Using Do Ink's Green Screen App to teach kids to summarize.

...

We just finished our first round of green screen vidoes and boy, did we have a blast.  I learned a lot - some things went well and some things can be improved upon but I will definitely do this project again. Here's an outline of how I did the lesson - learn from my mistakes!  

1. I provided articles for students to read about different aspects of ancient Egyptian civilization.  I teach two levels of classes.  I placed all the articles in a Goole Drive folder and shared it on Google Classroom.  This was great because I didn't make any copies and students could access them from any where.  The issue came with my lower level students.  They had problems dicerning which article went with their assigned aspect of civilization.  It was a good thinking process for them because they had to skim the article to evaluate if it was an article useful to their topic.  It did slow them down and cause a bit of frustration.  I don't know that I would do it differently next time - but having done it before makes anticipating their struggles easier.  

2.  I taught students to summarize using a rule-based summary frame.  Summarizing is difficult and requires higher order thinking skills to evaluate which information should be kept and which should be left out.  Here' the summary frame I used: 

Topic- Restriction-Illustration
What is the general statement or topic?
What information narrows or specializes the topic?
What examples illustrate the topic?

Students had to identify the topic of the article and what was unique or special about that topic and then find examples of in the article that demonstrate the characteristics of the topic.  Some students read articles about Ancient Egyptian's belief in the afterlife while some wrote sumamries about the priests role in the social pyramid.  This process when well but several times I called their summaries scripts and it really threw them for a loop. Next time I would just work on the summaries and then have them change the tone to a script. 

3.  I had no idea how to use the app but our student media assistants did and they came to my class and taught two students how to do use the app.  Those two students recorded all the videos for each group and taught them to drop them into Imovie and submit the video on Google Classroom.  Then those two students taught two students in my other class and the process continued.

4. While videos were being recorded I worked with students to make their cue cards, rehearse and spruce up their performances.  They were told from the beginning that their videos would be published online and they only had one take.  This kept them working hard and prevented them from getting silly - it also made the process go a lot faster.  

5. It took my AIG students 3 days and my Inclusion students 4 and a tiny bit of a 5th day.  I'm sure it'll be even faster next time.  

Here's one of our videos: