
learned so much and it was exciting to see them do it
on their own". And while Mr. Morris
and Mrs. Davis were the guiding lights, the real stars
in this feature are the students. Mr. Morris adds,
"these are 3rd graders that produced
a very elaborate clay animation movie. They learned far
more about the subject matter and also learned how to
use MediaWorks."
The
prior year, Gillipsie 5th grade English students used
MediaWorks to create a fictional story called Hulk in
Space. Click on its image to view in the left column.
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Interactive
Stories & Multimedia Reports
MediaWorks
has also been put to use by Gillispie 5th grade History and
English students to create interactive adventure stories on
the Civil War, American Revolution and the California Gold rush.
Just like with the Clay Animation project described above, the
projects below began with research and script-writing.
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Students
learned about polling, charting and graphing and presented
their findings in a QuickTime movie created using MediaWorks.
The MediaWorks Sequencer window made it easy to have the
pictures and text change at the desired times of the accompanying
narration.
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