Fourth graders at Holladay Elementary have been learning about the regions of Virginia and their products (VS.10b) in Social Studies. Since Ms. Rivara let me know that she wants to do more video projects with her class this year, I taught them how to use WeVideo to create short movies about the regions of Virginia. First we got in self-selected groups, and each group discussed the region they wanted to do. One student from each group signed into WeVideo with their Google account. We switched from Timeline mode to Storyboard mode (using the 3 lines in the top left corner) to use a simpler layout at the beginning. We clicked on the Title slide and added the name of our region. Next I showed them how to use the red record button to record their introduction using the webcam. We added that to our video storyboard by clicking and dragging it. Then we searched online for pictures of our region and added those our video storyboard as well. I explained how to use the microphone button to record a voiceover, and we switched over to Timeline mode (using the 3 lines) so that we could adjust the duration of the photos to match our voiceover. Finally we clicked the Themes button and chose a theme with the effects and music we liked. When the students finished editing their videos, we clicked the Finish button, chose the 480 size to load it faster, and published it. Now we could copy our links and paste them to Google classroom so we could watch each other’s videos. You can see them all here.
