Flip Cameras

On Monday we were split into groups of four. The only thing we were told to do was read the book our group was assigned by Wednesday. My group was assigned the book The Eleventh Hour: A Curious Mystery by Graeme Base. This book is a mystery, fiction, children’s book about an elephant who is having his eleventh birthday party. For his party he makes a feast. His guests are excited for the feast but first they must partake in the festivities. As they are playing the games something suspicious happens, the feast is eaten. To the disappointment of all the guests no one fesses up to it. It is the job of the reader to figure out the clues and figure out which guest ate the feast. Today in class we were told our assignment. We were to create a visual book talk over this book using a flip camera. I had never heard of or seen a flip camera before but I was impressed by it. It is small and hand held and displays good video quality. I think as a teacher it would be very cool to have in the classroom. A book talk is just one of the cool activities you could have your students do with a flip camera. The camera holds up to an hour, some more, of footage. I think for most activities that would be more than enough time. After learning about the flip camera I was thinking about other activities you could do in the classroom with it. I think it would be a quick and easy way to film a student reading. In tutoring my tutee has a problem of substituting words. By filming her she could go back and read along with the video, or just watch, and realize her mistakes. This would help her to see that she needs to read the entire word, not just the first letter. You could also use it to film such things as reader’s theater and project presentations. It could be used by students to do the activity we did today, film a book talk. Allow students to plan what they want to talk about, where and what they want to film (as long as it can be done, and let them get to work. It could be used for multiple activities and it is so easy to use, even young children could run them. When it comes to putting them on the computer, a mini-lesson would work to help explain it. I will definitely look into getting a flip camera for my classroom.