Jo's Comments

Jo Churchill, the participating teacher at Pomphlett Primary, posted a comment that I thought I would copy as a blog post...

I would like to thank Kate and her school for their contributions to the joint project we made this year. Our children at Pomphlett Primary School enjoyed scripting and filming the video we made. The students even wrote the music using music writing software from Sony (Super Loopa). We used a normal digital camera to film with, which does limit the quality of sound and picture but is easy to use and more widely available in schools as a resource. The editing was done with Windows Movie Maker which is free on most computers using a Windows operating system. It is also easy to use, and older students of primary age in our school have used it to make films, pop videos and stop motion annimation.

The biggest problem we faced was US Customs! They were lovely on the phone but the forms for importing sweets(candy) even as gifts from one school to another are long and are in US English not UK English. Sometimes finding an appropriate translation for common UK items such as liquorish allsorts or fudge, was difficult. Thank-you to an American friend for her help!

It was lovely to find out about an area of the US we had previously known very little about. We often think of the two countries being very similar culturally, but it was interesting to find out about our local and national differences. I would recommend this sort of project to a school as it made learning relevent to many curriculum subjects and it was so much fun!
July 24, 2008 9:00 AM