Another Step on the Visual Literacy Journey

“There is no doubt that putting media tools in the hands of young people empowers them. They want to be heard, and they want their productions to be seen” (Kist, 2010, p.111). This desire is not limited to young people. I spent many frustrating hours last spring trying to compile short videos of students explaining writing criteria and demonstrating peer feedback and self-assessment for an action research grant report. My colleagues wanted not only our students to be heard, but our ideas for differentiating writing instruction and assessment. A simple online video editor would have solved my problem. Richardson (2010) suggests Jaycut as a simple online video editing tool, but when I went to the Jaycut site to explore, I found that it is not accepting registrations. A little searching on Google.ca revealed several other people who were asking when Jaycut would accept registrations, some from two months ago. I began to look for another web-based video editing program by searching Google.ca and Google Reader. I found a post by Richard Byrne on his blog “Free Technology for Teachers” noting that he had looked into WeVideo and thought it was a viable alternative to Jaycut. I then found a positive review of WeVideo on Networkworld. I am looking forward to investigating WeVideo as a way to acknowledge a variety of learning styles and walk the talk of multi-modal literacy (Kist, 2010) with my students and my colleagues – and to let my voice be heard.

Here is WeVideo's promo paragraph: WeVideo to the Rescue

We believe video is the new tool for connecting with students, stimulating creativity and keeping students engaged in the education process.  It can be used as both a means for you to deliver content and for students to create video stories as a part of their assignments. WeVideo has taken down the barriers to using video in the classroom by making it affordable, easy to use, and convenient.  It is accessible via the browser of smartphones, tablets and computers, so anywhere there is internet connectivity, you or your students can use WeVideo.  And WeVideo is uniquely social.  Our collaborative environment makes it easy for students to work together on projects or share video materials for use in individual projects.  This also helps tackle the challenge of distance learning enabling remote students to collaborate on video projects.  Videos can be easily shared to Facebook and video-sharing sites like YouTube, allowing students to show off their class work. (Retreived from http://www.wevideo.com/explore/Educators)

References

Kist, W. (2010). The socially networked classroom: teaching in the new media age. Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin.


Richardson, W. (2010). Blogs, wikis, podcasts, and other powerful web tools for classrooms. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, California: Corwin.