This is our last week of technology integration summer camp, and our theme this week is Movie Making. The kids have been busy making animations in GoAnimate4Schools.com and GoAnimate.com. I still have not found a good way to download the video so that I can include their animations on the DVD that they will take home. It appears that you can upload some of your animations to YouTube.com with a "Plus Account" which would enable you to download the video as well. However, a "Plus Account" is extra money each month and not the best option for students in a week long themed summer camp. I have embedded a few of the student animations below.
Our major project this week has been in creating a movie with everyone in the group included. Since we only have the week to create, film, edit, and publish the film itself, we often look for available scripts that other authors have already created. During the school year, I would certainly have the students rework something that they have written for an assignment, or during writer's workshop, for our script, but with such a short timeline "stealing" a script speeds up the process and helps to make the week more successful. This session we grabbed a script from Aaron Shepard's Reader's Theater page, and a picture book that he has written called, The Legend of Lightning Larry. Lightning Larry is a cowboy that rides into the town of Brimstone and changes the old west down forever. Instead of shooting bullets, Larry's gun shoots bolts of light that makes everyone a better person.
We spent the first two days reviewing the script, storyboarding our scenes, gathering costumes and putting up the set (green rolls of paper helped immensely), and practicing our lines. Day three was used to film the entire movie. The storyboards proved to be a huge help, since two of the scenes took place at the Cottonmouth Saloon, and with the help of these plans we were able to shoot the movie out of sequence, but ultimately saving a great deal of time. Marco Torres, the guru of student films, once referred to the importance of storyboards by saying, "It's much easier to take an eraser to a blueprint then it is to take an axe to a foundation." I couldn't agree more!
Thursday we spent the entire day in the computer lab editing our project in iMovie. I had visited 1880 Town in South Dakota a few summers ago on a trip across the northern part of the United States to visit as many national parks as I could, and we were able to use a lot of the pictures from this tourist attraction for our movie to replace the green screen backgrounds.
Friday we reviewed the movie for the last time and added the final touches to voice overs, sound and visual effects. It was time to burn our film to DVD and share it to YouTube for the whole world to see and comment on. Take a look at our student film, The Legend of Lightning Larry below. Keep in mind the students did everything on this project except for the script itself. We would love to hear your reactions and feedback, so please post your comments after viewing the movie.
Paul's Talking Burger and Soda Animation, "I Got an F on My Test"
GoAnimate.com: f by sharks182
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
Timothy's Pirate Animation, "Oh God!"
GoAnimate.com: oh god by tfitzgerald
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
Quenton's Animal Animation, "I'm Cool You're Not"
GoAnimate.com: Im cool you are not by qconvery
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
Eric's Jungle Animation, "An Elephant that Doesn't Eat Peanuts"
GoAnimate.com: An Elephant that Doesn't Like Peanuts by lawsonlabs
Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!
The Legend of Lightning Larry story by Aaron Shepard
Friday, August 19, 2011
Tuesday, August 9, 2011
eMagination Week
This week is a blended learning camp with a number of different multimedia types. During eMagination week at tech. integration summer camp, we have been creating our own video games using Gamestarmechanic.com, creating cartoons with Goanimate4schools.com and publishing our own comic books using Comic Life. This is always a fun week for me to teach as many of the elements between these three projects are similar, yet there are enough differences that it doesn't seem boring to spend 4 hours in the lab creating and developing their masterpieces.
The students arrive at 8:00am and I usually take about 15 - 20 minutes covering a quick mini lesson for creating video games, gaining extra characters, and developing a "true story" within a video game. Gamestarmechanic makes this very easy and fun for the students. Most of the time I have to stop them to take a break outside as they probably would play all day long.
After about an hour's worth of work we take a short recess break outside to stretch our legs and play a few games and have some snack. After all, sitting in front of a computer screen for 4 straight hours, even with students from the digital revolution, is too much time!
