Green Screening in the Classroom

By Jason Seliskar On February 26, 2011 · Leave a Comment · In Conferences, CUE, How To, Informational, Technology

Green screening in the classroom is something I have done the last few years with my fourth grade students. Green screening is the process of setting one image behind the other while eliminating a color (green or blue) in the one image to make it transparent, thus revealing the image that is behind. Green and blue are used since they are the furthest colors from our skin tones. A great example is the weatherperson on the television.

I have worked with students to make short movies from their anthology or novel stories. We have recreated scenes, added to them or simply made our own. These videos can be used across the curriculum. I have had students simply talk about plants and an image of a plant was behind them. Simple but visually interesting. We have had a spirit and pride assembly and the students took a picture of the assembly and then in front of the green screen reported on the assembly without all the background noise. This allowed them to report while the same effect was captured minus the overpowering speaker system.

One project we presented at the 21st Century Learner’s Symposium at Cal State LA was the California Regions. They researched each region and with the “magic” of the green screen they spoke of their new knowledge from the location of the regions. Well, not really but visually they were there. We used a green screen to recreate some locations when we turned our story “Who Stole the Wizard of Oz” into a short movie. There are many possibilities when using a green screen to enhance the learning and in addition to that you teach the technology behind it. It is a powerful addition to your teaching for engagement, learning and creating.

You need several things to do a greened screened project:

A camera that has a 3CCD chip to better take away the color green in editing or simply I have been using a Flip camera of late.
A green screen (green screen cloth, chroma- key paint, green paper with the right shade)
Proper Lighting (the screen and the subject have to properly lit)
Editing software ( iMovie, Final Cut Express or Pro on the Apple side; Movie Maker)
Hosting website for final production display (optional by great)

I will be presenting the how to’s to green screening at this year’s Computer Using Educator’s Conference in Palm Springs on March 19th at 8:00 am.

CUE2011 Presentation can be found here: Going Green with iMovie resources

I can be followed on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/jasonseliskar

Also, some great equipment needs can be found here at TubeTape.com. I have purchased several items from them and they are great and reasonably priced.

Please Email me! at mrseliskar@gmail.com if you have questions or want to further your knowledge of green screening in the classroom.

Stay tune to my next podcast on this subject.

Here is an example of one of our projects: