The fact that everyone these days has a smartphone means that every classroom has multiple cameras.  This is a tremendous opportunity for teachers since acting out a role-play on camera is usually more exciting for students than acting one out in the classroom.

I’ve always found public service announcements to be a great place to start when making movies in class.  You can really fit any type of topic into a PSA.

When making a PSA in class, there are a few things to keep in mind:

– Editing is usually not possible.  This means students have to get creative and think about how they can shoot a PSA in one take.

– Phones have different formats.  Make sure you know how you’ll get the videos on the OHP.  I find youtube the best source for this.  Having everyone upload their videos to youtube averts any need to download.

– Examples!  Youtube has a ton of PSAs.  Explain that you can go for shock value, humor, seriousness, etc.  Again, the idea is to be creative and have fun.

Here’s an example from my students.  It’s pretty good considering they did it in 45mins.  We were working with tag questions this week so they developed an script based on this.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4o6kQ9bNMyg&feature=youtu.be