Fourth graders at Laburnum Elementary have been reviewing the regions of Virginia (VS.2b) and famous people from the Civil War era (VS.7c), so today Ms. Mayer’s class created Social Studies videos on these topics to help them review. First, they chose a partner to work with and decided together on a Virginia region or a Civil War person to research. Next, we spent a few minutes looking over our notes and finding information online to share. I showed them how to download and save online images about their topic to use in their video. Then we logged into WeVideo to begin making our movies. WeVideo starts out in Timeline mode, which is a little complicated, so we switched to the simplified Storyboard Mode (click the three lines in the top left). Storyboard Mode already has a Title page set up in the timeline. We clicked the Edit icon on the Title page and typed our title, remembering to use capital letters. Now it was time to record our intro. I guided them through the process of installing the webcam extension and modeled how to record an effective intro (speak loudly with enthusiasm while stating your names and your topic). After the students had recorded themselves, we uploaded the pictures we had saved and dragged them into the movie timeline. The students planned what they would say about each image, but before they recorded their voiceover, they chose their Theme by clicking the magic wand icon. I found that it is helpful to choose the theme before recording the voiceover because the theme sometimes changes the duration of the video. Just be sure to mute the audio while recording the voiceover so it’s not playing while you are recording. The students recorded their voiceovers, providing facts about each picture. Finally we published our videos and shared the links on Schoology. You can see them all here.
