Bring play into your classroom through the use of technology

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Play is a key part of a child’s education; encouraging creativity and allowing students to use their imaginative and innovative powers. Play is a biological drive that supports learning: social, physical, mental, the works. Technology is a wonderful medium to bring play into the classroom space and gaming and robotics are increasingly becoming the norm in many schools.

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Another technological vehicle to support play and creativity across every curriculum area is video green screening. The green screen effect is a type of chroma key technique used in video production or photography to replace a portion of an image with a new image. As the name suggests green screening uses a green screen behind the object (for example a news reader), and then replaces the green screen with another image or video clip (for example a scene from Christchurch if you are reading the local Christchurch news). Editing software is used to replace the green screen, with you the editor telling the software which colour to make transparent and which image or clip to use to create the new background image.

Why would you video green screen?

Creativity: it offers a risk-free environment to engage in make-believe, allowing students to develop or broaden their internal imagery, stimulate curiosity and encourage experimentation. They can try different genres, change roles and developing different endings. For older students that make-believe world can be applied to what otherwise may be very dry topics to some students. Those that supposedly despise Shakespeare or Pythagoras Theorem could be turned around by a strategically chosen green screening project.

Social skills: students will use all manner of social skills to work towards the final product. They will be practicing all those verbal and non-verbal communication skills as they negotiate roles (quite literally in this case) and manage the project to its destination. Green screening projects are fantastic vehicles to develop the ability to work in a team as students listen to other’s points of view, work through conflicts and share responsibilities.

Emotional development: a carefully chosen theme for your green screening project can be used to let students express emotions that otherwise might be difficult to deal with, whilst in role or whilst covering a topic such as bullying, grief etc. Teachers talk about how even when the topic is totally unrelated to something that a child is going through, they can still use the role they are playing to somehow process what might be going on elsewhere in their lives or just to try to be someone else – the shy child playing a world leader, the serious child pretending to be a penguin in a scene from Antarctica.

The learning possibilities using Green Screen technology are endless. Here are some ideas:

• Explore anything – pop You Tube clips behind the students and they can describe habitats, countries, coastlines, the water cycle, microbes travelling through the body…

• Be anyone – again use You Tube and become Nelson Mandela with the story of his life running in the background or Shakespeare dissecting one of his plays

• Stimulate writing – you or your students can make some cool story starters with an appropriate video running in the background.

• Create book reviews with large shots of the illustrations or video excerpts of the book running in the background as the students discuss the book – add QR codes onto your library books that link to the book reviews

• News programmes – school news, community news, world news

• Weather programmes, again local, national, world…

• Read your poetry with a video of appropriate images running in the background

• Analyse your own sporting performance or provide your own sporting commentary

• Walk around any objects and describe them

• Record a process and your student is the talking head explaining it

• Make a welcome video for your school, with a video of the school running in the background

• Record your worlds in Minecraft and have a tour guide point out the features

• Raise and deal with topical issues such as bullying, substance abuse etc. by producing infomercials

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And how to do it?

Key to the whole process are two things. Firstly, the object in the foreground (i.e. your news reader) cannot be wearing the same green as your green screen or it will be edited out. Secondly, the colour and lighting of your green screen needs to be as even as possible. Any light or dark patches will render that area a different colour and they won’t be “chopped” out by your editing software.

Begin by thinking about your physical space, or spaces. The green screen “studio” could potentially be mobile, a resource that moves around the school or it could be fixed and different groups could be timetabled in to use it. If money is no object it could be something built into every learning space, and this is starting to happen in some of the new modern learning environments with a green wall being factored in. Your physical space needs to be wide enough to get all of your actors in front of the green screen, so think about how many students you will want in shot at any one time, for example two news readers or one student lying down pretending to fly. You will also need enough space for lighting and the camera “crew”! The larger the space the better.

Now think about your green screen. You can use a painted wall or a wall covered in material or fabric. The key is that the material is not too reflective or else it will create lighter spots, and that it does not wrinkle, as this can create darker patches. If it is a mobile solution you can hang it using a frame or off some screws or use thumb tacks. Also think about how you are going to pack and store it (those wrinkles in mind again!). The latest green screens are pull-down PVC pelmet screens with very non-reflective surfaces making life very easy.

Moving onto lighting; the aim is to light the whole screen consistently. You will need two lights, possibly more and accompanying stands. Encourage your students to experiment with different combinations to get the most even lighting, making sure that there is no shadow being cast from the object in the foreground. Also think about health and safety and the amount of heat given off by some lights.

Next consider a camera and your audio. Your camera choice will come down to budget. You can do green screening with an iPad and a USB mic (with a camera connection kit to use it with your iPad). You can use a webcam linked to your PC. However both for quality and for an introduction to the media world, a school should aim to have at least one mid-range camcorder. Try and find a camera that enables you to plug your mic in directly that makes for greater ease of use. The camera wants to be on a tripod and it is worth checking that the tripod moves smoothly.

The editing software – the world is your oyster. For IPads, the app Green Screen by Do Ink is highly recommended, as is FX Studio. For Macs, iMovie has green screening capabilities and for all platforms including Windows there is Open Broadcaster Software, a free download which is my favourite. This allows you to record to file to edit later in your usual movie editing software, such as Movie Maker Live, or alternatively you can stream live to YouTube or to a streaming box which would allow you to send the live feed around the school! All the professional video editing software packages of course include green screen capabilities too. If you are working with older children task them to watch the many You Tube videos that explain how to use whichever software you choose. Let them work on a project or two, and then these older students can cascade it to the younger ones, thereby providing more valuable learning opportunities.

Enjoy going anywhere and being anything.

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Thanks to Jacira de Hoog from Cambridge Middle School for pictures of her students engaged in green screening.

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Jenny Barrett


enny is the CEO for Breathe Technology. Her enthusiasm for technology came when thrown in the deep end whilst teaching at a Taiwan high school. Jenny has since undertaken a Master’s of Education (Ed. Technology) and has supported classroom teachers to use educational technology in UK and NZ projects. www.breathetechnology.co.nz