[Test] Educator of the Month: Dana La Chapelle

/ Lise Framstad

Dana La Chapelle is a 7th-8th grade Video Productions Teacher at Toby Johnson Middle School in Elk Grove, CA.  This is her 11th year teaching Video Productions. Dana taught Yearbook, Computer Technology and elementary school during her first 7 years of teaching. She boasts of having the best job on the planet and absolutely loves helping students and other teachers learn to use WeVideo!
One of her favorite projects with WeVideo is their Public Service Announcements.  In this project,  students get to choose the topic they feel needs to be brought to the public’s attention the most.  They then combine research, camera skills, and creativity into their WeVideo project to create something designed to motivate their audience to care about their topic.  
[video width="1280" height="720" mp4="http://cms.wevideo.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/12/PSA-Walking-distracted.mp4"][/video]
First Project

Our school has a live morning news show called First Things 1st on TJ-TV.  The first project we did in WeVideo was to create a new intro for our show.  There were many great project submitted, but one really stood out!  This intro was created by an 8th grader named Paolo Garcia and is still in use as the official intro for our show.

Favorite Feature

It’s really difficult to choose one WeVideo feature over all of the many features WeVideo offers!  One of my favorite WeVideo features is its accessibility and mobility of WeVideo.  My kids can edit their projects at home, easily upload footage from their phones and continue working when they’re back in class. We also love the keyboard shortcuts, and the ability to duplicate as well as  select and move multiple clips on the timeline.  I could go on and on because  WeVideo is PACKED with many of the features that are offered in the really expensive, computer based editing software.  All these features AND editing in the cloud, from any platform?  Wow!

WeVideo

WeVideo saved my class from extinction!  At the time I discovered WeVideo, my class had only one Mac computer that was capable of editing video for every three students in class.  We had some PCs without editing capability and we had access to some Chromebooks from time to time.  Our Mac computers were starting to die of old age and, without money to replace them, I was worried my class would have to be discontinued.  Then, I found WeVideo and learned that, because it’s editing in the cloud, I could use it on all of the different computers I had in the class.  Because of WeVideo, my district refreshed my lab with Chromeboxes and we are thrilled to have one computer per student!  Students use WeVideo exclusively to edit videos for Video Productions, create news packages and segments for TJ-TV, and anything else we can imagine.

Do you know a WeVideo Rockstar? Are YOU a WeVideo rockstar? Send an email to lise@wevideo.com