NOW Classrooms, Grades 9-12. Meg Ormiston

get approval of their storyboard from you before they start recording. Our team finds that storyboards drawn on paper help the group stay more focused when recording video.

      4. Students should choose a source image or video for their background layer and add it to the timeline. This source will appear in place of the green screen in the final video.

      5. Tell students to use the available app controls to ensure the background image properly replaces the green screen. This includes cropping or editing their source content and adjusting a chroma key filter, the technical name for green screen, to filter out the correct shade of green that your green screen uses.

      6. Students should record or add video they want to use in the foreground layer. This usually features a student or student group presenting information the students researched that pairs with the background image or video they selected.

       TECH TIPS

      

To learn more about using a green screen in your classroom, conduct a web search on how to green screen. There are many online videos to help with this process. You can simply create an inexpensive green screen using a green tablecloth or green fabric. If you want to go a step further, you can purchase special kits that come with green screens and lighting packages.

      

Remind students not to wear green when they record themselves. Green-screen apps cannot differentiate a person wearing green, or other green objects in the foreground, from the physical green screen and will swap the green clothing or object out with the background source.

      7. As students complete their projects, they should also implement other advanced edits such as adding multiple audio tracks and clever transitions between scenes. Encourage students to experiment with the features their platform supports and share their expertise with other students in other classes.

      8. When complete, students should publish their work to the classroom LMS.

       Connections

      You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.

      • English language arts: Ask students to use a short green-screen video to recreate an historical fiction novel that they read. For example, students can be the characters in the story and then set up against pictures or video set in the time period of the book.

      • Science: Introduce students to The Magic School Bus cartoon character, Ms. Frizzle (The Magic School Bus Wiki, n.d.). Have them familiarize themselves with the character and then plan how they can model their review of a science topic in a way similar to what Ms. Frizzle would do. Students should creatively use advanced video-editing concepts to produce a movie, music video, or newscast as they create a product connected to Ms. Frizzle’s approach.

      • Social science: Have students create a video based on a current event. The video should include a newscast with green-screen effects that explains basic information on the event. Students can also include interviews they do with others or even create commercials that connect with the current event and demonstrate their understanding of it.

      • Career and technical education: In any technical course, have students create and share a short video about the skills they learn in each unit. Encourage students to try and make something technical into something humorous. Students should share videos to the classroom LMS first and then post them to a classroom YouTube channel so you can share them with future classes.

Using Audio to Enhance Understanding

      Students who can successfully solve problems know how to think about what they do and describe why they do it. Having the ability to verbally explain their thought process also promotes students’ organizational and speaking skills, which leads to deeper understanding of classroom material. In an article at Edutopia, fifth-grade teacher Marissa King (2016) writes about the power of using audio to reach all classroom learners. Specifically, she details how students can use audio for brainstorming, refining their individual voices, practice and revision, and self-assessment. Given the importance of audio to classroom learning, it’s important that we provide high school students with frequent opportunities to explain their thought processes as we prepare them for college and career.

       Novice: Proving Mastery Through Spoken Audio

      Learning goal:

      I can use audio tools to verbally demonstrate my understanding of a topic.

      The ability to convey understanding in a concise and organized manner is a hard skill to teach but one that will take students far in their education and future career. For example, today people are building successful careers as podcasters spreading their messages and beliefs online as they pick up sponsors and support their families basically by recording and sharing audio files. Learning how to explain your point of view by recording a simple audio file is a skill students can use in an online course or a job interview. To that end, we designed this lesson to allow students opportunities to explain their thinking in their own words. For example, students could explain a new invention or product idea in an entrepreneurial course similar to the show Shark Tank. Students can also add different wrinkles to these verbal tasks by conducting and recording an interview or a roundtable discussion with experts outside of the classroom. (Check with your department chair about students’ allowed cell-phone use before planning this lesson.)

      Many digital devices have voice-recording features built in, but many do not. For example, iPhones include a Voice Memos app by default, but iPads do not. Fortunately, no matter what devices your students use, you can locate a simple voice-recording app for it. We recommend Chirbit (www.chirbit.com), QuickVoice (www.nfinityinc.com/quickvoiceip.html), Showbie (www.showbie.com), and Seesaw (https://web.seesaw.me). Whichever app you choose, make sure you feel comfortable enough with it to explain to students how to locate and open it, stop and start recording with it, and access and share recordings.

       Process: Recording a Spoken Audio Clip

      Use the following five steps to teach students how to record a short, spoken audio presentation and store it online.

      1. Ask students to pick a topic, select a recording platform, and develop a plan for their recording. These plans can be as simple as writing down a simple bulleted outline of topics on a piece of paper.

      2. Students should press the record button and begin speaking.

      3. When they finish recording, students should click on the stop button to end their recording.

      4. Depending on the app’s features, students should save the resulting audio file and export it to the online storage platform your classroom uses. This could be a classroom LMS or a dedicated cloud-based storage platform, like Google Drive.

      5. Allow students to listen to other students’ recordings outside of class and nominate a few of the best clips. Play those clips in class and feature the best of the best on your class’s website.

       Connections

      You can apply this lesson to different content areas in the following suggested ways.

       TEACHING TIP

      Students can use the voice-recording skills they demonstrate in this lesson to prepare for the speaking portion of advanced-placement (AP) foreign language tests. Listening to recorded clips of the language they are studying is a simple, effective way for students to review and refine their pronunciation.

      •