iMovie by Trial and Error

In August, I created a video for Back to School Night to highlight for parents the TPRS (Teaching Proficiency through Reading and Storytelling) method that I use in my Spanish classes. It was my first time using iMovie and I have to admit, I clumsily made my way through the process. Nevertheless, it was fun playing around with it and in the end I was just happy that I produced something. However, I know that the presentation I created with iMovie could have been much better in a couple of ways. Here is the video that I created:



The transitions and the subtitles were the most difficult part of creating the movie.

If I had to change one thing it would definitely be to improve upon the subtitles. I had a difficult time timing the subtitles to each slide and as a result, some of the subtitles lingered too long or didn't coincide with the image on the screen. I also found it challenging to enlarge the subtitles. Some are very large and others are small (the more words per slide, the smaller the subtitle). Some of the subtitles were too small for the audience to read. The subtitles are a very important part of effectively communicating the message considering most of our parents do not speak Spanish. I feel that the power of the presentation was lost due to the lack of readability.

Since the video is a series of clips from our class, I would have liked for the transitions to be smoother and less choppy and abrupt. I think a good use of transitions would have made the video easier and more enjoyable to watch.

I'd like to keep playing around with iMovie. Maybe the second go around won't be as difficult. I'd also like to have kids start creating their own movies. It would be great to use Flip video. I appreciated the simplicity of FlipCam's software after the complexity of iMovie. Although after playing around with the Flip software, I learned that subtitles cannot be inserted into movies which is a bit limiting for language learners. Still, I think I'll give it a go and have kids grab a flip and start filming. It's a great way to get kids to use the target language and have fun with their classmates. And who knows, maybe they will teach me a few things and help me improve my video presentation for next year's Back to School Night!