Music and what it means to me

In the last two weeks we have been working this interesting topic, and then everybody has had the chance to show how much  and what kind of music they like, besides how expert they are when editing a video-clip, a karaoke video-clip. Well, they are not Spielberg but some of the students I have this year have showed some very good skills in the making of the Karaoke videos I bring you here at the end of the activity.

First they worked in class with these conversation questions just to warm up. They used them for the pair work activity we had at the beginning of this topic. Then, before writing their own composition expressing what music means to them, I offered them the possibility to enjoy the reading of some essays written by some Polish colleagues two years ago.

After this it was the time to write about what music is all about to them. Once they had done it, and I had corrected and marked their essays, they emailed me the final versions and then I uploaded some of them to our moodle so everybody could enjoy them. You can reach them here without becoming a registered user of our virtual classroom.

To finish the activity they had to prepare a video-clip, a karaoke version of a song they liked. The conditions were:

1. The song selected had to be understandable and with a proper message,
2. They had to make it in groups of three. To do it they are advised to use videos recorded or photos taken by them, although they could also download some free material found on the Internet.
3. The final version of the video brought to the teacher had to be at least 2mb/s.

My compromise with them, as a teacher, was that I would edit a DVD with the best ones, and all of them would be uploaded to a repository in Internet so everybody could download them. The content of those songs becomes part of the material they have to study for the exams.

Here you are the videos they have made this year. There are 26 of them made by years 9 and 10 students. They are a lot, and all of them very professional.

In a few days time we will know which ones have been given the “Best Video awards” by the students in our partner school in Poland, but meanwhile you can start watching this superb video three students in 4th A have created, I think it is really worth watching! They are Laura Valencia, Miren Ballesta and Angela Lamberto: Very well done, girls!

What the students say about Music

But this is not all, some of the students wanted to tell us what music means to them. They are Edurne, Claudia, Lucia and Gork (year 9), and Alejandra, Cristina and David (year 10). Here you are their live performances.

I hope you enjoy all these materials and, should you meet any of the authors, I invite you to congratulate them because… I think they deserve it!

And the winner is…!

Finally on Friday 12 we had the Ceremony Award to name the winners in the First Karaoke Video Editing Contest. Our friends in Poland had done a terrific job! They watched all the videos and valued different aspects before deciding what videos they considered the winners. Here you are a presentation prepared by Kamil Pendyak where we can see how they worked the videos in class and then reached their verdict.

Then, at 14,00 they connected with us through Skype and, one by one named all the winners. All Ibaialde students were anxious to know who the winners were, and when our friends in Jablonna read the names, everybody received a big applause. Here you are the list of all the winners and the diplomas they got.

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To all of them a very big CONGRATULATIONS!, and for those who didn’t win anything,… Don’t worry, next time!

Thanks to everybody for your professionalism in the making of the videos, and to those in Poland for the way in which they have dealt with their important responsibility when deciding who they winners were.

JUNE ‘ 10: Here I am again to add some information to this entry. In the last few days I’ve got news of all the videos our friends in Poland are creating and then uploading to their school’s webpage. It all started with our videos, but believe me, theirs are really worth watching, and there’s one especially (Collide) you should never miss, I have never seen anything better made by 15 year olds.  CONGRATULATIONS!