Now you can analyse films and Watchitoo!

One of the age old problems for History teachers has been the fact that we have such an amazing plethora of 'quality' of films that can be used in our classrooms for teaching (excepting Titanic and Pearl Harbour) but giving students a focus and purpose whilst watching the films can be a struggle.

The moment you draw the blinds down and switch a film clip on the IWB, apart from preventing them from sleeping, you also fight the chorus of 'Miss/Sir can we sit on the tables?' or 'Miss/Sir can we sit on the floor to watch it?'. Errrrrmmmmm no... they haven't purchased tickets for the cinema and they are not in their own home. Also every time we watch a film clip there is always a task to accompany it. This task, inevitably, draws out the showing of film clips because students need to watch clips more than once to get the information you need them to... slowing down the lesson and leaving teachers a little greyer at the end of the lesson than the start...

So let's change this by using a nifty little online gadget called www.watchitoo.com...

Start by setting up your own free account and uploading film clips that you want the children to watch... really simple from the content tab when you log in. 

You should also set up 15-30 dummy account names so that when you get into an ICT room or have a laptop trolley in your classroom the students can log on to the website.

The concept is now simple. As the teacher you upload a film clip into 'Your Show'... I chose a Hastings clip from YouTube... and then invite each of the 'students' to watch the clip at the same time. The neat little aspect about this is that there is a chat function alongside the video so that as student are watching the film clip they can chat and comment to each other, like MSN, about what they are watching. They can choose to watch it as many times as they want, collectively, before completing a task.

This is a different way to watch film clips together, keep students focused, discussing the topic and not feeling like they are at the cinema - loving that feeling!

There are so many films out there that this could be a task using on more than one occasion... it could even be set up as a homework task for the students via the VLE.

Have a go... have fun... and happy blogging!