Inspiring video projects are a fun way to engage students on a specific topic. Videos have a strong influence on how we perceive the world. Leading students to produce their own videos for your class will allow them to demonstrate critical thinking around key-concepts in your lesson while deepening their understanding of media literacy.
8 Inspiring Video Projects for Students – Photo Credit Manuel Quintero via Flickr
Here are 8 types of inspiring video projects to challenge students at all levels:
1. Tutorials and How-to’s Videos
How-to videos are extremely popular online and your students are already well acquainted with those. In this assignment, they can demonstrate understanding of content for your class by creating a video explaining to other students any task, skill, idea, etc. Tutorial videos are especially easily to introduce in math and science classes.
example of video project
2. Book Trailers Videos
A book trailer video is a great alternative to making a traditional book report. The goal of a book trailer video assignment is to promote a book to other students their age.
3. Video Storytelling
The goal of the video storytelling assignment is to create a visual essay that explores a chosen theme. They can be as simple in elementary school as a 10-picture video slideshow including a narrative in the form of a voice-over or subtitles. They can also be more advanced in middle and high school and involve props, animations, drawings made by students as you will see in the video below.
4. Video Presentations
Similar to a story told in a video, students can focus in this video assignment on presenting information about a factual piece. They can also take the form of a stop-motion animation as in the example below.
example of a movie project: video presentation made by students (via Marilou Gallos)
5. Remix/Mash-ups
Another hyped concept is the video mashup which incorporates elements from many various sources to create a new or heavily modified video. This assignment can provide the opportunity for student to analyze different perspectives and treatments of a topic.
YouTube #rewind2014 is the ultimate video mashup
6. Public Service Announcements
The goal of PSA announcements is to educate a specific audience about issues of concerns and possible solutions.
example of a PSA video project made by students (Dylan via Bob Oddo)
7. Advertisements
A variation on the public service announcement, student-made advertisements have a tone which makes them more subjective vehicles for commercially represented ideas. They can even deploy comical elements from infomercials.
8. Newscasts
With a green screen, it is a very simple affair to create a professional looking news report. Two chairs, a sheet and a computer background will get you some great results! Have students practice their script. They can also use the Telepromptor app on any screen for a realistic teleprompter.
A Few More Tips for Recording Inspiring Video Projects
Keep a few things in mind before your ask students to create videos for your class:
- Beyond elementary school, you should leave students the freedom to choose their own video editing app.
- Although you do not have to provide direct training, it is important to provide your students with a specific rubric for your video assignment (we will look at an exemplar rubric for video assignments in a future newsletter).
- Sharing video projects is an easy process!
This is another innovative way to use video assignments: using short films as mentor texts in the middle school classroom. Thanks Tom!