Tag: iMovie

3-12, Creative Thinking, Education, Motivation, Research, Student Products, Teaching Tools, Videos

Genius Hour Trailers

Terri Eichholz

geniushourtrailerpic

At ISTE last week, Jane McGonigal showed a fascinating trailer that had been designed for a project she was doing with the New York Public Library.  You can see it here.

I was intrigued by the concept, and thought it would be a great way to introduce Genius Hour to my students this coming school year.  I found an excellent Genius Hour trailer online that had been created by Ryan O’Shea, but I wanted to make one that was a bit more generic so anyone could use it.

Plus, I wanted to play around with iMovie.

So, with a little help from my daughter, who shares billing with me, here is what is probably the first draft of my version of a Genius Hour Trailer.

And if you are interested in more Genius Hour resources, don’t forget to visit my special page devoted to this topic. (Update:  *As of 1/2/14, you can now download all of my current Genius Hour resources in a bundle on Teachers Pay Teachers for $5.  Or, you can still download them separately (for free) by clicking on the links on the Genius Hour Resource Page.)

Fair warning – the music is a bit spooky, so you would probably not want to use this with K-2.

5-8, Education, Reading, Student Products, Teaching Tools, Videos

iMovie Trailers for The Giver

Terri Eichholz

Screen Shot 2013-05-08 at 6.07.46 PM

In our district, most 5th grade GT students read the book, The Giver, by Lois Lowry.  This amazing piece of dystopian literature spawns endless discussions about topics from the meaning of freedom to the potential consequences of genetic engineering.  I have read this book with a group of students every year for 14 years, and I have never heard the same conversations twice.

Lisa Johnson at TechChef4u recently featured some iMovie trailers, and included some that were done about The Giver by Mr. Weinert’s 8th  grade class.  I hope to use them to get my class excited about the book next year, and perhaps have them create some of their own for one of the sequels to the novel.

Lisa Johnson also included a link to some storyboarding templates for iMovie on the iPad by Timothy Jefferson which you might want to check out as well.