A couple of years ago I had students in one of my classes create Common Craft-style videos to tell the story of Lewis and Clark. I was reminded of the project earlier this when Jeffery Shoemaker mentioned on Google+ that his students are doing a paper slide video project. A paper slide project is a low-tech way of recording a video story. It’s the way that Common Craft started too. In fact, if you look at a couple of the early Common Craft videos you will see a little string moving paper cut-outs.
A paper slide video project begins with a story that is drawn on individual pieces of paper. Students then work in pairs to record the video. With a camera mounted on a tripod one student narrates while the other moves the paper slides. I had my students alternate roles. Wes Fryer has written an extensive post about paper slide projects. Wes’s post includes this PDF that contains a rubric and a storyboard template.
If you want to take a little higher-tech approach to making Common Craft-style videos, here are a few tools that your students can use.
Wideo – A tool for dragging and dropping digital cut-outs on a blank canvas. You can animate those cut-outs then add an audio track to your project.
Powtoon – Like Wideo this is a drag and drop tool for organizing digital cut-outs on a blank canvas. After organizing your cut-outs you can add a soundtrack to it. The free Powtoon account limits you to 45 second recordings.
The free Knowmia Teach iPad app allows you to create video slide-by-slide. Your slides can include drawings or pictures from your camera roll.
