Description:
5th Year MAT students in the Early Childhood strand were offered the opportunity to thematically integrate three courses we were working on together in the form of a reflective iMovie. The development of this movie allowed students the opportunity to apply their understanding of 1) the development of a lesson and the design of a lesson plan, 2) the manner in which to incorporate creative expression into their ECE classrooms, 3) the use of video as a means to tell a learning story, and 4) the use of teacher reflection as a means of improving lesson design and implementation. Furthermore, this project fostered collaboration between the student and mentor teacher over good lesson design and implementation, and encouraged the mentor teachers to utilize the digital video camera.

Process
Students were asked to work with their mentor teacher to design an expressive arts lesson and to ask the mentor teacher if he/she would be willing to videotape them teaching the lesson. This was supposed to be an iterative and collaborative process that would result in a strong lesson plan with all the appropriate lesson plan elements. Next students were to ask their mentor teacher to tape the lesson and to discuss how they would like the lesson taped, given that the focus was the methods used to support student learning.
On the day of the lesson, students would bring in the PT3 camera and tripod and help the teacher get familiar with the use of the tools. The lesson would then be taught and taped. As soon after the lesson as possible, student were to sit down with the teachers and view the lesson, reflecting on its strengths and weaknesses. They were asked to pick out the most critical insights that would like to include in the video and to subsequently videotape themselves providing this critique.
Next the students were to edit the tape, intercutting footage of themselves commenting on the lesson elements. This total length of the video could not be longer than 10 minutes and therefore must show only selected segments. Finally students were asked to take the finished movie back to their school and share their work with their mentor teachers and discuss the lesson and the video reflections.

Here is a Link to the description given to the students regarding the project.

Conclusions
About half a dozen students undertook this project and worked with a mentor to produce a tape. Without exception they found this to be an important experience from the standpoint of working with their mentors, editing a video, and most importantly the opportunity to watch themselves teach a lesson. This was a very successful trial of this concept and I will fully implement this as an element of the curriculum next year.