The use of digital movies in inquiry-based and project-based learning can support the constructivist philosophy of the eMINTS program. Best practice in the design of movie projects means involving students in the higher levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy: analysis, synthesis and evaluation. Moviemaking projects offer opportunities for classroom lessons to move toward the transforming level of Grappling’s Technology and Learning Spectrum. Teachers can enhance classroom lessons with video in ways that cannot happen without the technology. Video production can evolve around authentic tasks that require original thinking and allow students to create products useful to others.
Digital Storytelling Digital storytelling combines the art of storytelling with digital media to create stories that speak to emotion both in the telling and in the seeing. The following website offers examples.
Oral Histories Students can collect the histories of people living in their communities. See the following website for student interviews with Holocaust survivors, WWII camp liberators and Japanese-American internees.
Community Projects Students can develop video projects that highlight aspects of their communities. The perspective could be service oriented, historical, economic or the like.
Social Issues/Social Action Students can produce videos to call for action or bring attention to a social issue. In the following example, teens use music, text and images in an attempt to bring understanding to the issue of world hunger.
Scientific Experiments Video provides an excellent opportunity for the study of motion. Students can film their experiments and analyze the motion frame-by-frame.
Research Projects Students can choose topics within given parameters, then research them and produce informative presentations that connect to real-world applications. Increase the thinking level of these projects with good essential questions that push students to analyze and synthesize information.