Case Study: Using mysimpleshow in the Classroom

What is the most obvious oral topic or essay that students can expect to get on their return to school after a long summer vacation?

If you’re thinking “Tell the class about your summer holiday,” you’ve got it right! That’s all good and well if you’ve been to Disney World in Florida, or if you’ve had a Turquoise Holiday in the Maldives, or if you’ve been on a safari in Kenya… But what if you just stayed at home? Even though you might have had a great time at home, how do you convey that in an exciting manner to class mates, who have all been visiting great places during the summer holidays?

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That is exactly the dilemma that teacher Launa Irvine’s young daughter, Kirsti, faced when she got the tell-me-about-your-holiday assignment. They hadn’t gone anywhere; yet they had fun staying home in Mallorca during the summer holidays. Kirsti wanted to share her holiday with the class in an innovative way… and decided to make a mysimpleshow video about it:

Although the students were familiar with the information about Mallorca, the video was new to them and proved to be a great hit with the class. The students then wanted to make their own mysimpleshow videos, and the teacher wanted to know more about the program and how it could be incorporated into lessons.

Launa then decided to do a 3-session workshop to show students how mysimpleshow works with her son’s class of 9-year olds, considering the developing writing skills of Kirsti’s 7-year old classmates and the time limit allotted for the workshop. She based it on three famous figures the students were already learning about in history and literacy lessons: Florence Nightingale, Leonardo da Vinci, and Roald Dahl.

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The mysimpleshow Workshop

The first session was used as an introduction. After watching a myss video on Leonardo da Vinci, Launa explained how the students could make their own videos on a famous person, using Florence Nightingale as an example. After choosing a template together with the students, she explained the writing step to them using an already prepared script as an example.

In session 2 of the workshop, the students wrote their own scripts based on an article about Roald Dahl. In groups, the students read the articles and selected information that they wanted to include in their scripts, which proved to be an added benefit from using the tool: being able to choose only the most essential information from the article. Then each group wrote a script, using the mysimpleshow template for “summarize a famous person’s biography.” To Launa’s pleasant surprise, the students quickly realized what was expected of them regarding writing a script thanks to the guidance provided by the template.

The third session was the most exciting one for Launa: students had to import the script into mysimpleshow and choose, change, and edit images for the videos. They only had an hour to get through the Write and Visualize steps, and Launa was concerned that the time would be too limited. Luckily, it took the students about 20 minutes to type their scripts and another 20 minutes to choose and edit images in the Visualize step. By the end of the third session, all of the videos were rendered…and the students were super impressed with their own creations! 

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After the students presented their videos, they filled out the above survey about their experience. The results yielded an overall positive reaction:

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What a great way to stimulate creativity, get students to narrow down a text’s essentials, and to boost class presentations with something out of the ordinary! The students wanted to make more mysimpleshow videos after the workshop was finished. Launa firmly believes that teachers can expect to see a few more presentations incorporating mysimpleshow videos as part of the delivery!