Each spring after the state’s standardized testing, I knew my students would need a relevant, high-interest assignment to remain focused until summer vacation. In a Socratic Seminar fashion, we read selections from Tupac Shakur’s collection of poems “The Rose That Grew from Concrete.” Using Costa’s Level of Inquiry, my students created level two and level three questions to bring to class for discussion. Students also wrote reflections and/or summaries after each seminar. However, the culminating assignment for this poetry unit was a video based on personal core values.
One day we defined each word (personal, core and value), and created our definition of what personal core values were and made an accumulative list. Afterwards, I found another list of common values online and had my students compare it to their list.
The effort my students put into the Personal Core Values Animoto video assignment makes it the best assignment my students have ever approached and completed in my teaching career. The video had to include the following:
• At least 10 personal core values (PCV)
• At least 10 digital pictures, one to represent each PCV
• At least 2 video clips
• Video length must be at least 2 minutes and no longer than 5 minutes.
• Music that supports PCV
Animoto has a collection of music, digital pictures and video clips, but students may also upload their own as long as their media is original and meets Animoto’s guidelines. Animoto offers many features for the student to create their unique video, but the best feature is that Animoto does all the technical and difficult “stuff” for the students so they can remain focused on the assignment. The length of the video is based on the length of the song and/or the number of media pieces included in the project, whichever one ends first.
Animoto is web 2.0 friendly, so students can share their creations via Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, YouTube, Photobucket, Picasa, iPhones and many other applications that support embedded codes. A teacher can apply for a code, so students can gain access to special accounts for education. Visit Animoto for education at http://animoto.com/education and use your school email address to apply for an educational account.
Because the account codes generally last for 180 days, my students were able to use their Animoto accounts over the summer for their own personal use. Talk about relevancy! Many students created videos of their prom, vacations, and summer outings. I had two students from last year come back this semester and ask for another code so they could use Animoto for their science project.
http://animoto.com/play/F0h7VUdTb79GqnhaxPKsYg
Do you use Web 2.0 tools in your class? How do you implement them?
The Museful Teacher 
What a great video assignment for your students. For some reason I read the first screenshot on the video as Blondes instead of Boldness!
Blondes can be bold, right?
I LOVE this! This is exactly the type of creative, relevant assignment I hoped I was presenting when I taught English. If there were more teachers like you that taught like this, maybe kids wouldn’t hate English and reading so much! Kudos!
I think your assignment is perfect the way it is, but if you wanted to add another element of technology to it, you could try creating a Wordle or Tagxedo word cloud with either the PCV words as a whole (maybe one cloud for your class’s words and one cloud for the most common ones), or you could ask each student to create a word cloud with his/her individual words and definitions. That suggestion popped into my head while I was reading your post, so I thought I’d share. 🙂
Mrs. K, word clouds are a great idea to step the project up a notch. Thanks!
What a great idea! I am always so hesitant to use technology in the classroom, but this I could do. Thanks for sharing!
Kristen, why are you hesitant in using technology in the classroom?