After coming in from our break, I once again share a quick 15 - 20 minute mini-lesson on creating animations, adding voice overs, sound tracks, or creating complex actions between characters. Then the students get another hour to play with the program and discover what they can create. The best part about teaching this course is the "sandbox" time that the students explore with on their own. I get to walk around and observe how, and what, the students discover on their own, and answer unique questions that they have on a case-by-case basis. The best is when a student figures out something new and shares it with his/her classmates right there on the spot. That to me is the true meaning of learning, and why I love teaching these summer camps.
We take another short break outside and end with one more mini-lesson about using Comic Life, creating a Simpson character, layering using iWorks instant alpha, or finding ways to add backgrounds to our colorful comic books. The students then end with an hour to write, edit and publish their comics. Some export their comics to web pages, and others prefer to print them in color and take home a hard copy of their masterpiece.
The students arrive at 8:00am and I usually take about 15 - 20 minutes covering a quick mini lesson for creating video games, gaining extra characters, and developing a "true story" within a video game. Gamestarmechanic makes this very easy and fun for the students. Most of the time I have to stop them to take a break outside as they probably would play all day long.
After about an hour's worth of work we take a short recess break outside to stretch our legs and play a few games and have some snack. After all, sitting in front of a computer screen for 4 straight hours, even with students from the digital revolution, is too much time!
After coming in from our break, I once again share a quick 15 - 20 minute mini-lesson on creating animations, adding voice overs, sound tracks, or creating complex actions between characters. Then the students get another hour to play with the program and discover what they can create. The best part about teaching this course is the "sandbox" time that the students explore with on their own. I get to walk around and observe how, and what, the students discover on their own, and answer unique questions that they have on a case-by-case basis. The best is when a student figures out something new and shares it with his/her classmates right there on the spot. That to me is the true meaning of learning, and why I love teaching these summer camps.
We take another short break outside and end with one more mini-lesson about using Comic Life, creating a Simpson character, layering using iWorks instant alpha, or finding ways to add backgrounds to our colorful comic books. The students then end with an hour to write, edit and publish their comics. Some export their comics to web pages, and others prefer to print them in color and take home a hard copy of their masterpiece.
Friday, August 5, 2011
Student Web Pages
This week for tech. integration camp we have four very enthusiastic students that are entering 6th grade in the fall. They have never created their very own web page before, so they were excited to try new things and share some of the fun things that they have seen on the web.
I first introduced the students to Apple's iWeb program which makes creating and editing web pages a snap. Everything is drag and drop, and what you see is what you get. In other words, there is no html programming or java script editing to do. In fact, you can embed html snippets, interactive maps, videos from YouTube or even their own web cam to add to the web with a simple drag and drop from the widgets menu of iWeb's program.
The students started with pictures they found from the web that they liked or enjoyed. Eventually they learned about YouTube additions and each added a video to their web page as well. Many students brought in cameras, phones and even a Nintendo DS with pictures and stop-motion animation films loaded on them that they wanted to transfer onto their web pages.
I only met with these students for two hours a day during the week, so it was more of a discovery and play type of session, and I have to admit that not all of the items are what I would have allowed if I were teaching this lesson in a school classroom, but it was interesting to see what the students wanted to add to their web pages and the things they picked up so quickly while they "played around" with their web page designs and formats.
A couple of web 2.0 tools that the students found particularly interesting to add to their web pages were Fotobabble.com and Blabberize.com. Fotobabble allows the user to record an audio recording to any digital image that they upload to the web site. This is a great tool for younger elementary students that want to comment on a picture, but lack the speedy typing skills or spelling skills to really reflect their ideas or opinions on the photo. Blabberize is a little different. It's the JibJab of mashing photos and audio. In other words, you can create a "mouth" that moves similar to the characters on JibJab or SouthPark. In other words, the site allows you to create virtual paper puppets that move their mouth as you talk into your computers microphone.
