Movies in the classroom

I first used iMovie on the mac laptops in a free fall lab.  A common subject in Physics, it is hard to analyze because things fall so quickly to the ground.  The students and I took some objects that could be dropped safely to the stairwell and a background drop marked every 10 cm.  Students spread apart up and down the stair well.  We had droppers, filmmakers, catchers.  We took the two video cameras back to class, loaded them onto a laptop, and burned 2 c.d.'s.  The students passed the c.d.'s around the class and loaded the movies onto their laptops.  The students could then analyze these clips to determine the approximate distance that the objects fell for a given period of time.  Using the background to determine distance and the the frame number to determine time, students could determine the average speed at that point and graph distance vs. time.  We had a lot of fun that day and the students really got into it.  They felt like they could "see it".  It also sparked a good discussion on how the angle of the camera could have affected our ability to read the results.    As Lever-Duffy and McDonald mention in Teaching and Learning with Technology--"Visuals are, for most learners, a necessity."
I have found the use of multimedia in the classroom since then to have a positive impact in many ways.  I have had my Physics students (usually junior and seniors) create their own movies for class before.  The Mac laptops with iMovie, a built in camera and microphone on them make this very easy.  It is often mentioned by students as one of their favorite parts of class and a project that really helps them remember the content.  For my lesson I decided to take that idea and work it into a 9th grade biology class.  During the ecosystem unit we concentrate on the flow of energy through ecosystems.  There is knowledge that is supposed to be memorized, but the main idea is the process.  By having my students create a video on energy flow through an ecosystem they can internalize it and put themselves into it.