Sunday, June 11, 2017

Green Screen in the Classroom - Five Easy Steps!

Are you looking for a simple way to use green screen technology in your elementary classroom?
Well, recently I took on this task, and I found it to be very easy!
1. For this method, you need an iPad or iPhone.


2. Download the app called Green Screen by Do Ink.  It is $2.99, but well worth the three dollars.
For more information about how to use this app, check out the short video clip from Greg at Kindergarten Smorgasboard.  I credit him with my inspiration for this project!


3. Purchase green tablecloths from any dollar store.  I bought 5, but really needed only 3. I layered the three tablecloths over each other, and used push pins to attach them to the wall in our filming area.  The whole wall in my classroom is made of bulletin board material (lucky me) so this was an easy set up.

4. We started this project because my students chose to do a television news show to share their persuasive writing projects on a social issue.

 Last year we did a classroom newspaper from a template I found in Google Drive,
 but that's for another post.

So, I asked the students to choose a background idea that connected to their persuasive writing piece, and went to work searching for their backgrounds.
I would highly recommend this site - pixabay for free images and videos!  I found many of the background images I wanted on this site.

5. I saved the images and videos to the iPad I was using for filming the students, and it was easy to layer these two videos together because the of the simplicity of the app.

Here are a couple samples of the videos that were created:


After I collected the videos from 20 of my students (4 chose not to be videotaped), I compiled them together into a class news show with iMovie.
Our news program was shared with parents at an end-of-the-year program.

We also shared the video on our class Seesaw feed.
Questions?  Feel free to message me below!

I hope you'll try out green screen technology with your students.
We got a lot of "WOWs" after sharing our class news video!