The goal of our project was to provide students with the ability to accomplish higher level analysis and reporting of hands-on inquiry based science projects by providing them with the technological tools necessary for in-depth investigations. We accomplished this goal by purchasing the necessary equipment to set up a portable multimedia lab consisting of an iMacDV computer with included iMovie software, a digital video camera, tripods, and Office 2001 Mac software.

This lab was utilized by nearly 300 eighth grade science students and by the UMS Science Olympiad program.  Students taped trials of two different engineering design projects during the course of the year.  After capturing the trials on digital video the students imported the video into the iMovie software on the iMac and performed frame by frame analysis of the performance of the devices.  This analysis allowed students to identify postive and negative aspects of their projects that otherwise would have been impossible to see.  For example, in the toothpick tower project the students were able to identify exactly where and how their structures failed.  From this information the students were able to formulate ways to improve upon their structures.  Before the use of digital video analysis the students could only guess what happened to their structure. The students shared their iMovies with their peers providing them with an opportunity to express their formulations with more depth and understanding than was previously possible.

This is an example of a student produced analysis movie of a toothpick project. Because the movie had to be exported as QuickTime, the quality has been degraded. In the original iMovie, the student can advance the movie one frame at a time for close analysis.

This is an example of a student produced analysis movie of a marshmallow catapult. The video shows the path of a marshmallow being launched at two different trajetories.

Our project was somewhat compromised by the inconvience of the renovation of our entire building. After the renovation is complete we will expand the use of digital video and iMovie analysis to additional activities. We would like to thank the CU Foundation for their generous support of this project.