I would certainly use iWeb, or Weebly.com if you do not own a Mac, for student created projects that could be presented in a web page format. This would be a great tool for students to present information that they found in researching a particular topic, helping out their community through a service learning project, or for a book review or talk. I have helped students create web pages in the past for their Flat Stanley projects as the pictures from the visitors, interactive maps, and even a few videos were easily represented in a web page format for everyone to see.
Here is the link to the four student created web pages if you want to take a look at the finished product; StudentPages
I first introduced the students to Apple's iWeb program which makes creating and editing web pages a snap. Everything is drag and drop, and what you see is what you get. In other words, there is no html programming or java script editing to do. In fact, you can embed html snippets, interactive maps, videos from YouTube or even their own web cam to add to the web with a simple drag and drop from the widgets menu of iWeb's program.
The students started with pictures they found from the web that they liked or enjoyed. Eventually they learned about YouTube additions and each added a video to their web page as well. Many students brought in cameras, phones and even a Nintendo DS with pictures and stop-motion animation films loaded on them that they wanted to transfer onto their web pages.
I only met with these students for two hours a day during the week, so it was more of a discovery and play type of session, and I have to admit that not all of the items are what I would have allowed if I were teaching this lesson in a school classroom, but it was interesting to see what the students wanted to add to their web pages and the things they picked up so quickly while they "played around" with their web page designs and formats.
A couple of web 2.0 tools that the students found particularly interesting to add to their web pages were Fotobabble.com and Blabberize.com. Fotobabble allows the user to record an audio recording to any digital image that they upload to the web site. This is a great tool for younger elementary students that want to comment on a picture, but lack the speedy typing skills or spelling skills to really reflect their ideas or opinions on the photo. Blabberize is a little different. It's the JibJab of mashing photos and audio. In other words, you can create a "mouth" that moves similar to the characters on JibJab or SouthPark. In other words, the site allows you to create virtual paper puppets that move their mouth as you talk into your computers microphone.
I would certainly use iWeb, or Weebly.com if you do not own a Mac, for student created projects that could be presented in a web page format. This would be a great tool for students to present information that they found in researching a particular topic, helping out their community through a service learning project, or for a book review or talk. I have helped students create web pages in the past for their Flat Stanley projects as the pictures from the visitors, interactive maps, and even a few videos were easily represented in a web page format for everyone to see.
Here is the link to the four student created web pages if you want to take a look at the finished product; StudentPages
Friday, July 29, 2011
Base Camp to Summit; Geocaching for Kids
This week our theme at summer tech. camp is geocaching for kids. It's an introductory course to GPS units, some orienteering, and overall good fun outdoors. Most importantly it's using technology to integrate some family fun activities and still get outside when the weather is gorgeous here in Maine. This week, I have 7 students ages 8-10 that love all things technology. Most of them use technology in the forms of cameras, video games, and iPods, but have never tried geocaching.
On Monday we explored how GPS units work by watching a short video on Brainpop and then going outside onto the school's playground to use the digital compass to locate 4 film canisters that I had hidden earlier that morning. We then came back to the lab to watch the tutorial video on geocaching.com to learn about the sport and how to get started. There is a cache hidden behind our school that a group of students and I setup a few years ago in our after school geocaching club called, "School House Rocks Box". It's a metal lunchbox that is hidden in the woods behind our school. It's perfect for an introduction since it's large enough to stow away small trinkets and prizes, and the path to it is very easy to manage as well. We also use this cache to start our Virtual Flat Stanley's on their treks around the world!
On Tuesday we had found that there was a cache about 3/4 of a mile down the road at our town's public library called, "Read, Read, Read". The students learned how to input the coordinates on this one into their GPS units and packed up for a short hike. They were pleased to see some good prizes in this cache to trade with, and couldn't wait to hide one themselves. When we arrived back to school we took a walk back out into the woods and marked areas with the GPS units of good hiding places for a new cache. We then played a geodash game.
