Week 12

For this project I chose to make a book trailor for the YA novel The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins. As I mentioned in an earlier post, I would probably use this to replace a book report--paired with a question and answer period and a single paragraph explaining their favorite scene in the novel and why. This could easily be done individually as well in groups. It would help showcase the student's ability to pick out important themes, ideas and scenes from a book they have read; at the same time, it would also give the opportunity to showcase thirty books (if I chose to have them do it individually) to my class in a quick, effective way. It might help my students find other books they would be interested in reading and maybe pick up a book without me making them for a grade.
I could also use this as an introduction for a new book we are reading. It would help the kids get excited about the new novel we are reading--maybe I could even make Romeo and Juliet or Huck Finn appear interesting to my students. It could help motivate them to read the book to learn what happens in the story.

I made this movie with Windows Movie Maker.

Week 11

So for this blog post I am going to insert a little tip that I learned while using movie maker. If you are having issues adding music add it into your Windows Music Player Library. I know, with iTunes, who uses WMP??? But, for some reason iTunes cannot change it into the right format. Sometimes it won't even accept mp3s. It has to be in a format that Windows Media Player can read or it won't work. The second thing--which I'm not sure why it took me so long to realize this. Instead of editing the time of the clip by going to Edit: Clip: Time -- just change yourself from storyboard to timeline and you can change the timing of each invidiual clip by just clicking on it and adjusting it with your mouse (you can do the same thing with the music clips as well). It's super easy to make some clips longer than others without the hassle of going through four different tool bars. Also, while storyboard is good for adding effects and transitions--the timeline is the best way to view and work with your movie anyways.