This week I’m taking a few days off to ski, play with my dogs, visit with friends and family, and generally recharge my batteries. If you’re on vacation this week too, I hope that you’re having a great vacation. While I’m away I’m rerunning the most popular posts of the year. The selections are based on pageviews during 2012. New posts will begin again tomorrow. 

Credit: Chelsea Davis

Video creation projects are some of my favorite things to do with students. I like video projects for a number of reasons not the least of which is that students generally enjoy them too. I like video projects because when they’re organized properly students have to write, research, produce, and revise just as they would if they were writing a story or research paper. The difference is that shared finished video projects have the potential to reach many more people than a well-written essay does. Another bonus is that I can invite my administrators into my classroom to watch a few short videos and they can quickly see what my students have been doing.

Here are five ideas and tools for video projects that you can try with your students this year.

1. Biographical and Autobiographical videos: The first week of school is when we get to know our students, they get to know us, and they get to know each other. To help everyone introduce themselves, try using short videos created on Animoto. Have students select ten or so images from that are important to them or represent things that they are passionate about. Then let them select the music that matches the message they want to send to the class about themselves. Don’t forget to create a video about yourself. When all of the videos are ready, have a little viewing party in your classroom.

2. Common Craft -style videos: Common Craft produces fantastic educational videos using nothing more than drawings, paper cut-outs, and voice over. I used that model last fall to have students tell the story of Lewis and Clark. My students worked in pairs to create images then narrate their videos. They took turns narrating and moving the images in and out of the scenes. We used Flip Cameras, but just about any digital video recorder will work.

This summer I’ve been playing with PowToon which allows me to create a Common Craft style video by dragging and dropping pre-drawn elements into each scene. PowToon is still in beta, but I encourage you to sign up for an invite. You can see one of my PowToon videos here.

3. Stop-motion videos: One of my favorite tools for creating stop-motion videos is Jelly Cam. Jelly Cam allows me to create a stop-motion video by upload images or capturing images with my webcam then playing them back at any frames-per-second rate that I choose. The latest version of Jelly Cam allows me to add an audio track to my project. Think about the possibilities for creating claymation movies with Jelly Cam, the next Gumby could be born in your classroom.

4. Documentary videos: Perhaps the next Ken Burns is sitting in your classroom right now! With We Video your students can collaboratively create documentary videos.

5. Flipped classroom videos: If you have been considering trying out the flipped classroom model by making your own short instructional videos there are plenty of tools available to you. Show Me for the iPad is one free tool that I like. I also like Screenr and Screencast-o-Matic for creating videos on your desktop. You might consider flipping the flipped classroom by having your students create short instructional videos to share with each other. Take a look at Next Vista for some good examples of students creating short instructional videos for each other. And if you are going to try the flipped classroom idea this year, please consider these three points first.