Geodash
I have modified this game a little bit to help with learning about marking and finding, and also to get the kids to see both sides of this game. Each pair of students are given a GPS unit and a film canister. They must hide the film canister and then mark it with their GPS unit. I usually have two groups go to the front of the school building, and two groups go to the back so that they cannot see each other hide their "cache". We then meet back in a middle spot and exchange GPS units. Now each pair of students have a another group's GPS unit and must find the "cache" that they just hid. It's a little bit of geocaching and a race all thrown into one.
On Wednesday we had one more to find that was within walking distance of the school called, "Quack Quack". We saw a path behind the school that looked to go in the right direction, so we armed ourselves with lots of bug spray, marked our original spot in case we got lost out there, and headed off into the woods. There were a few overgrown portions of the path in which we got scraped by some pricker bushes at times, but we eventually made our way past the other elementary school and onto the road near where the cache was hidden. This was a much longer hike and it took us an hour and 40 minutes to complete the round trip trek.
Thursday the students were dropped off at the base of our local "Mountain" (it's more of a hill) Mount Agamenticus. There is a smaller cache called, "Kim's Eye View" that looks over a cliff not far from the access road that we found first, and then there is a multi-cache on the grounds of the park itself called, "Vernal Cache". I had introduced the concept of a multi-cache to the students on Monday, but they hadn't seen one yet. For this cache, the coordinates take you to the first waypoint. This waypoint is well hidden, but gives the final coordinates to the cache itself which is much further away. These can be a lot of fun especially if they are cleverly hidden and contain clues to find the next cache and not just the coordinates themselves. I have found a few in conservation areas that made you think and answer trivia questions with numbers in order to find the correct coordinates for the final cache. These are the ones I am most proud of when I sign the log at the cache site and respond online at geocaching.com to get credit for my find.
It was an absolutely beautiful day on Mount Agamenticus. The highs were only in the low 80's and the sun and hawks were out. The summit lodge was also open with all of the nature exhibits to let us look at while we were up there as well, and I asked parents to pick up their kids at the top so that they could see the exhibits as well. This is definitely one of my favorite camps to run, and something I wish we could work more into the school curriculum too!
TrailGuru Map of our Treks
Monday School House Rocks Box Trek
Tuesday Read, Read, Read Trek
Wednesday Quack Quack Trek
Thursday Kim's Eye View/Vernal Pool Multi on Mt. A. Trek
On Monday we explored how GPS units work by watching a short video on Brainpop and then going outside onto the school's playground to use the digital compass to locate 4 film canisters that I had hidden earlier that morning. We then came back to the lab to watch the tutorial video on geocaching.com to learn about the sport and how to get started. There is a cache hidden behind our school that a group of students and I setup a few years ago in our after school geocaching club called, "School House Rocks Box". It's a metal lunchbox that is hidden in the woods behind our school. It's perfect for an introduction since it's large enough to stow away small trinkets and prizes, and the path to it is very easy to manage as well. We also use this cache to start our Virtual Flat Stanley's on their treks around the world!
On Tuesday we had found that there was a cache about 3/4 of a mile down the road at our town's public library called, "Read, Read, Read". The students learned how to input the coordinates on this one into their GPS units and packed up for a short hike. They were pleased to see some good prizes in this cache to trade with, and couldn't wait to hide one themselves. When we arrived back to school we took a walk back out into the woods and marked areas with the GPS units of good hiding places for a new cache. We then played a geodash game.
Geodash
I have modified this game a little bit to help with learning about marking and finding, and also to get the kids to see both sides of this game. Each pair of students are given a GPS unit and a film canister. They must hide the film canister and then mark it with their GPS unit. I usually have two groups go to the front of the school building, and two groups go to the back so that they cannot see each other hide their "cache". We then meet back in a middle spot and exchange GPS units. Now each pair of students have a another group's GPS unit and must find the "cache" that they just hid. It's a little bit of geocaching and a race all thrown into one.
