Cicero Video

My video was a biography on Cicero, a statesman and orator who lived in Rome from 106-43 BCE.

I'd never used I-movie before (or if I had, it was so long ago that I had forgotten). I was surprised by how easy the program was to use - perhaps I understand computers better now than I used to, or perhaps the programs have become more user-friendly. I was also not working with live video, which I am sure simplifies the process enormously.

I don't see myself using movie-making software much in the future, though. Movies are very time-consuming to make - between planning them, finding material (images, video, music, narration), putting everything together, and editing for the finishing touches - and there aren't a lot of topics where I would want to use video to present the material. I would save videos for topics where my students need background information, but the topic is simple enough to understand without asking a lot of questions. That rules out anything related to grammar, which forms most of Latin. If I want to show my students a video on history or culture, I can probably find one which is already made through the History Channel or YouTube.

(Note the "About 184,000 results" line in the top right.)

There's also the problem that once I make a video, it becomes a static product, and I don't know how difficult it would be to re-edit a video later. As I teach, I know that I'll become more skilled at teaching certain subjects - know what to stress, what to leave out, and how to explain everything. There's also the problem that every class is different, and they may need explanations which are tailored to them. A video is a one-size-fits-all format: once you put it on the screen, the video is in control of the education, not the teacher or even the students. This is different from the other topics we've studied, like interactive white boards and even graphic organizers.

I could assign a video project where students make videos on (pre-selected or approved) topics, but I would need more training to do that than what I received from this short unit. I would want my students to record and edit narration, possibly to record and edit video, and we didn't cover those topics at all. We also didn't look at any programs other than I-movie, and not every school uses Mac products.