Authors: Emily Cerny, Kalli Burkhart, Ellen Clark

What is iMovie?

iMovie is an apple application that allows you to make complete videos/movies. You can use iMovie on iPads, mac computers, and select iPhones and iPods. You import pictures or video clips, cut them, edit them, and add voice recordings or music. iMovie makes creating original movies much easier so than most anyone can do it without much trouble. 

How to use iMovie: 

When you plug in a phone or camera to your computer, it should automatically begin downloading your pictures or videos to the iPhoto library on your computer. Everything in your iPhoto library will be available to put in your movie. You can also pull pictures and videos from the internet or create your own voice recordings. 

1. Plug in your camera or phone
2. After opening iMovie, click file-->new project 
3. Name your project, and choose your theme
4. Select and import pictures and videos you would like to use 
5. Edit videos 
6. Click and drag the clips to your timeline (in the order you would like them to appear in the final video) 
7. Edit the amount of time clips are shown by double clicking on the picture or video and changing the duration  
8. Add extras: transitions, titles, effects, voice recordings, ect (More in depth explanation of these in the supplementary videos)
9. Save and share the movie in various formats.

**You can play your video from any starting point by placing the red bar that appears over your video and pressing the space bar.

Tutorials:

Examples of student produced work that connects iMovie with History:

This was an assignment for a group of high schoolers using video clips to create their iMovie

This video is an example of a 5th Grade U.S. History project, that puts together different pictures to tell about events that happened in history like the Dust Bowl.  

https://www.dropbox.com/s/z1hvf7jjayxisy3/Pompeii%20A%20City%20Frozen%20in%20Time.m4v

This is another example of a video created by one of the group members on iMovie.  It discusses the history of Pompeii.

How to bring iMovie into the classroom:

Newscast: Like shown in one of the example videos, students can make a newscast reporting on their selected topic. This newscast could be focused on any past event. Students would do in depth research as a groups and present the information as if the event was happening right now. Each member of the group would look at the event from a different angle and report their findings. Their iMovies would then be presented to the rest of the class. 

Teacher: Teachers can use imovie when presenting new information to the class. This will be more exciting and stimulating to their students. Instead of just reading about history in a textbook, or listening to lecture, they get to watch movies, see pictures and hear stories. In such a high tech society we need to keep up with our students by keeping their interest in the classroom, iMovie is a great tool to use to do that. These movies can be saved on a classroom website for student use at a later date. 

Photo Essay: Both students and teachers get tired of constantly writing and reading essays, a photo essay is a good way to energize the assignment. Students use all of the information that would use in a standard essay and find photos that help explain their thinking. Text or voice recordings should be added to the photos to complete the story.  

Time Machine: Students would create some type of time machine that they would step into and it would then take them back in time. This would allow students to recreate events and then "relive" them. This would be a very hands on activity and give all students a better understanding of the event because they could all experience the recreation of the event, either through acting or watching the iMovie.

Other resources:

http://www.apple.com/search/?q=imovie§ion=global&geo=us

http://edapps.ca/2011/11/13-ways-to-use-imovie-in-the-classroom/

http://www.infotoday.com/mmschools/jan02/banaszewski.htm 

http://macmusicmagic.wordpress.com/2012/08/11/creating-silent-movies-with-imovie/

http://www.teachingwithtech.net/imovie/