iMovie in the Classroom

Over the last couple of weeks, I have been experimenting with both iPhoto and iMovie and their value in the classroom. I have created two projects as a result, one a short movie introducing the Acropolis and one a short slide presentation on the same subject. Although both are highly similar pieces, I now have the choice of using either in my lessons. I created each project with the third grade SOL for ancient civilizations in mind. Both could work as introductory hooks to the unit on ancient Greek culture and architecture. I would probably follow up the movie with a look at how some of the temples were constructed and the parts associated with the columns, statues, engravings, etc.

After completing the assignment I wanted to upload both to YouTube to both preserve and share my work in an easy and convenient location. However, during the upload process I was notified with a copyright violation on the music I had included in my projects. The song that plays in the background of both slide show and movie is Tom Petty's "It's Good to be King" off of his album Wildflowers. As a result, my videos uploaded but without the music so they play silently. I found this to be a disappointment in my sharing capabilities, but also interesting. Teachers are constantly looking for resources to enhance the classroom experience with anything from lesson plans, music, videos, pictures, books or even recipes. The internet makes this hunting process excessively easy and amongst so much information the issues of plagiarism are often neglected. Although the Tom Petty song I included in my movie was originally from a purchased CD, it still violated his copyright when I tried to incorporate the song in a public project without proper permission.

Even if we can get away with using collected material for private projects (such as a personal iMovie presentation), we still need to recognize source citation when attempting to share those projects on a public level (such as YouTube or even this blog). I could directly relate the whole process of my music issue with recent discussions on the internet and how much we can get away with in terms of taking information and using it as our own.