Using video to present Productivity

Once I had seen the process of story boarding and making a video story, I looked for a relevant reason to use it. My ESS students continued to have trouble with the concept of productivity, particularly with the story / math problems. I wanted to develop a tool that:
a) The students could use during my upcoming IB workshop absence
b) Would give them a review of the importance of productivity to food webs
c) Link productivity to the producers and show how energy is lost through food chains
d) Gave them numbers to work with
e) Could be stored in a way they could access it for review
f) Was in a format they could watch a segment over and over again to get a full understanding when the concept or process needed time to ‘ sink in ’.

My idea was that students could use the video as a stand-alone tutorial on productivity or use it in conjunction with a worksheet I would prepare that asked related questions about food webs, productivity, and energy flows in ecosystems. I started by finding two images that didn’t have too much information, showed food chains that students would clearly relate to and understand, and demonstrated the different pathways of energy flow in food chains. By referring repeatedly to modifications of these two images, I hoped students at all levels would gain a deeper understanding.

One might ask why I did not just record the entire series on the SmartBoard. I need to practice this new technology to help me feel comfortable enough with it so it can be part of my digital toolkit for developing future learning aids. I did use the smart board to make the images that I then transferred to PowerPoint slides to import into Movie Maker.

The most challenging step was to learn Movie Maker. I got some idea from Jeff about what it could do, but not how to stretch images, match images and voice recordings, and edit the product. The entire process of making the 8-minute project took me about six hours. Dennis helped me learn how to convert the project to a movie, store the movie on You Tube, and then embed the movie in my PantherNET course page so students could watch it there. Once I learned these, I improved and saved the movie, deleted the old movie from You Tube and PantherNet, and imported the newer one to both. This helped me solidify what I had learned so I could do it again on my own if I needed to.

This last step introduced an achievement I had not originally set out to do. The video is 8 minutes long. I intended my audience to be my students, but I developed the project because I found no good animation or video about productivity on the Internet. By placing this movie on You Tube, I was allowing other teachers to use it, come up with ideas they might try, or show to their classes. I had trouble the first couple times; Dennis suggested that Internet Explorer was not a good browser to use for loading to YouTube. I had better success with FireFox.



This also gave me an opportunity to track how this video impacts the world. Even though the video is lengthy, as of today, it has been viewed 35 times, ten of those from ISB and our community. I am very surprised with the frequency of views and number of countries of the viewers, given there is nothing catchy in the video to lure viewers (other than the topic). I will be curious to see how the statistics progress.

Next, Dennis suggested I place the video on PantherNet, so students could watch it directly and not have to go to another screen. My students claimed both the video and its presence on PantherNet helped them learn this material better.