Collaborative Digital Write

Last November my class did a collaborative write called "Imagine" using digital media, inspired by John Lennon’s song Imagine.  I have attached the iMovie we created HERE and have detailed an overview of what we did below in case anyone wanted to do something similar with his or her class. 

OVERVIEW

We listened to the song Imagine by John Lennon and discussed the lyrics (each child had a printed lyrics sheet).   Then we had a class discussion, imagining the possibilities for our world.   After that they wrote on a graphic organizer that showed the format I wanted them to follow.

Imagine a world where...                                 (Effect) Everyone would/could/was/had…    

Next, we went to the computer lab and searched images through Google.   They knew that they needed to search two equally powerful, yet possibly opposing images.  I had previously taught a few lessons on searching/saving images but the piece that I needed to add was "what makes a powerful image?" 

We defined the word "powerful" and talked about how our images needed to infer a message.   They found their images and dropped them into the public folder.

Then, back in the class I connected my laptop to the infocus projector and together we created the movie.  Since I don’t have Smartboard, we used our imaginations and each student would touch the screen and pretend to drag and drop.  I followed their gestures with the trackpad.   

The students learned a lot about how to work iMovie from this collaboration and worked really well together.