2015 ASTE Presentation for "Hands-on iMovie Workshop: Celebrating Student Success"

Enjoying life in Elves' Chasm in the Grand Canyon, May 2014

Here's how I described my workshop in my proposal to the ASTE committee:  "This hands-on workshop with high school student co-presenters will focus on how to celebrate student success at any grade level with the use of iMovie. The presenter and high school students will assist workshop participants of all levels of iMovie experience so that they can use this program with confidence and success in the classroom. We will learn from examples of iMovie projects that celebrate student success in the areas of reading, science and math."  

Luckily, two student co-presenters will be helping me on Saturday, Feb 21--Gaea Bard and Matthew Shidner. So far, 29 teachers are signed up for this workshop. I have e-mailed the participants three times since February 6th to ask about their specific goals and background in iMovie. So far, I've only heard from 8 out of the 29 participants...hopefully, more will respond soon.

When I met with Gaea on Friday, 2/13, we agreed that the introduction to the hands-on part should be short...30 minutes or less.  Teachers need at least 80 minutes to really try out the program and get confident in their skills.  I have 2 hours for the workshop, so we can do a 10-15 minute wrap up at the end.

The four main "pieces of advice" from the workshop are

1. Trust yourself...don't worry... iMovie is user-friendly
2. Short, less-than-perfect movies are valuable, especially as time goes on
3. Find ways to collaborate with musicians, artists, community members
4. Respect the privacy and intellectual property rights of all participants

Click here to link to my presentation on google docs with links to examples of excellent videos.  My presentation on February 21st will have a video of one of my kindergarten students, but I don't want to post this video of Madison to a larger audience.  Her family gave me permission to share it with colleagues, so I want to limit the audience for this private video.