I love going into Anna’s Grade 6 class. Her students pick the topics they want to explore and the medium they’d like to create in, and Anna challenges her students to find the right tools to convey their message. I was invited into her class because a handful of students were making videos for an upcoming project. She wanted me to answer a few questions and show them best practices for editing in Canva, as well as provide ideas and feedback to make their videos better.
I spent about 10 minutes going over a bit of vocabulary, naming the different areas of their editor:
- Timeline: Shows the sequence of clips in order, where most edits are made.
- Playhead: The line that indicates what part of the video you are playing back.
- Trimming: Shortening a clip from the beginning or end.
- Transition: Effects that animate between clips.
- Export: Create a video file to upload elsewhere (i.e. Google Classroom).
- MP4: The most common file type for online video.
Read more: Canva Video Editor
With some basic vocabulary established, we dove into what makes up a well made video. Here are some questions and answers that the students came up with:
What does a well made video look like? 👀
Good lighting and framing
Catchy titles and graphics
Cuts between scenes are simple and not distracting
Video is not too long and flows well — no bloopers!
What does a well made video sound like? 👂
Music that is relevant to the content and evokes emotion
Sound effects that help describe what’s happening
Clear voices at a reasonable volume
Next the students broke out into groups and I took some students with more questions into the next room to discuss their ideas. Many of their drafts contained lots of text and were way too long. We talked about replacing text with images that could convey the same message. Sounds that could replace descriptions (chirping birds give the feeling of a forest) and voice overs that could move the viewer with emotions that static words could not! Ideas were flowing after this conversation!
For the next 40 minutes or so, I bounced around giving feedback on various projects. As I walked the room, I noticed how diverse the projects were. Some students applied what they learned to slide decks that would be displayed during a speech, others were instructional cooking videos, historical skits, and animated infographics. Very cool! 🙌
This whole experience is a great example of how a skill like video editing can be translated to many different mediums and supports a variety of projects. It’s also proof that students can apply these skills in ways that speak to them, instead of working on a prescribed project with outcomes that are indistinguishable from student to student. Get creating!
Even More on Video 🕺
Here’s a post from Teacher on Fire that goes more in depth into The Magic of Student Video Submissions.