For Erik Lima, education is just fun.
In his 18 years of education, many students have walked through his classroom doors, and he has honed in on opportunities to help each one shine in their own unique way.
WeVideo has become an integral part of that. We caught up with Erik, a sixth grade teacher at Pacific Sky School, to get a peek into his process and hear him recount some of his favorite accomplishments as an educator.
How he got started
When Erik first started at Del Mar Union School District, he dove into the tools that were already available at his disposal. WeVideo was one such channel. “I jumped in to play around with it, and I realized that there was a lot in WeVideo that we could use in the classroom,” remembers Erik.
So he implemented WeVideo's tools for the first time that very same year. “With my first lesson, I showed my students a few ways they could use WeVideo, and I cut them loose,” he noted.
What happened next was also pretty fun. Students thrived from having both a voice and means to express themselves and some agency – and choices – about how to do that.
As student empowerment improved across the board, Erik noticed certain, quieter students began to come out of their shells and feel like they could show up to class in new and different ways. “One of these students felt such a sense of ownership over it that they even offered to create tutorials for their classmates, said Erik. “I was blown away, and was also able to reuse those tutorials for students’ benefit in the years that followed. As WeVideo progressively added new features, more students asked to update our class tutorials.”
Erik’s favorite ways to use WeVideo
In his school setup, Erik teaches several common core subjects - math, language arts, and science (his students trade off with another teacher for social studies). While he uses WeVideo to tackle a wide range of projects with a large variety of topics, several consistent themes emerged in how he’s able to tailor lesson plans to student needs.
1. Branched learning
When navigating a diverse classroom setting, it’s important to tailor material to different students’ learning speeds. One subject where Erik implements a branched learning approach using WeVideo is in Language Arts “When I see some students are further ahead on reading assignments, I’ll assign them an independent reading portfolio with additional lessons to keep them challenged and engaged,” he highlighted.
2. Peer mentorship
One of the recurring projects where Erik relies on WeVideo is for a scavenger hunt project at the beginning of the year – “I create a series of tasks or levels in a slide deck, covering different skills I want students to learn independently in WeVideo,” explained Erik. But where the real magic happens is when some students start powering through the skills, or it comes naturally to them. “That’s when I ask these students to mentor the others and show them what they’ve learned.” It’s an instrumental project in creating the kind of collaborative, supportive culture he wants students to experience in his classroom, where the perspectives of each class member are valued and leveraged.
3. Group projects
With WeVideo’s collaboration tools, Erik has also come to rely on the platform for group projects in his science and math sections. For instance, in one project, Erik merges math and science skills in a virus outbreak assignment. Students receive quantitative and qualitative data and the goal is to figure out where the virus originated, which they are asked to create a video presentation about. “From filming the interviews of the infected to translating the data into clues about the virus’ origin, it’s really cool to see how they use their creativity to tell the story of what happened with this outbreak,” explained Erik.
Student showcase
Mr. Lima also integrates WeVideo with curriculum and contests by different publishers, He recently saw one student group win a “Best of the Best” award and another come in second in their category in McGraw Hill’s StudySync media contest.
Of the winning group, he said, “I was a little unsure how it would turn out when this group came to me and wanted to record outside – the environment and audio can be more unpredictable. But in their video covering platitudes, the students used so many cool editing cuts and mics to make sure the audio was clear, and I was shocked and so proud when it won!”
Of his second place students, he also was elated to see their creativity shine. “This team used WeVideo and a green screen effect to stage a disappearing act. They finished the discussion about the topic and disappeared with editing, and it was so creative.”
Final thoughts
While every student, class, and year are different, Erik says WeVideo consistently helps him empower his students to become comfortable in their own skin. “It’s a process, but I’m glad to have the tools to help students be a part of the class culture that I want to create," he says. "I also feel really fortunate to have the support and alignment of my school's principal in championing student voices and creativity.” Next year, Erik will continue to use his teaching mindset in Del Mar Union School District to impact a new crop of students at Pacific Sky School.