Last week sixth grade students completed a movie project inspired by Life’s Little Instruction Book. The students paired up to brainstorm tips and tricks on succeeding in sixth grade at Lab. They used a nifty program called Inspiration to collect their thoughts and ideas. In rapid-fire mode, Inspiration creates a mind map on the fly, automatically populating bubbles with each new entry and connecting them to each other in a web of ideas. We wanted to make a slide show in PowerPoint, but I didn’t want to make the students type each entry more than once. Luckily, Inspiration features “export to PowerPoint” and with one click the students were able to create a new PowerPoint presentation with a new slide for each brilliant idea.
The kids then styled the slides in PowerPoint, and timed them to flip over every three seconds or so. PowerPoint’s “Make Movie” feature converted the slide show into a movie, which the kids then manipulated in iMovie to add a sound track.
So, to recap– From Inspiration, to PowerPoint, to iMovie, to your screen! Check out the links below for some examples of the students’ work.
Alex and Eliot’s Movie
Melora and Lillian’s Movie
Melora and Lillian’s Movie
Louie and Magda’s Movie
Louie and Magda’s Movie
The students really impressed me on this project. Not only with their insightful advice and helpful hints (”Don’t wear clothes that are too tight.” “Always respect your teachers.” etc.) but with their ability to effortlessly navigate between different applications and create a polished final product– in only three class periods.
Posted on September 18th, 2007 by Ms. Ruthie Hansen
Filed under: video, student work
Ms. Hansen,
I just got Inspiration and exported a file to PowerPoint. It worked!! I can’t figure out how to “make” the movie in PowerPoint. I have looked in PowerPoint, but no luck.
Could you please email me the instructions. I’d like to do this with ny 5th grade classes at the end of the year.
Thank you.
Ms. Hansen,
Sorry I left the .net off the email address before.
Hi Debra– On my computer, PowerPoint has “Make Movie” in the File menu, about halfway down. It exports the PowerPoint presentation as a .mov Quicktime file. I’m excited that you’re thinking of doing this project with your students! Please let me know if you have any other questions, and also please let me know how it turns out!