Week 12

This week there is no Chinese school because of the Thanksgiving holiday. I contacted the teacher and ask her to send an email to remind the students that they need to finish the movie editing before next Saturday’s class, and they need to prepare a short presentation to introduce the Chinese tones. In the mean time I am preparing for my class project presentation on Monday 11/26. Although my project is not completed yet, but I already have some of information that I can share with the class.

Week 11

This Saturday I demonstrated how to capture video clips from a DV camera. I have changed my plan a bit. Instead of me importing the class video clips into WMM, I used a laptop to show students how to do it and then let students actually capture the clips on 3 laptops. Fortunately the video we shot was not very long. It did not take too long to do it three times. I used the rest of the class time (with no students involved) to burn the WMM project file onto CDs. Every student has received a CD before they leave the school. They will spend their own time to edit the clips and bring the finish product to the school on 12/1. Every student will also give a presentation “introducing Chinese tones” on the same day. Hopefully every student will do they homework.

Week 10

This Saturday we finished shooting the video. Like last week we started at 8:30 AM and finished shortly after 9:30 AM. I wrote a thank you notice to parents for brining their children (who participated in the video shooting) that early to the school. I also brought 2 laptops to the class. Together with the teacher’s laptop we let students explore WMM. I put some pictures and music on each laptop and let students play with Automovie. It took about 15 minutes for all students to have a hands-on experience.

I discussed with the teacher about the possibility for each student to present Chinese tones. She think this is a great idea and made the announcement that each student will do a presentation on December 1. They will explain how Chinese tones work by pretending that everyone in the classroom doesn’t know anything about Chinese language.

During the week I will import the video clips we took into WMM and burn the project file onto CD. Next Saturday I will give the CD to students. They should try to edit the movie at home and bring it to the class on December 1 for sharing. For the next week I will use about 30 minutes of the class time to show the students how to do some editing in WMM. Hopefully everything will work out just fine.

Week 9

Last Saturday we started the first video shooting. It didn’t go very well. Students came to the school around 8:30 AM. We have no previous movie making experience. It seemed chaotic. We did everything again and again. I don’t remember how many takes for every single scene. After 90 minutes we had to stop for the regular class activities. Next Saturday will be the last chance to finish shooting video and we need to move forward to editing the clips, and students need to prepare for their individual presentation as well. I will also spend some time at the next meeting to show the students more detail of using Windows Movie Maker.