This is an updated version of a post I first published in 2015 about doing this project with Adobe Voice, a previous iteration of Adobe Express. Click here to read the original post.
Every year in June, I have my students make a video for next year’s incoming students, showing them what they will learn in a fun way and sharing their thoughts on what helped them learn. The first couple years that I did it, I filmed students acting out mini dialogues with their vocabulary. Then, when we had iPads, before we went completely 1:1, I transitioned to having the students use Adobe Voice (now Adobe Express) to create the videos on the iPads. Now that we are 1:1 and all students have school issued laptops, the students can create the videos on their devices. Our school has a subscription to Adobe Express, so students can use their school credentials to log in and the site is EdLaw2D compliant (important in New York State).
Adobe Express allows users to quickly and easily create visually appealing content for social media and other uses. My students use the video feature, although you can page a webpage, poster, graphic, and lots of other types of media. To make a video, users make slides for each idea they want to present and then add text, icons, or photos, as well as record audio for the narration. The photos are all legally sourced from Adobe’s stock collection and are automatically cited at the end of the video (if you read this blog regularly, you know that is important to me). You can also upload your own photos or videos. The program has a collection of stock music you can use in the background, as well as professional-looking themes and fonts to choose from. It has just enough options to spur creativity but not so many that it’s overwhelming.
Above is a preview of what the video editing screen looks like. After the students have finished making their video, they click “Share,” and invite me as a collaborator so I can duplicate and download the video.
Students work on this project in groups. I give each group a vocabulary topic that we covered during the year and have them open up Adobe Express and make example sentences showing what types of things they will learn how to say using that vocabulary. It could be a dialogue or just a word with an image. Each group’s video is expected to be about 8-12 seconds long. The idea is just to give incoming students a preview of what they will be learning. They also have to put subtitles in English so incoming students know what it says. This used to take several class periods, but now that we have block scheduling, they complete this all in one class period.
I combine all the videos and edited them in WeVideo to make one long video. I also record students sharing their favorite things we did this year, and/or their tips for success, and add that footage at the end. For this blog, I edited it down further and took out the student interviews for privacy reasons. The video you see below was actually done back in 2015 with the iPads, which I shared with the original post. Although it’s old, Adobe Express, despite several name changes, really hasn’t changed that much, and the video still provides a good example of what can be done with it. The clip you see in the beginning was done by a student in his own time. He was the one who brought the app to my attention (back when it was Adobe Voice and only available for iPad) and he made the video to show to incoming middle schoolers at our orientation night. I thought it was perfect for this video as well. I cut off all the credits slides and put them all together at the end, which seemed more logical then putting them after each video, since it’s supposed to play like one big video.
The students have a lot of fun making these videos each year and the incoming students always enjoy them.
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