Storytelling for the YouTube Generation: The remixed culture

During the technology update portion for our district's opening day, I spoke with staff about viewing YouTube as a genre.  This genre is viral short-form film and is embedded in the lives of each and everyone one of our YouTube generation students.  Here are a few strategies and examples as discussed during the presentation that we didn't have time to go in depth with.  

When giving students "creative briefs" like this, remember that they don't necessarily need "training" on how to do this. Try to make experiences like this as organic as possible and avoid the traditional "how-to" step by step list of directions for them.  In the end, remember you are grading them on CONTENT - not on their video skills. It's how they communicate what they know that matters. 

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Active participation in literary experience enhances the development of comprehension, oral language, and sense of story structure." 

- LM Morrow

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Stop-motion via Vine (for smart phone or tablet)

• 6 second science fair (#6secondscience on Twitter and examples on Mashable created with Vine)
• Idiom Vines (with lesson plan): http://alessonplanaday.tumblr.com/post/57158019675/using-vine-videos-for-lessons-on-idioms-by

Google Doc stories via Google Storybuilder:

Story builder with math word problem example:

Swede Videos (example from Star Wars remixed and remade)

1-minute, 1-take videos (sum up anything - i.e. sum up all the rules of football in 1 minutes or sum up a story)

1 minute 1 take video summing up Forrest Gump movie

Remixed Music for Parody videos (aka any song "goat-edition") :)

 

Paper-slide video

How-to guide for creating the paper-slide video

Newsletter 2.0

Get the kids involved! 

Example via a Principal along with students sharing weekly updates from school.

Nonfiction video voice-overs (sum up anything)

ex: Planet Earth - narrated by kids

Directions on creating a video like the one above - Taking nonfiction video and having students remake it (i.e.: strip out voice and have the students read it)

• Save/download media from DiscoveryEd or YouYube, etc.
• get something that’s like 1 minute 14 seconds (short)
• You or the students import the video into the online video editor website WeVideo
• when ready to do a voice over...
• put volume down for the main video on WeVideo screen (not on device)
• record your own video with webcam directly on WeVideo
• drag it into the timeline editor and click “edit”
• drag the scroll bar to the left to make your own video small and drop into the corner of the screen

Doing this or K-2 is so possible! Just find the clips ahead of time, cut them down to the length you'd like on WeVideo or MovieMaker and have the kids do the self-webcam video reading portion.

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Blubbr.tv: The edu-version of Scene It!

Growing up, I used to love to play the game Scene It with my friends and family.  It would usually be the common staple to bringing together my family with our family friends on a Saturday night back when I was in high school.  In fact, it became so common place that my dog would charge to the TV screen when the film reel sound played, and we also learned that about 80% of the time the answer to the question had something to do with Harrison Ford.  When I previously taught 8th grade language arts, I used to always wonder what it would be like to have students review information in a way that was similar to Scene It - a provider of immediate feedback that is game based, interactive, and media rich.  Insert: Blubbr.tv - a user-created, pop-culture savvy, and YouTube ready site for playing and creating video trivia with friends.

On Blubbr, users create Trivs, which is basically shorthand for Triva. Here's an example of a Triv I put together on Personification:





Users can sign up for free accounts (and as of right now there is no age restriction on the site - users just must agree to not place inappropriate content online).  Once you click to create your own Triv, Blubbr will ask you to title it and then search for the video (held via YouTube) that you'd like to search for and place on the Triv.  For example, I searched "personification".  You can search then for more content on the next screen.

On the editor page (as seen below), you can search for video content, crop the video with the sliders underneath it (to shorten to only the portion you need), include a question (with 4 possible multiple choice answers), and submit your work.  You need a minimum of 5 video clips to submit your Triv.

When someone goes to take your Triv, they can receive points getting questions right/wrong and answering them within a certain period of time (i.e.: the faster you answer correctly the more points you are awarded).  They can also send the Triv to their friends and "challenge" them to beat their top score. As the Triv progresses, the small circles above the video will turn either green for correct or red for incorrect.  If someone clicks on the incorrect answer, their response will turn red immediately and the correct answer will be highlighted in green.

Of course, you do not have to create content on there as there are plenty of searchable Trivs for you to use.  Just browse the categories or search directly for what you are looking for!

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