School’s *almost* out for summer. As testing season ends and the so-close-to-summer squirming begins (or maybe it already has), now’s the perfect time to introduce engaging multimedia lessons into your curriculum.
Check out these five lesson ideas to spark students’ creativity and digital literacy skills. All can be completed using WeVideo Classroom which, by the way — you and your students can try for free! Happy teaching.
1. Show What You Know
Using the screencast feature in WeVideo, students record their screens and walk their classmates through a problem. Take this further by allowing students to lead a whole- or small-group lesson.
It’s imperative that student thinking be visible in the classroom, and this lesson helps with that. Screencasting is an engaging way for students to show both teacher and class what they know. Plus, it creates opportunities for students to make deeper connections in their studies.
2. Reflect And Connect
Reflection is a pivotal tool for fostering higher-level thinking skills and helping students make connections across topics. In this simple activity, students create a video to reflect on a learning moment.
These reflections can happen as part of an assessment portfolio, as part of a showcase at the conclusion of a unit project or inquiry based project, or simply as an ongoing, informal check for understanding. This activity works for any age and grade.
3. Create Your Digital Self
In this activity students get practice making a vlog, or a digital journal in which they tell the world about a topic of their (or your) choosing.
Journaling is a powerful way to open up students to reflection activities and allows them to choose the content of that reflection. Using digital journaling injects a creative energy into the reflection process and provides a different way for students to share themselves and their thoughts with others.
Integrate this activity into a student passion project, a project based learning experience, or a class project on website design or multimedia.
4. Show Off Your Passion
In Show Off Your Passion, students record tutorial videos sharing an interest, passion, or skill of theirs. You can also use this activity to create a how-to for your students to turn a complex concept into something simple and understandable. This activity is multi-faceted: students practice creative communication and effective video editing.
Activities like this, in which students become the teacher, are wonderful ways to cultivate and foster student agency and voice in the classroom.
5. Animate Your Knowledge
An RSA animated video is a form of storytelling that synthesizes information and makes thinking visible to others. Using a whiteboard or other slate medium, students narrate what they know about a topic while drawing pictures or text to help their audience visualize the information being presented.
This style of expression allows for both students and their audience to take in information in different modes. Along with being fun and engaging, animated videos of this kind unlock a different way to share information and demonstrate understanding.