Sometimes we make things just too complicated for ourselves. If you can get a hold of video cameras for your students (old, new, whatever) give them a non-editing assignment. Go old school, edit in the camera.

Given 30 minutes and a video camera, – create a one minute public service announcement regarding the dangers of smoking, doing homework, joining the science club, advertisement for the book you’ve been reading in class. No editing, just multiple shot opportunities. Editing can be the death of video, make it just one easy shot without the edits. Students make more video and are forced to be more creative on the fly without the aid of advanced computer skills.

We used to do this all the time, before video went digital. The editing process is great, it is also a big time vacuum. Force the kids to live without delete, it is a good exercise for everyone. They’ll think you are retro. Which today, apparently is cool.

Tags: creativity, education, podcasting

This entry was posted on Friday, February 12th, 2010 at 7:28 am and is filed under creativity. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.