On Wednesday we had one more to find that was within walking distance of the school called, "Quack Quack". We saw a path behind the school that looked to go in the right direction, so we armed ourselves with lots of bug spray, marked our original spot in case we got lost out there, and headed off into the woods. There were a few overgrown portions of the path in which we got scraped by some pricker bushes at times, but we eventually made our way past the other elementary school and onto the road near where the cache was hidden. This was a much longer hike and it took us an hour and 40 minutes to complete the round trip trek.
Thursday the students were dropped off at the base of our local "Mountain" (it's more of a hill) Mount Agamenticus. There is a smaller cache called, "Kim's Eye View" that looks over a cliff not far from the access road that we found first, and then there is a multi-cache on the grounds of the park itself called, "Vernal Cache". I had introduced the concept of a multi-cache to the students on Monday, but they hadn't seen one yet. For this cache, the coordinates take you to the first waypoint. This waypoint is well hidden, but gives the final coordinates to the cache itself which is much further away. These can be a lot of fun especially if they are cleverly hidden and contain clues to find the next cache and not just the coordinates themselves. I have found a few in conservation areas that made you think and answer trivia questions with numbers in order to find the correct coordinates for the final cache. These are the ones I am most proud of when I sign the log at the cache site and respond online at geocaching.com to get credit for my find.
It was an absolutely beautiful day on Mount Agamenticus. The highs were only in the low 80's and the sun and hawks were out. The summit lodge was also open with all of the nature exhibits to let us look at while we were up there as well, and I asked parents to pick up their kids at the top so that they could see the exhibits as well. This is definitely one of my favorite camps to run, and something I wish we could work more into the school curriculum too!
TrailGuru Map of our Treks
Monday School House Rocks Box Trek
Tuesday Read, Read, Read Trek
Wednesday Quack Quack Trek
Thursday Kim's Eye View/Vernal Pool Multi on Mt. A. Trek
Thursday, July 21, 2011
It's a Bug's Life
For the third week of summer camp, I had four enthusiastic and full of energy 5 and 6 year olds. The theme for the week was, "It's a Bug's Life". This week we hunted around the school for insects, bugs of all types, and things that would look different to a bug since they are so small. We checked out the gardens, the flower beds, the playground, the back field and even went for a stroll into the woods one day. We found lots of different species of bugs and plants that would look very different to a bug. We then brought them back in our bug boxes and took a closer look at them under the ProScope Microscope attached to the computer. We recorded video of the live bugs and took pictures of the bugs that didn't move very much. We used these pictures to create a digital audio riddle book using the close up images for the riddles and a regular sized picture for the answers to the riddles. The students really enjoyed collected bugs and going out on our scavenger hunts, but they also enjoyed created the book in Keynote and burning it to a disk so that their whole family could enjoy what they had found. I have published the audio book to YouTube, and you can preview it below as well.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Movie Making Camp
It always impresses me how a group of students can work together and collaborate on a storyboard, script, filming sequence and editing decisions. This week at summer Movie Making Camp we had 8 students that ranged in age from 8 - 13. Now most of the time students at these age levels don't even want to be associated with one another, well except for the 8 year old that wants to "play with his older friends all the time." I admit there were certainly some very silent times outside planning, and in the lab where the students went to their respective corner staring into the glare of their single monitor with headphones on. However, without even being pushed into it, since after all it's only summer camp, they came together to film, edit and produce a collaborative movie.
Hollywood won't be knocking on our doors any time soon, but we certainly learned a lot about the capabilities of iMovie '11 and how to use green screen and picture-in-a-picture techniques. It also taught us to better plan and to think about costumes when using these techniques in the future. Both boys in one scene wore blue outfits and we really wanted to use a blue screen to make the art work come to life since the green screen was used for the backdrop. We had to problem solve and used picture-in-a-picture as a special effect instead. Not as polished as our 12 year old chief editor Abbi would say, but it will do for the time we have here. She was right! It will have to do for the time we had this one week to plan, film and produce our movie, The Legend of Slappy Hooper an American Tall Tale by Aaron Shepard.
