RSA Style Videos Using a Green Screen

The great Aristotle once said, "There can be no words without pictures."

 
There is a growing trend online and in media regarding the use of images and pictures in resources.  According to research this is a positive trend.  There is much support for how we are "hard wired" for reading information that includes pictures to support text.  Did you know:

-we use more than 50% of our brain for image processing
-it only takes us 0.01 seconds to scan a room to determine what is going on
-people follow directions and instructions much better when pictures and text are used
-speeches that incorporate images are more persuasive than those that do not

Dan Roam, in his book titled Blah, Blah, Blah: What to do when words don't work,  writes  about how words alone are not sufficient to engage listeners.  He encourages presenters, business people, and educators to use images to deliver and reinforce ideas.  According to Dan, ideas will be more memorable and our information will be more engaging when we use images to support our information. 




I have already written about how teachers might incorporate image usage into their lessons to motivate and engage learners using RSA Animate videos.  If you have not read this blog, you can access it here.

RSA Animate videos could be taken to a more advanced level with your students using green screen technology.  Here is a sample of one I quickly created with the help of my daughter.





How is this done?  Instead of having students draw out their RSA Animate on a white board or paper, students could write and video record the drawing or their images on green or blue paper as seen in the picture on the left.  When finished, the video file can be imported into a program that has green screen or chroma key functionality like I-movie or Adobe Premier Elements 11.  You can find two tutorials on how to do this here:

a) Green Screening using Adobe Premier Elements 11-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WEzg-WIHL-4
b) Green Screening using I-movie-https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q64NAQsoUZg

As you can see in the tutorials, you can swap out the green/blue background for any image or video you want.  This allows students to come up with a variety of options.  Drawing RSA Animate on a green/blue background and then using green screen software enables students to enhance their videos and create original and professional RSA Animate video.

Give it a try and let me know how it turned out!