The potential of movie maker for digital videos in the classroom

The use of digital video in the classroom, I believe, poses an array of opportunities for 21st century learners. It can spark emotion, cater for various learning styles and provide engagement and hooks into a learning tasks or a lesson. Alongside its usefulness for an educator, it can also provide learner interaction, especially for learners who may not show much interest normally, it can be used as an assessment task and it can be used to compile evidence or present class interactions to parents and peers.

Kearney & Shuck (2006) discuss the intentions and findings behind a trial of digital video in a selection of schools. They found that along with the common uses I have outlined above, digital video also facilitates communication of messages, ideas and information, especially for those children who don’t engage with everyday communication tasks. They also believe that the use digital videos can be ideal to record personal or group reflections and findings from their work.

Before researching digital videos in the classroom, my initial perception was a moving image, such as a youtube clip. I didn’t really consider that a digital video could incorporate the use of still images, text, music and moving images. After discovering this, I feel that I am now more open to incorporating it into classroom learning.

Today I used movie maker to have a ‘play’ and create a digital video of my own. The video is a combination of images and text that I have created to support a lesson I will facilitate in my prac class this week on water footprints.



I found movie maker to be an effective program for my purpose of creating this clip. It allowed me to add text, choose music or sound and narrate the slides. I also found that the program was easy to use and navigate. Troubleshooting was also easy to find and follow. This is a program that I think that children could navigate and utilise well as it is straight forward and simple.

I really enjoyed using movie maker to create a digital video and I will trial it tomorrow in my lesson at school. If I can model it to my learners, hopefully I will be able to scaffold it for them to trial later in the unit.