To kick off Whale Week (the final few days of work using Endless Ocean in our Sealife topic) with my class I planned to discover the Blue Whale in the Nintendo Wii game.
Planning a discovery is I suppose a bit odd, but in a moment of solitary gameplay, I mean planning, in the classroom I found the Blue Whale. The children never stumbled upon it during their own play in the last few weeks. As a result I thought it would be a great way to introduce our week of work based on these amazing animals.
I explained to the class we were going to be taking a dive together as a class. I have done this infrequently over the last 6 weeks, but it is useful to work together sometimes to discover new things and to maintain the momentum.
I didn’t explain that we were looking for the Blue Whale. As I swam away from the shallow waters of the bay, the gloomy blue depths that stretched out ahead of us seemed to raise the tension. As I turned back towards the boat the sound of bubbles from the diver was overwhelmed by the children shouting, “What’s that?”, “Over there!”, “Turn around!”
Appearing before us was the Blue Whale and the children were so excited, it was the largest creature we had found in the game. Here is the Flip camera footage we shot to capture the moment as our diver swam with the whale. (If you listen closely you will notice that at school I take on my Darth Vader alter ego)
The children went off to work with Google Squared and find out more about the Blue and other whales.
On the BBC last week Stephen Fry was tracking down the Blue Whale in the last in the series of Last Chance to See and so we spent some time watching someone finding the Blue Whale for real.
It was a great way to start our week of work, I could never offer that experience for real – the simulated moment we shared using Endless Ocean was a lot of fun and hopefully a memorable one.
We have been using the Flip mino cameras in our school for just over a week. Yesterday I quickly gathered some ideas together about how teachers were using them. This is what I got back from our staff.
Nursery and Foundation
Used in the role play area in classroom and for speaking and listening activities
Useful for assessment and collecting evidence for Foundation Stage Profiling
Will be taken on trips to the farm and then review the footage to support with some writing back in the class.
Year 1
Recorded Victorian Day in school and used for recount writing.
Created a set of instructions for using the Flip cameras – instructional writing in literacy.
Staff / TAs have created talking stories.
Year 2
Filmed the children making salads (DT) which was linked to literacy and science – using the films to write instructions.
Used to film animals (pets) for use in describing animals in poetry.
Further filming of children in dance/drama lessons will support the animal poetry.
Year 3
Children filmed making 3D structures from Nets – watched back to support instruction writing.
Documented trip to Perlethorpe outdoor activity centre and Viking drama workshop in school.
Year 4
Used for drama roleplay and reviewing their performances.
Used as a recording method for a science experiment on the best insulating material – “How to keep snow cold” (!!!)
Year 5
Learning interviews during maths, by children and teacher/TA asking for children to explain their methods or strategies in their work.
To support DT instructions and sequencing of skills.
Documented trip to Perlethorpe outdoor activity centre, children given cameras to interview their peers during the day – footage used in Moviemaker back in school to make recount films of the day.
Recording and review of storytelling work in class – refining the process. Children record each other and then watch back, repeat and refine.
Year 6
Shape TV children interview each other in the role of a quadrilateral.
Filmed science experiements and the childrens predictions of the results.
Timed talks in literacy on a specific subject – practice interviewing each other.
And that is just 7 days.
Along with handing out the cameras in the last staff meeting I pointed them towards the growing Pocket Video Tips presentation that is currently up to 35 ideas. I hope you have found something there to make a start yourself, I know we have.
One last idea I have had is to arrange a Film Festival type staff meeting, perhaps on a theme such as “Learning” (I know not particularly original!) – I will be inviting staff to choose one piece of footage to show the rest of the staff and to explain about their decision to share it. I might even get some red carpet and a tux. Beyond ideas for using video, it will just be a great way to share what is going on in different classrooms.
Curiously I suffered the same problem today as a fellow Twitteruserwas having yesterday. I retweeted his request for help and was pleased to be able to forward some advice from my network to help him. Today I was able to put some of that collective wisdom to good use, when I had the very same problem of not being able to play an avi file created by our Flip Cameras.
It is a long standing problem and I have seen it mentioned many times previously – basically Windows Media Player lacks the video codec to unscramble the coded Flip films, all we got when we played them was the audio.
I knew that the actual camera bundles with software (which I generally bypass) and so must also include said codec. I found the file I needed in the System, Install folder on the camera named: “Windows 3ivx Installer” (there is a Mac version and a Leopard compatibility file too) After running this installer, which takes literally 10 seconds to complete (with no restart required), the files were viewable and Movie Maker could also import them correctly.
I solved this with about 5 minutes to spare before the children were to come in and make some recount films of our trip to an outdoor centre yesterday. I copied the file to a network folder and then accessed it on each of our class laptops – I roped in a few boys, who with an enthusiastic “We love doing installs!” helped to update the machines before the afternoon began. With the codecs back in balance the children got busy creating their films.
If you run into the same problem with your own Flip Camera I hope this helps you out – if not you could always tweet about it and I am sure people will be able to offer some advice.
