This activity is a great way to combine video editing with critical thinking skills. You’ll start by taking a video and chopping it up into smaller segments. Scramble those pieces up, and then the challenge begins. Students will use a video editing program to reassemble the video by putting the clips back in the correct order. This isn't just a fun exercise; it also offers a range of cognitive benefits including problem solving, spatial reasoning, attention to detail, and technology skills.
Chop up a video, scramble the parts, and challenge students to reassemble it.
Video puzzles are fun, but they can also help you learn skills that will help you in school and at work. Students use problem-solving skills as they examine the video puzzle and put the clips back in the right order. By arranging video clips, kids improve their spatial thinking and their ability to see how things fit together in space, which is a skill that is needed for everyday things like navigation. Students learn to pay close attention to details as they carefully put the video back together, making sure that the changes are smooth and that the whole thing makes sense. Finally, video editing teaches students how to use technology tools and how to work with them. This improves their digital skills and their ability to make multimedia, which is useful in today's tech-driven world.
Resources
Puzzles
People have always been interested in challenges that test their wit. Puzzles entertain, annoy and ultimately make us feel good when we figure them out. There is a huge range of puzzles, and each one has its own background and appeal. Here is a look at some popular types and their origins:
Tiling Puzzles: These involve fitting together flat shapes to create a larger image. The most famous example is the jigsaw puzzle, invented in the 1760s by cutting up maps mounted on wood.
Mechanical Puzzles: To complete these three-dimensional puzzles, you have to move things around to reach a certain goal. One recent example is the famous Rubik's Cube, which was created by Ernū Rubik in 1974.
Logic Puzzles: These puzzles, which often use grids or rules, test your ability to think and figure things out. One well-known example is Sudoku, which comes from Latin squares that were used in the 18th century.
Maze Puzzles: Solving these puzzles requires finding your way through a maze. Labyrinths are mentioned in old mythology, but maze puzzles probably came about much later. For example, evidence from excavations in Greece and Egypt shows that they were popular in those locations.
This is just a small sampling of the vast world of puzzles. From tangrams, ancient Chinese dissection puzzles, to modern video editing challenges, these brain teasers continue to evolve and provide a fun way to exercise our minds.
Activity
Here's a quick rundown of the process for creating the video puzzles in WeVideo. The creating a video puzzle using WeVideo tutorial in Resources explains the process in detail. The tutorial uses WeVideo as the video editor but you can use other video editors, usually you'll just need to save the video puzzle as a project for students to open:
Start a project and import your chosen video.
Cut the video into pieces.
Zoom out and rearrange the pieces to scramble the order.
Select all pieces and close any gaps that appear. Move the puzzle to the beginning of the timeline.
Convert the project to a template and make it live for students.
When students open the template, they'll see your scrambled video clips. Their challenge is to rearrange the pieces back into the correct order to recreate the original video. Remind them to frequently zoom out on the timeline to allow enough space to move clips around freely. As they arrange pieces, they can select multiple clips and remove gaps to clean up the editing.
You can use any type of video source for this puzzle - commercials, animations, or even videos your students have created themselves. For an extra challenge, don't show them the original uncut video first. See if they can figure out the message or storyline based solely on reassembling the pieces correctly. Adjust the number of clips used to increase or decrease difficulty. Start with just a few cuts for an "easy" warm up, then ramp up to "medium" and "hard" levels with more and more segments to piece back together.
This engaging video editing activity will have students motivated to solve the puzzling clips while sharpening skills like problem-solving, spatial reasoning, attention to detail, and video technology proficiency.