Copyright and imovies

Copyrights can be confusing and infuriating. For example, the use of video in the classroom can be very restrictive. While it is good that educators be accountable for why they are showing a film in the classroom (by having to explain how it fits into the curriculum) it can still be frustrating if they cannot show a whole film that would benefit the classroom. Of course, it partly depends on the film and the film company. Disney tends to guard their products more closely and therefore it is more difficult to incorporate their films into a classroom. One way I remember that Disney films were used at my high school was in the foreign language department. After tests, our classes sometimes watched Aladdin or The Lion King in Spanish. I think if our instructors had to explain themselves they could successfully argue that watching these films caused students to have to translate the dialogue and therefore encouraged them to think on a higher level.

I’m still not sure about some copyright issues. Suppose a church wanted to sponsor a free movie night for the community? Would they be violating copyright law by showing a free film to the public?

Copyright issues aside, I would like to discuss imovie. I was pretty amazed at what could be done with the imovie software. Our group filmed for about 25 minutes and out of that 25 minutes, only about four minutes of film were used! Still, it was incredible to see how movies really are made, and how they can be used in the classroom. I enjoyed working on the storyboard concept and gathering the props the most, although filming itself was fun. I think with today’s students being so technology oriented videos would be more interesting to them than simple lectures. Also, I found out that educators and students can win awards for their videos! Ivie (Innovative Videos in Education) is a huge organization that offers awards to student and teacher generated videos. I think it may be worth looking into in the future.