Quick & Easy Student Videos

Here’s a great way for students to process important content with their cell phones. They created a short video documentary on one of the Cold War outcomes with their phones.

I put students in groups of three and assigned each group a topic (like destalinization in Russia, brinkmanship or Afghanistan). Next I showed them an example of what their video might look like. I used a clip that Kerry Gallagher posted on her blog.

Next, I showed them the instructions that Gallagher had developed-- choose a reader, draw symbols or images that will appear on the screen, rehearse moving your images on and off while your passage is read.

The actual recording did not take too long, about 15 minutes. Some uploaded their videos to You Tube. Here are a couple of examples of their work.