Hi--

I was wondering if anyone had any experience working with kids (middle school aged). Would they be able to use something like i-movie? Or are there other programs more geared to that age group?

Any suggestions would be very much appreciated!

Thanks,

Sage Rockermann

A friend's grade school kids are editing like crazy with an EMac -- inexpensive way to go. Everything they need is included. Ditto for the IMac -- just a little more money. Make sure it includes the Superdrive.

My 9 year old son (4th grade) knows iMovie better than I do. FCP is another story. Older kids should have no trouble at all. Probably teach the teacher a thing or two.

This site is a great resource for curriculum ideas, lesson plans and info that you could use in a classroom or in your home.
http://ali.apple.com/

the lesson plan on apple's page look interesting.

i also found this pdf to be very helpful:

http://www.evc.org/pdf/Hands_On_Guide.pdf

we ended up using a combination of emacs and power-books (due to lack of space) with the 7th graders & it worked out really well this summer.

iMovie is really really easy to use. Final Cut Express/Pro is more complicated. FCE and FCP3 crap themselves on timecode breaks while iMovie doesn't. They also have sync problems, unlike iMovie. The interface in iMovie is very intuitive, but it isn't hard to learn FCE/FCP3. FCE/FCP3 of course is more powerful, but that doesn't necessarily mean that kids will learn more using that software. Final Cut allows you to easily adjust the timing of the edits. This could have a large effect on the impact of a film but it really depends on how advanced and involved you want to get.

Some people in my school ran into a very nasty bug with iMovie (all their clips disappeared). On small projects (<100 clips and edits) iMovie has been rock solid in my experience.

I'd get them started on better editing software, instead of a fully automated "knock off", it may be too costly though.

I'm only 15 myself, and I was great with Premiere and stuff when I was in like 7th-8th grade, even though I didn't have a digital camcorder then... I use Vegas 4.0 now, and it rocks.

From my experience, it's really not the software, but it's the projects you have them do with it. For example, we are using $4000 CAD software in my first CAD class, at school, right off the bat, but we are just doing simple stuff with it right now, gradually getting harder. It's pretty fun, and atleast I am learning something unlike my other computer class there for hardware (which I know more about then the teacher)

Good luck...