Hollywood won't be knocking on our doors any time soon, but we certainly learned a lot about the capabilities of iMovie '11 and how to use green screen and picture-in-a-picture techniques. It also taught us to better plan and to think about costumes when using these techniques in the future. Both boys in one scene wore blue outfits and we really wanted to use a blue screen to make the art work come to life since the green screen was used for the backdrop. We had to problem solve and used picture-in-a-picture as a special effect instead. Not as polished as our 12 year old chief editor Abbi would say, but it will do for the time we have here. She was right! It will have to do for the time we had this one week to plan, film and produce our movie, The Legend of Slappy Hooper an American Tall Tale by Aaron Shepard.
Sunday, July 10, 2011
Comic Books and Movie Making
Our second week of summer tech. camps is about to kick off. I'm really excited about this one as I get to work with the elementary PE teacher, my long time friend since high school. This week's theme is Comic Books and Movie Making. I love this combination, not because I want the kids to make a movie about comic book heroes as the rest of Hollywood is doing these days, but because it gets students to focus on the planning of making movies and good digital story telling strategies. We use a lot of different technologies to plan, create, edit and publish these Comic Books and Movies. This week's camp runs Mon. - Fri. from 8:00am - 2:30pm. We have a great group of 8 kids that are eager to learn about how to create movie magic and glossy comic book pages. The combination is perfect! Marco Torres once said, "It is much easier to take an eraser to a blueprint, then it is to take a pick ax to a foundation." In other words, planning is the key building block to a successful project. I use comic books to teach about storyboarding with making movies and digital storytelling.
The students will first learn how to use Comic Life and all of it's features to create their very own Comic Book. Illustrations can come from anywhere. They can be drawn in an illustration program such as Kidpix, Tuxpaint, Clicker Paint, etc. or even free hand drawn and scanned in. Other students may decide to use Photobooth to create comic like drawings of themselves or toys that they bring in to tell their comic stories. We will learn the differences between speech bubbles and transition text to tell the story in a comic book. This is just foreshadowing to our storyboarding techniques that we will use to create our class movie as well.
For movie making, I usually start with a video that I created with the tech. ed. at my old district called, How to Make a Movie. This teaches the basic steps to digital storytelling for elementary students in a humorous way. (For more information and resources on digital storytelling view our team taught web page on digital storytelling from our ACTEM presentation in Augusta, Maine in October 2010.)
I have used Brainpop's videos as well to help illustrate the steps in movie making, especially when talking about at the professional level. The students and I then scour the Internet for a story to use, as creating one itself could take weeks by itself. If I were to teach this project within the classroom, I would certainly prefer the students to develop a story they had written in language arts and create a digital story out of it, but as I only have 5 shortened days with them it is much better to rely on other resources. For this reason, I have found that Aaron Shepard's Reader's Theater web page works great for creating elementary movies. In fact, last summer we used his story, "The Boy Who Wanted the Willies" to create our summer movie and it worked out great. (See video below)
After our initial group processing and planning, we often use Kidspiration for the brainstorming, Comic Life or a storyboard template that Pages '11 offers to create the scenes in order on the walls of the lab, we discuss which roles each student wants. The students work on creating lists for their costumes, props and immediately start reading the script to memorize their lines. Each day, I teach a a mini course on filming, green screen techniques and movie magic. I find that by doing this, and explaining how other movies were made, it allows the students to become the real problem solvers when it comes to filming their own movie.
For example, last year we needed a scene in which a student walks up to the gates of a castle. Immediately the students said we could use the green screen. Then one student said, "Well I actually have a toy castle at home that works. Couldn't we film it with stop-motion animation to make it look like the drawbridge really works?" That just got the discussion rolling. From there we filmed the castle against a green screen and after 6 attempts we came out with the finished product in which a student walks towards the castle against the black of night as the draw bridge slowly lowers. (I have added all the steps on how the students did this in the previously mentioned digital storytelling link from above if you are curious how the students solved this problem.)
