First Annual Central Senior Film Festival

The first annual Central Senior Film Festival was a huge success! Most classes in the school have taken part by using iPads and iPad minis to film a variety of ideas and messages. Students were able to edit and enhance their clips using iMovie on the iPad or MacBook.

From over 100 student created films, 17 were selected. Students involved in the selected films were chauffeured to the front entrance of Central Senior in an SUV limo to walk the red carpet! In the front foyer a photo booth was set up using an iPad on a tripod (over 250 photos were taken of students, parents, siblings and staff). Guests were amazed at the beautiful gym (decorated by a team of students) while a DJ provided an exciting atmosphere between 6 and 7 p.m, when the viewing began. Student MCs impressed a packed gym with their introductions and well rehearsed comedy between films.

Here are the entries created by individuals or small groups of students. I will post the final film (created by an entire class of grade 7s) in my next post. Enjoy!

EQOA PRACTISE using IPADS

In guided groups I have started to use the IPad to help student prepare for EQAO. We all log in to an EQOA reading text from a previous year, read and discus the text, and read the questions. Students really engage in this, especially students who find it difficult to write answers. After we answer and talk about the multiple choice questions, I have one of the students create a document on google drive and share the doc with everyone in the guided group. We then use the success criteria to create an exemplary answer together. Fantastic, engaging, instant feedback and very non threatening to those student who don't even know where to begin.  The best thing of all is that they have the iPad in their hands and can see an answer generated right in front of them.  Thank you ipads!!!

The National Film Board visited Central Senior

The National Film Board visited Central Senior school recently to build student and staff knowledge and capacity in the areas of stop-motion film making and clay animation.

Staff and students were involved in two ½ day workshops.  Each classroom teacher identified 5-7 classroom “leaders” to learn alongside them.  Staff and students collaboratively developed stop - time and clay animation videos.  The product staff and students developed in just a short time was amazing - it was a clear indication of what can be created with more time, support and fluency.

The National Film board offers a variety of workshops that target different audiences, ages and purposes.  The cost for the workshop was affordable, however, they capped the workshop at 30 so providing access to all staff and students was not economically feasible.  I believe it would be great learning for technology champions at each school to participate in and then share with their colleagues back at the school.  The NFB also came out with a new movie making APP recently.  You should definitely check it out.

We have included some photos and videos of our experience.  Contact us if you have any questions.

Jamie Stone

Clay Stop Motion Clips

CSS unravels the secret of Oak Island

For over two hundred years treasure hunters have been digging on a tiny island off the coast of Nova Scotia. What are they digging for? Is it a hoax? A sink hole? Or something more? The truth is no one knows for certain what if anything is buried on Oak Island. Students at Central Senior School armed with iPads, Google Drive, and inquisitive minds hope to unravel the secret.

In a collaborative effort students are researching their own theories on Oak Island. They are turning these theories into short films dramatizing the truth behind the Oak Island money pit. Not only are students learning to make inferences, research, and support a main idea they are also learning to take risks and act upon their beliefs.

As we are in the early phases of this exciting project and we are looking forward to adding videos to this blog shortly. The project represents the adaptiveness of film by providing students a cross-curricular, collaborative opportunity.

Stay tuned for more!

Rory Ellis

Film Making at CSS

Throughout Central Senior small teams of students are engaged in film making - interesting conversations can be overheard about acting, camera angles, editing, and communication. As each group works towards a finished product they have planned, scripted, prepared and edited (one group has 1.5 hours of video to edit down to 3 mins) using iPads.

Mr. Lowell’s class - using video to meet expectations from Writing, Media Literacy, Oral Communication, and Drama and develop Learning Skills like collaboration, initiative and responsibility. Students are using Success Criteria designed for the Film Festival and given choice of the different film categories in order to develop and express their ideas using the Enduring Understanding “We can make a difference.”

A variety of genres are being represented, stop motion, PSAs using actors, drama and documentary. Students are also advertising in order to promote their films in the class.

Clips and photos of students at work

persuasive debate, google drive, collaboration

As a next step in all things persuasive, (persuasive toy commercials in Dec.) my students work on preparing a persuasive debate.  Student partners received a pre-written debate card and possible phrases to support them in their preparation.  Partners were asked to decide who would argue con and pro.  They were also reminded of the persuasive techniques used in their commercials and were given a list of powerful words. Jody was in and introduced students to having multiple writers work on the same document and the chat function while you’re working (using Google Drive).  Students applied this to the debate preparation and the results were amazing.  Although students weren't required to write out their debates (they were allowed to prepare orally), most partner groups chose to use Google Drive.  I sat back and watched (that’s right, I left them alone) and before long students were chatting about ideas for their partner to use, and creating and collaborating to ensure that both partners were ready.  The use of Google Drive fostered collaboration to a new level in my classroom.  One student even remarked on how their partner helped them to focus on sentence structure and punctuation.  It was great!

When it came time to present their debates students were very engaged and excited.  Student presented in front of the class with an Ipad in their hands.  One step closer to a paperless classroom.

Learning Surprises and Staff Collaboration!

So, the other day I had a great time discovering something new, by accident!  I had taken photos of my students on my ipad and my colleague asked if he could have them to use in our school yearbook.  So, I proceeded to click on photos with hopes to email the photos to him.  Having emailed photos many times from devices before, I know that this method (or even sharing photos via google drive) can take some time and be a bit tedious as they are downloaded/uploaded.  However, upon selecting my photos in my photo app, the ipad prompted me to share them using "Airdrop".  I had no idea what this was but I was curious and decided to try something new by following the oh-so-easy prompts on my ipad to turn on "Airdrop" in the Control Center in the settings app, on both my ipad and my colleague's ipad.  Then, with just one tap, (selecting my colleague's ipad number that suddenly appeared under the Airdrop symbol in the photo app), all 10 of my photos instantly appeared on his ipad!  It was so fast and simple!  What another great way to collaborate in the classroom and as staff! :)

The Power of Collaboration!

Upon teaching my class how to create and share documents on Google Drive, using the i-pad minis in class, my students have been thrilled to find that they can create group assignments in real time!  My grade nine French Immersion class is currently working on creating their own movies, in any genre of their choice, in groups, in French.  First, they worked on the script in Google docs.  They were thrilled to be able to work from devices at home (or on the bus or in the car) to write one script, as a group, in real time, seeing changes being made by their peers on the spot.  They have used this form of collaboration inside AND outside the classroom setting and have actually been excited to do homework and collaborate on this project due to the technology involved.  They have furthermore used the i-pads in class to film their movies and will be using the i-movie app to edit and put together the final product.  I am excited to see the end results! :)