Highlighting the Texas Computer Educators Association Conference at the Austin Convention Center in Austin were six 5th and 6th graders from Austin’s Great Oak Elementary School, showing how they use video today where students in the past wrote term papers. 

Great Oak kids presented their videos at the Casablanca Video Editing booth one day, and San Antonio students will be at the Casablanca booth the following day.  Casablanca makes the only stand-alone video editing units available at prices of $1,000 to $4,000, making them more affordable for schools than traditional computer editing units.

The students are working on class projects and demonstrating how easy it is to create a complete video with the user-friendly editing units sweeping the nation’s schools --- now in over 4,000 K-12 schools throughout the U.S. 

Student-produced video is a strong and growing trend in teaching.  For English, video is being used instead of paper reports for themes and literature studies.  In language classes, kids produce commercials.  Government classes require students to film campaign speeches.  Science classes use videos in field projects. 

Teachers say it gives students of all ages and abilities an opportunity to become involved in a team project, which helps them learn.  They say students do not have to be computer savvy because the Casablanca does not work like a traditional computer.  Students still learn and improve their writing skills as they write their video scripts.