So you want 4000 video hits!

 

 Video is the king of media.

 

My limited authority for this assertion comes from Google Analytics, Flick Stats, and TeacherTube Statistics. These are used to track the success of various Cayoosh Kidz productions.  Nothing comes close to video in popularity. Videos such as Reading Power , about Adrienne Gear,  or The World’s Greatest Teacher    have had around 3500 viewings. The number of hits per month remains steady, suggesting that both of these videos will reach 4000 hits by the end of the school year. The total number of viewings for our videos is well over 72 000.

 

By contrast, our webpage gets only about 150 hits a month, which is good for a small school, but when you consider a video can get that many hits in a day the attractive power of video becomes evident. And while TeacherTube doesn’t record views by country of origin, we can infer by comments left at our site that visitors from around 20 countries have watched our creations.

 

We all write and create to be heard; kids love to have an audience for their work and when they know that their audience is the whole world they become incredibly motivated.

 

But how difficult is it to produce a video that gets 4000 hits? It’s easy, and next post will look at the process that we use to do it.

 

Ken

Video – The Fourth Wave

Video has been the most successful and rewarding media we have explored. The majority of our website’s visitors have been people watching videos. We use video across the curriculum. While we have made over 50 videos we have only just scratched the surface of what we would like to do.

 

Where do you do it?

 

Good quality videos can be captured with an inexpensive digital camera. The file can be stored on your website, however this is an awkward and time consuming option when compared to using a free video hosting site. With the latter you put a link on your website that connects to the video stored on the hosting site.

 

TeacherTube

The internet is the easiest vehicle for sharing and gives the widest audience. TeacherTube http://www.teachertube.com/login.php  is one of the best for student work. It is carefully monitored for safe content and is easy to use. You sign up and begin uploading videos, following the clear instructions.

How to begin?

 

Keep your projects short, use a simple digital camera and do the minimum of editing.

 

Storyboards

A story board is the road map of where you plan to go with your story. Making a Storyboard .

Reading Power is a strategy developed by Adrienne Gear to promote reading comprehension.

Reading Power was designed primarily to promote reading comprehension, but it is also a pragmatic framework to understand all media. After learning about Reading Power students are able to understand the needs of their audience and then create videos that audiences engage with.

Reading Power: Teaching Students to Think While They Read
By Adrienne Gear

What to shoot?

The sky is the limit! However some styles do work better than others on the Internet. Your films need to be iconic in nature with a strong story line; this is because of the small screen and the short length (running time) of the video. The video resolution doesn’t need to be high to be visually powerful on a small screen. Video length needs to be only a few minutes due to technical limitations. On the positive side this means that productions are easy to piece together and edit. Be warned; it can easily take a motivated five-student team a week to plan, film and edit a two minute video.

Digital Storytelling

www.storycenter.org

www.digitalstories.org

www.digitales.us

tech-head.com/dstory.htm

techszewski.blogs.com

http://www.techlearning.com/

Here are some examples of video genres we have produced.

Comedy The World’s Greatest Teacher
Drama Massacre in the Bookroom
Environmental When Good Bears Go Bad
Drug Awareness When Sorry Isn’t Enough
Anti Racism Green People Are The Best
Documentary Residential School Experience
PE Chinese Skipping
DIY How to Make Tin Can Stilts

Video Editing

Without editing, videos usually look awful. The good news is that with a bit of work you can easily add titles, arrange the sequences, cut out mistakes, use transitions, and finish your production with credits.

Windows Video Maker or the Mac iMovie are free and simple to use. There are many more options if you purchase an editing suite such as Adobe Premier Elements which we use at Cayoosh Kidz.

Links

http://video-editing-software-review.toptenreviews.com/
http://www.videomaker.com/learn/
http://www.youtube.com/video_toolbox

http://kidsvid.altec.org/index.html

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