Talking Famous Americans

Today 3rd graders created talking photographs of a Famous American they had written a paragraph about during their language arts block. Using the Dell Webcam, students were asked to videotape themselves reading their paragraph. This was VERY hard because they had to keep super still so their lips stayed in the same location. Next, we opened a blank Powerpoint template and dragged the video to a blank slide. Students then went to the student server to grab a picture of their Famous American that had their mouth cut out (thank you, Tyler Hart for sharing!) and drag it to overlay their video. They had to line up the mouth cut out and their own mouth in their video. In some cases students had to put a rectangle shape over parts of their video that were sticking out underneath their Famous American's photograph. Students learned how to change the shape to be completely white in order to blend in with the white slide background. Afterwards, students used the Word Art tool to type the name of their Famous American. Projects were exported as wp4 files and sent to me through the Work Collector. Many students did not finish their videos today since we only had 45 minutes to work. If I were to do this lesson again, I would change several things. First, we need at least an hour if not more to carry this out. Second, it might be best and most efficient to do this in small groups. The students had to listen to and follow many steps in order to be successful. Check out four students who were able to create a finished product in 45 minutes:


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