Here is my looooong overdue blog post!
2-3 underwent its biannual advertising study just before Thanksgiving Break. Our advertising study generally involves learning about the history of advertising, examining different types of ads and paying attention to certain advertising tricks and claims, all with the goal of helping our students to become more aware of the power of advertising and to be thoughtful and critical consumers. Over the years we have included a variety of activities and guest speakers. This year, along with some of our usual activities, we had an "in-house" expert, Ken Matsubara, Sarah's husband, a creative director for The VIA Agency, working with us and touring us through The VIA Agency's workplace, and we also added a little twist to our typical hands-on activities. We decided to try using iMovie to create our own ads. It was a resounding success! We enlisted the expertise and assistance of Page in first training us teachers and then introducing our students to iMovie Trailers. Page also worked along with us in helping the students to plan and produce their ads. The children worked in groups of three to decide on a product or service to advertise, make a poster and then create a trailer to promote their product or service. Since all of the students were working on their projects at the same
time during a couple of different class periods, 2-3 was certainly a
bustling hub of activity during those times! We teachers were in awe of the excitement this project generated, the creativity and ingenuity we observed and how well the students worked together. The afternoon before Thanksgiving Break, we had an "ad-fest," a showing of all of the ads we had made, complete with snacks. The children loved watching each others' creations and were very proud of their accomplishments. With Page's help, the teachers also shared the links to each ad with parents and created QR codes to go along with each ad. I think it would be safe to say that we will be incorporating iMovie into our advertising study the next time around. We are "sold" on the usefulness of this medium for children to demonstrate their learning. Kudos to Page for all of her enthusiasm and guidance! Check out this example:
http://bit.ly/19hrsLO
