Topic: “Go Green” – A lesson in Move Maker: Using digital cameras to make it personal. Grade Level: 7 - 12 Length: 4-6, 45 minute class periods.
Objective: Students will demonstrate their understanding of the phrase “Go Green” using the lyrics of Miley Cyrus’ song “Wake up America” (or other song chosen by students or teacher which applies to ‘go green’ theme) to create a movie presentation featuring their own photos. Their photos will accurately illustrate 6 or more ways in which students their age can “Go Green”. Students will demonstrate a basic understanding of the Movie Maker software by including transitions, titles, effects, inserting a music file and timing their pictures to the music.
Materials: The song “Wake Up America” (or other song chosen by the teacher) legally acquired on the students computer Computer Digital Camera, connection cable, memory card headphones Movie Maker (or other movie making software)
Procedure Anticipatory set: The students will have already been introduced to the idea of “Going Green” in previous lessons. Play the song “Wake Up America” by Miley Cyrus as the students come into the class. (YouTube may have a video with the lyrics to play on the whiteboard as well) Revisit the topic of “Going Green” and discuss how people their own age can use environmentally friendly principles in their everyday lives. Brainstorm a list of actions students can take to “go green” and conserve energy.
Body: (extend the time table according to your class length and time needed) FIRST CLASS PERIOD: Student will use the first class period to story board their ideas. Each student will be given a print out of the lyrics to the Miley Cyrus song and expected to come up with ideas for the pictures they want to take to illustrate at least 6 different actions from the brainstormed list. SECOND (and third) CLASS PERIOD(s): Students will have 30 minutes. Each pair of students will have one digital camera. They will work together to capture photos which illustrate themselves or others taking actions to “go green”. They will be expected to return to the classroom with the pictures they have taken with 15 remaining minutes to upload them to the computer. Pictures will be saved to the student’s folder. REMAINING CLASS PERIODS: Using Windows Movie Maker, they will import the song and their photo files to create a presentation. They make use photo editor software to resize, crop or edit photos as needed. Students must include transitions between photos, effects, text as title and on-top of photos, and show ability to time the show effectively. At the end of this lesson, there should be time given to the presentation of each student’s video to the class.
Closure Revisit importance of actually taking the “Going Green” actions in their daily lives.
Cross-Curriculum Ideas
This can very easily be integrated with the sciences. This is a very important issue in the world today and could be a project done by both the science and technology departments.
Follow-Up
If there is any form of morning announcement via television, the teacher could see if the projects could be featured on the morning news.
The projects could be used in science classrooms when discussing global warming, environmental friendliness and going green.
Each student’s project could be burned to DVD in order for them to be able to share their work at home. This process could be a lesson within itself.
