Primary Students Create Hollywood Style Movies

New Zealand Primary School Students Creating Hollywood Style Movies

MELBOURNE - Australian Children’s Television Foundation - Auckland’s Marina View Primary School is leading a revolution that is breaking down the four walls of the classroom using a 3D software package called Kahootz.

Colin Gover, Information, Communication and Technologies (ICT) Director has students as young as five build their own virtual 3D ‘environments’, create animation and even put themselves into the animation sequences they have created.

"When I first saw Kahootz, I knew that our kids could push the boundaries of this software and so we ran with it. The kids learnt alongside me and we all became learners. We still are."

Using chroma key effects on digital video along with Kahootz Movie Maker, an extension that allows students to create AVI or QuickTime movies from a Kahootz scene, Marina View created an incredible scene. It was a student interacting with a 3D Kahootz animated character.

Peter Maggs, Head of New Media at the Australian Children’s Television Foundation, creators of the software, was amazed. "You see this kind of thing in Hollywood movies, and here are primary school kids creating it," Peter says. "A few years ago, you might expect high school students to be trying their hand at something like this, but here it is, happening with Colin Gover and his primary school students at Marina View."

Marina View PS is building a reputation across New Zealand as the Kahootz school. "We get teachers from all over coming to see what we are doing – we have a philosophy at Marina View that we are all learners so we involve the kids in the process as well," Colin said.

Kahootz is listed on the New Zealand Ministry of Education's Software for Learning (http://www.tki.org.nz/r/ict/software/kahootz_e.php). The software has been reviewed by teachers and identified as supporting New Zealand schools and early childhood programs.

For more information on Kahootz, visit www.kahootz.com and view the showcase section for student examples.

Kahootz is distributed throughout New Zealand by Edsoft.

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