Create a Comic Strip with Clips

The creative opportunities available to students within the app Clips are endless. I have never met an educator that doesn't get SUPER excited when they start to explore it's many features and realise that this one app can be used by all ages and in all curriculum areas. This post shares why I love the app Clips, including some project ideas, as well as a demonstration video on how to create a comic strip style movie to show an important sustainability message.

At first glance, Clips is a super simple movie making app, which invites students to capture little movie snippets (or.... Clips 🙌🏻) which are automatically stitched together. These Clips can consist of video captured within the app, or, photos and video imported from the Camera Roll (with the option to add their voice over the photo and video). Using the Clips app in its simplest form like this, has so many applications in the classroom. As an early years teacher, the idea of easily adding the child's voice to footage of their creations and discoveries is always a winner 🤩. But with a few more taps, students can add Filters, Stickers, animated Text, Live Titles, a music Soundtrack and the most incredible animated Posters. With just a few of these additions, the final product looks super polished and so effective.

I have so many favourite Clips projects, it really can be used in any subject to show understanding. Just a few ways I have used Clips in the classroom are:

• 'Letter of the Week' hunt. Give students a letter and have them hunt the classroom, capturing Clips of items that start with that letter. Works the same for numbers, colours, shapes, sounds, rhyming words, angles etc.
• Story Retells. Have students create an oral retell of a story using Clips. They could add Text to identify which part of the story they are retelling (introduction/orientation, problem, solution etc) and choose a music sound track to fit the theme of the story. This could also work with students answering comprehension questions and giving evidence from the text as they could capture photos or videos of the parts of the story that they are referring to in their responses.
• Science Habitats. Have students import images of living things, and images of their habitats into Clips as they explain why each habitat meets the needs of that living thing. Use arrow stickers to point to each part of the habitat as they are talking about it.
• Social Stories. Use Clips to create social stories for the students in your classroom that need an artefact to refer back to when some extra support is needed. eg. When a student is moving to a new year level you could create a Clips social story to show their new teacher, their new classroom, where their bag will be kept etc etc.

Another fun project is creating a comic book style movie to spread an important message about sustainable waste management.  

Did you spot some of those amazing special effects?

This next video shows how this project was brought together.

If you are introducing your students to Clips for the first time, I highly recommend you give them the opportunity for some VIP time (Very Important Play). Maybe students can create a Clips movie about themselves, adding AS MANY stickers and special effects as they want 🤪. Then, as we create a Clips movie to show our understanding about a certain topic, I often set a limit on the number of stickers and special effects that they can add, and always state that they special effects must fit the theme task they are working on.

A lesser known feature of Clips is the fact that you can create and export to students a template or scaffold of a movie file. Use posters to set learning intentions and pose questions and export this to students so they can complete the task by capturing clips (and slide them into place after each poster set by the teacher), ready to save and share back with you. To learn more about how to create a Clips movie scaffold, click here.

For more information about using Clips, why not explore:

• Clips module in the Apple Learning Center
• Learning with Clips Series from the Education Forum
• Chapter One of the Everyone Can Create: Video book from Apple Books.

I'd love to hear about your favourite ways to use Clips in the classroom 🤩