Using Replay App for Student Documentaries

By Kim Miklusak

For the Contemporary American Texts class, John Bottiglieri has his students create their own documentary.  You can find more information on the assignment here.  Mr. Bottiligieri allows students to pick whatever technology they would like to complete this assignment in order to meet the rubric requirements.  Traditionally students use iMovie and their iPads as we are a 1:1 school. Around this time of year you will see students setting up tripods in the hallway, interviewing people or speaking (and often re-speaking) into the iPad.  They then head back to class to edit and finish their projects.  If you would like to see student samples, please let Mr. Bottiglieri know!  Many are available only as files right now although we are hoping to make some available through YouTube in the future.

One student, Sarah Pauscher, was frustrated with iMovie, so she worked with the app Replay to create her documentary.  Check out her project about Chemotherapy.  Here is what Sarah had to say about the app and the process:  

"Out of all the apps that I had experimented with, I found that a good amount of them had crashed. Every time that I would use this app [Replay], it never crashed and it was the most interesting of all the apps I had. The app allowed me to incorporate many things into my documentary such as music in the background, text on screen and interesting effects. This app was easy to use and had many benefits to my documentary. This app compared to other benefited my document because it was easy to understand and had many interesting features. One disadvantage to this app was I'm pretty sure there is a limit to how many videos you can add into the whole thing. Other than that, I enjoyed using this app more than iMovie."

Thanks to Sarah's recommendation, I checked out the Replay app.  I can't wait to use it and offer it as an option to my students in American Literature for their American Dream interview project and later in the year for their 20% Time projects.  Look for an upcoming post on how to use Replay and more suggestions for the classroom!