About a week ago I wrote about the work we were doing in my first grade classroom to prepare to create PSAs about things that needed more attention at our school. (You can read those details here.)

I thought long and hard about how to best teach my students to learn iMovie. The first thing I did was to create my own PSA using the same process I had taken my students through. I was definitely a bit rusty knowing the ins and outs of the iMovie app. I had to experiment and fiddle around—giving me valuable experience to share with my students. Finally I decided that I would start by showing my students in real time how to make an iMovie by making another right in front of them — and in fact having kids come up and do some of the processes for me.

We did the easy part first, and students got their photos into iMovie and created a title slide. Then we headed out to recess. I’ve learned over the years that doing complicated things around both sides of a recess is magical. You can get started…take a much needed break before things get too hairy and then return refreshed, but before things are forgotten.

After recess I showed students how to write a script and then record a voice over for their movie and then set them off to work. The classroom transformed before my eyes, becoming a workshop where students were focused on their movies. They helped each other, giving advice and support to their classmates as needed. I was on my feet, moving and listening, reminding how to edit, how to delete. I spent a lot of my time borrowing student headphones as I listened to their works in progress. My biggest challenge was our less-than-stellar headphones. Some crackled when they recorded. Some refused to play back. Over the next couple of work periods I learned to have those with the most problematic headphones go outside and record without using headphones.

It was so exciting to see the finished products–especially knowing that these first graders were able to create these iMovie PSAs on their own. Here is a student PSA created by a first grader last week and the plan he worked from.

But the best part of this whole process is when students started telling me that they were going home and making iMovies. They followed the same procedure we did in class: they took photos, planned something to say, and recorded their voices. I loved when a parent emailed me one of these creations! Students are now not only consuming digital content, they are also creating digital content!

Now to think about the next project… Any suggestions?