Evidence of the Midwest

There are so many opportunities to engage our students deeply in learning activities daily. With the use of a set of 30 Flip video cameras, the 3rd and 4th grade teachers will share this tool to enhance current teaching practices. The use of video cameras will allow our students to engage more actively in our learning, as well as heighten their retention of the state learning standards we cover.

In moving from an inactive and purely receptive learning situation into an active participant scenario through these activities, students will move from the Knowledge level on Bloom’s Taxonomy of Learning Domains into the Comprehension, Application, and even Synthesis levels. By engaging student and creating moments in learning that activate more of their senses through pictures, video and sound, students of a wider variety of learning styles will be reached.

Throughout the year, we will use the Flip video cameras to enhance our curriculum. Imagine the traditional homework on geometrical shapes, where a 3rd or 4th grade student sits at the kitchen table gazing around the room looking for different quadrilaterals to write down. Now imagine that same student up and moving around the house, yard, or neighborhood snapping pictures of quadrilaterals to share with the class the next day. The level of enthusiasm and engagement will be dramatically different in the exact same homework assignment. Plus, by being up and active during the assignment our students will ensure long term retention of the concept. Then the benefits of the use of this tool will be carried over into the next day. Instead of students calling out “the lines in the ceiling of my basement” while the entire class tries to imagine what that could be (only the children with a drop ceiling will know), the students will quickly upload their photos in the morning to a video presentation and can describe each clip that they took when it comes up in the presentation. Again, this will be an all together completely different experience. Obviously this engaging tool would lend itself to a multitude of mathematical , writing, science and social studies lessons as well as advance the students technological skills and even the playing field for students without as much technological exposure outside of school.

The video clips I have posted on youtube are a small collection of videos my class collected for their Evidence of the Midwest project.

In this specific lesson, students are sent home with FLIP video cameras and the following instructions:

FLIP Video Assignment
Use your camera to collect video clips that show evidence of our region. What shows that we live here in the Midwest? (ex. Indoor malls, streets named after famous people from the region, businesses that are found mostly in the Midwest, landforms, etc.)

Keep your clips short (15-20 seconds maximum).
Have fun, but be responsible.
Please keep the camera in its case whenever you are not using it.
Bring it back on MONDAY!


Once students returned with the clips, we imported them, trimmed them, imported them into Powerpoint, added animations, textbox narrations, shared them with classmates, and will ultimately share them at Open House.

I had so many positive parent responses from my students using these cameras. Several parents even went out and bought one for their family after my student brought it home. Our school would benefit greatly from having a full class set we could have in constant use. This is a goal we are working toward and this grant for ten FLIP video cameras would help us tremendously.

Thank you for your consideration.