Storytelling

This week, I'm teaching students to use iMovie and tell stories about International Polar Year projects. The student movies reflect their own styles (from documentary to music-video) and they all use video and audio clips in some sort of logical storytelling fashion.

The iMovie '08 interface is intuitive and facilitated some creative uses of still photos, videos, and student narration. The newest iMovie is a really good tool for quickly mashing together a variety of clips and pushing out a finished product in minimal class time. It's not Final Cut, but students are learning a few essential digital editing strategies. And becoming better storytellers.

We aren't ready for This American Life, but I caught this series by Ira Glass and picked up more than a few words of advice for my students. He's a great communicator and very inspiring. If only I could communicate half as much, half as well...

This is the first of four parts. If you have 30 minutes to spare, click through and watch them all. The message applies to students & teachers, videocamera-toting parents, radio/tv/movie/web producers, or anyone else who creates a medium to communicate effectively. If you are looking for something more lively to share with students, you might try the Acceptable.tv tutorials with Jack Black.