Tuesday, 19 April 2016

Videochallenge: learning about vertebrates in Faunia!


Our next challenge has been creating a video for our e-project about animals. Before recording ourselves, we have been thinking in the organization of the video, our roles and what to say. To have a clear idea of what we wanted to do, we used StoryboardThat, an online tool in which you can create an storyboard, similar to a comic, to create a story or present and activity to children, for instance. 

In this case we have used this tool to describe our video, which consists of explaining an activity to children about visiting Faunia. This tool has been very easy to use and it is great for students as it is engaging and attractive for them. They could use it in class to explain an activity or develop their imagination by creating stories. 

The comic that we have created is divided into different frames:

1       -  Presentation of the activity
2       -  Explanation of what students have to do in Faunia
3       -  Tools that they are going to use in Faunia
4       -   Students in Faunia
5       -   Explanation of the activity after the trip
6       -   Final comments

Here you can see our comic:




Moreover, the aim of our video is to motivate learners to do an activity while and after their visit to Faunia. As our e-project is about animals, we decided that a school trip to Faunia could be a fun way to keep working on this topic while children learn more about it.  

In the video we briefly explained how to carry out a research on the animals’ topic in which children will investigate, take notes and look for specific information about the characteristics of vertebrate animals. Then they would prepare a presentation using Genially to share their experience and learning to the rest of the class. 

In order to do that, we have created a video using Chroma, which is an audio-visual technique used in TV, cinema and photography. It consists of removing a colour from an image, usually green, and replace it for another picture or video using a computer. To do this, we used a green sheet to cover a blackboard and we recorded ourselves with a mobile phone.

Besides, we have used Sony Vegas Pro to edit the video. This is a great programme which let you do anything you want to add or modify in your video. The only drawback is that there is not a free version. 

During the editing part we changed the background using animals’ videos and we added animals’ sounds to modify the audio.

We have learnt a lot from this activity, not only for the cooperative work but also about about editing videos and especially in my case, it has been the first time that I use chroma, so it has been very interesting to try new things in this challenge. 

Without any doubt, we laughed a lot when recording the video so the experience has been great!

Both the storyboard and the video challenges are part of a nationwide educational collaborative project, The ESL Times. This project consists of publishing students or teachers’ work in english and the aims are to foster the development of the four language skills, reading in english, using TICs to teach languages, encourage collaborative work and value the sociocultural aspects of the english language. 


Finally, you can watch our video here:

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