Aha moments like this, and true problem solving is what I miss the most about teaching in my own classroom, but as long as I can still offer enriching programs during the summer months and after school during the year, I will be happy.
We then edit the entire film using iMovie '11 with advanced tools checked in the preferences menu to use picture-in-a-picture and green screen techniques. (I purchased my green screen, a green cloth, on eBay for $2). After all of the voice overs, music, sound effects and video effects have been added, we burn a DVD copy that the students can create the cover art for so that they can bring it home and share with their family and friends. I also show them the process of uploading the video to a Web 2.0 resource such as Vimeo.com or YouTube.com so that family and friends far away, as well as the rest of the world, can view their finished product. They truly feel like movie stars when the whole thing is finished!
The students will first learn how to use Comic Life and all of it's features to create their very own Comic Book. Illustrations can come from anywhere. They can be drawn in an illustration program such as Kidpix, Tuxpaint, Clicker Paint, etc. or even free hand drawn and scanned in. Other students may decide to use Photobooth to create comic like drawings of themselves or toys that they bring in to tell their comic stories. We will learn the differences between speech bubbles and transition text to tell the story in a comic book. This is just foreshadowing to our storyboarding techniques that we will use to create our class movie as well.
For movie making, I usually start with a video that I created with the tech. ed. at my old district called, How to Make a Movie. This teaches the basic steps to digital storytelling for elementary students in a humorous way. (For more information and resources on digital storytelling view our team taught web page on digital storytelling from our ACTEM presentation in Augusta, Maine in October 2010.)
I have used Brainpop's videos as well to help illustrate the steps in movie making, especially when talking about at the professional level. The students and I then scour the Internet for a story to use, as creating one itself could take weeks by itself. If I were to teach this project within the classroom, I would certainly prefer the students to develop a story they had written in language arts and create a digital story out of it, but as I only have 5 shortened days with them it is much better to rely on other resources. For this reason, I have found that Aaron Shepard's Reader's Theater web page works great for creating elementary movies. In fact, last summer we used his story, "The Boy Who Wanted the Willies" to create our summer movie and it worked out great. (See video below)
After our initial group processing and planning, we often use Kidspiration for the brainstorming, Comic Life or a storyboard template that Pages '11 offers to create the scenes in order on the walls of the lab, we discuss which roles each student wants. The students work on creating lists for their costumes, props and immediately start reading the script to memorize their lines. Each day, I teach a a mini course on filming, green screen techniques and movie magic. I find that by doing this, and explaining how other movies were made, it allows the students to become the real problem solvers when it comes to filming their own movie.
For example, last year we needed a scene in which a student walks up to the gates of a castle. Immediately the students said we could use the green screen. Then one student said, "Well I actually have a toy castle at home that works. Couldn't we film it with stop-motion animation to make it look like the drawbridge really works?" That just got the discussion rolling. From there we filmed the castle against a green screen and after 6 attempts we came out with the finished product in which a student walks towards the castle against the black of night as the draw bridge slowly lowers. (I have added all the steps on how the students did this in the previously mentioned digital storytelling link from above if you are curious how the students solved this problem.)
Aha moments like this, and true problem solving is what I miss the most about teaching in my own classroom, but as long as I can still offer enriching programs during the summer months and after school during the year, I will be happy.
We then edit the entire film using iMovie '11 with advanced tools checked in the preferences menu to use picture-in-a-picture and green screen techniques. (I purchased my green screen, a green cloth, on eBay for $2). After all of the voice overs, music, sound effects and video effects have been added, we burn a DVD copy that the students can create the cover art for so that they can bring it home and share with their family and friends. I also show them the process of uploading the video to a Web 2.0 resource such as Vimeo.com or YouTube.com so that family and friends far away, as well as the rest of the world, can view their finished product. They truly feel like movie stars when the whole thing is finished!
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