Creating a one minute commercial to help promote either the conservation of energy or the environment was our summative task for term two Science.  Offered several options for topics they self-selected themselves into groups of three, with my guidance.  Each group of three, nine in all, schemed, planned, wrote and practiced their own version of their commercial.

After several periods of planning, writing and practicing an afternoon was chosen for the recording of the commercials.  In their groups of three they efficiently and responsibly acted and recorded their video commercials.  I captured the video from the camera to the computer and made three copies onto cds for them to edit.

There was a rather long lapse in time between the recording of the videos and the editting of the footage because of several factors beyond our control, none the less when the editting was done they were very keen to see what they could make of their reocrded work.

Considering few of the students had previous experience with either the software or the computers in this way they efficiently and responsibly worked through the task at hand and created their versions of commercials.  THEY taught each other most of what they learned to accomplish this task.  I, of course, scaffolded and modeled the teaching - they learn from each other ALL the time.  I trust that they are good teachers, because they have shown me they are.  Because we teach each other, and we learn from each other we can accomplish much more than if it was only myself who was responsible for the sharing of information.