Quoting Video and "Critical Watching": Scenemaker Makes it Possible

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Quoting Video and "Critical Watching": Scenemaker Makes it Possible

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Sick of students embedding full-length videos on their blogs and calling that “active learning”?

Scenemaker is one answer to upping the bar for “video commentaries.”

Here’s an example from the middle of a YouTube clip I love about the joys of bachelorhood:

And here’s another about its follies:

I wonder how easy it is to create mashups of these? If anybody knows, I’d love to hear.

In any case, for media studies blogging, for social studies current events or politics foci, and, the more you think about it, for a million more possible units, the freedom to selectively quote moments from much longer videos, and write about and around them, sounds very engaging. I’d like to read student works along those lines: “Watch this” followed by “I showed it to you because” elaborations and insights from the students.

And just imagine them embedding a spoken, rather than written, analysis and reflection of such clips using Flixn.

I can’t wait to play more with classroom blogging next year. I learned a lot in my first six months of trying it in the English and history classroom, but am still a rookie. Summer is already opening up a nice, quiet space for six weeks of “think-alouds.”

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