Visual Literacy

From FreeICT

Using still images and video as part of Literacy learning and teaching is powerful and great fun. This page contains links to some resources you could use for this.

Here are some clips from the British Film Institute. The BFI also runs the Screen Online website, with a wide range of film clips and tips for teaching with film, mostly downloadable on school premises only. There are short films, trailers, animations etc to download from Pocket Movies. More short films are available as podcasts for free subscription from ITunes. Suggested examples include Shallow Shorts and Atomfilms To Go: and ITunes labels which ones may be unsuitable for children.

BBC Learning Zone has lots of great clips for classroom use.

British Pathe is a huge database of clips from newsreels from the early days of film until the 1970s. You can search the database and download a free low-quality clip at home, but at school the higher-quality clips are free to download. Just follow the instructions, although it does take a short while and you do have to fill a form in.

For the Wallace and Gromit Soccamatic film, go to BBC website.

A great online non-linear adventure game (suitable for Renewed Framework Year 6) can be found at Huntingdon School.

Also, of course, you can use sections of your own videos and DVDs, but this can be even more powerful if you capture stills for sequencing, adding speech/ thought bubbles etc. Some DVD players allow this easily, but with some it can be extremely difficult. If you would like to capture stills from video, I would recommend VLC Media Player, which is free (Open Source). To download it, go to the site and choose your Operating System (eg. Windows). The site then gives you a choice of countries to download from, but it makes no difference which one you choose. When you have downloaded the software, check the settings- go to Settings: Preferences: Video. Where it says "snapshot", select where to put snapshots (eg. in My Documents or My Pictures) and select snapshots to be saved as JPG or PNG. Now play your DVD using the VLC DVD Player. Pause on the still you want, go to the Video menu and select Snapshot. It will take a snapshot and save it to the place you've chosen. You can then treat the image as any other.

A great site for downloading Youtube and other online videos is Zamzar. Choose URL, paste the web address in the first box, select to save as AVI and the site will email a link for you to download your video. Really easy and quick!