Capturing creativity using digital video

This paper evaluates the use of a creative learning activity in which postgraduate student teachers were required to collaboratively make short digital videos. The purpose was for student teachers to experience and evaluate a meaningful learning activity and to consider how they might reconstruct such an activity within their own teaching practice in their placement schools.\ud \ud Within UK primary schools (children aged 4 to 11 years) there is currently an increasing focus on creativity within teaching and learning and a desire to use ICT to enhance learning. This led the teacher educator in this case study to introduce a learning activity in which students created a short advert using digital video.\ud \ud The nature of creativity is considered, as is the collaborative element that frequently forms an element of creative learning activities. This collaboration was an integral element of the digital video activity. An existing framework of ‘meaningful learning’ is used to inform the analysis of the students’ responses to the learning activity.\ud \ud Student responses show that they valued the experience and developed a desire to use digital video in their own classroom practice on school placements. The combination of positive student responses, the collaborative nature of the activity and the scope for it to support meaningful learning make digital video a powerful tool for supporting creative teaching and learnin