Macworld for Educators Podcast Program

Listen to this episode: iMovie 101:Video Production for Educators

At Macworld today Lainie McGann ran a workshop, iMovie 101: Video Production for Educators, based around the Apple video editing application iMovie. No doubt, as Lainie explains in this interview with Allan Carrington, a number of people came along, as they always do, just wanting to know a bit more about how the program works – what buttons do you press when, how do you export to different formats, how do you refrain from overusing all those cute-looking transitions etc? And of course Lainie, as always, helped them to locate the answers to all these questions.

It is important to know what buttons to press, but its equally important to understand the pedagogical context and transformative potential of these technologies, and this is what Lainie focuses on in the interview. This is not just about kids playing around making movies in class, just because they can. This is about a whole new set of concepts, skills and multi-literacies. This is about moving to a more and more student-centred approach to education, and the breaking down of the teacher-as-sage way of doing things, a change in approach that the more traditional educators can find challenging.

Lainie McGann is an educational consultant, and the K-12 Educational Technology Coordinator for Newport-Mesa Unified School District. She is the Orange County CUE Board President, an Apple Distinguished Educator, and has been recognised as a Teacher of the Year. Read more about her at her website.

The favorite book that Lainie refers to in this episode is Daniel Pink’s 2006 best-seller, A Whole New Mind.

Online tutorials for iMovie can be found here. Also all Lainie’s resources used in this excellent workshop can be found on her website here.