​Video Reflections

I've been waiting for over a year and a half to use this tool! I learned about Adobe Spark over a year ago at a CUE event, and my awesome colleague, Mrs. Sage reminded me about this software.  

Instead of using a paper and pencil for students to construct reflections, have students use software to create a video. There are some many benefits to using videos, like students' creative sides are activated, their voice comes through, and their personality shines. And, you can practice different writing skills like POV, as shown in the videos below. I challenged my AVID students to reflect on their grades, but students had to maintain a 3rd-person POV! This made for some very entertaining and unique reflections. 

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 Example 1  (Working Progress) 

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Example 2 (Working Progress)

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How All Student Videos

Collect student links on Google Classroom by asking students to copy and paste their video link. 
Or, my favorite way to showcase creative visual digital media to the class is on Padlet. 

On Padlet, I can have all students submit their links to their creative projects where I can rate the videos, leave comments, and post the videos for the class to see them. 

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How-To Set Up Accounts 

1. Send students to Adobe Spark (spark.adobe.com) 
2. Have students select "Continue with Google" 
​3.  Have students register 
4. Make sure students use first name and last initial  to register 
5. Create a video! 
6.  Share the video (to render and get a link!) 
7. When students publish videos, turn off the "Get Noticed" feature 

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Some Caveats 

​One problem - students have to be 13 or older to register to use the software. You can imagine my painful realization when I tried to use this tool last year for a unit with my 7th graders. That was a huge failure because some of my 7th graders were 12 years old while others were 13 years. FAIL! 

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If a student who is under 13 years of age tries to register for Spark, then his or her account will get locked.  Therefore, I highly recommend that only 8th graders or older students use this software. 

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