Green Screens and Empathy in Social Studies Class

Teaching empathy is one of the key social emotional skills to help students build relationships with other students and adults. A really unique way to do this is through the use of green screens in the Social Studies classroom. Exploring topics in history has always been a great way to build empathy, but by incorporating a green screen, students can quite literally place themselves in the shoes of a historical figure.

If you aren't familiar with green screen technology (also known as chroma key), it can be a simple and inexpensive activity for your class. The three basic steps are: take photos in front of a green background, digitally remove the green background, and digitally replace it with anything. There are extensive green screen kits for purchase online, but you can grab a green table cloth from any dollar store and use your cell phone to try it out. I'm a firm believer of using what you have before you invest.

Green screens are a fun technology integration activity for your classroom, but when creating this activity for your students there are a few things to consider. The goals of the lesson should be focused on the learning and not on the technology. Technology simply adds an element of engagement, fun or new skills to support the ultimate goals. When designing the lesson, it is important to keep that in mind as it is easy to get carried away with the fun of a green screen. Green screens are great, but what are the students learning? Always start with your learning objective and build the activity from there.

For example, the objectives might include things like:

-compare and contrast historical experience and modern day experience

-build empathy capacity in students through connecting with historical events

-narrate historical events

-support claims with evidence from primary sources

Last year I coached a teacher through the process and our goal was to help students build a capacity for empathy through writing about the experiences of soldiers in the Civil War. We designed a two part activity in which the students would recreate Civil War photos using the green screen, and then use a RAFT writing template to develop a letter home from the perspective of someone in the image. The teacher that I was working with chose about 10 Civil War photos from the Library of Congress to have the students recreate. As a class, they looked at each of the pictures and heard about the background information for each one. They formed groups to chose which picture they would re-create. Using a green screen, students took their pictures, uploaded them to Google Drive and edited them using a web tool and Google Drawings.

The picture taking, uploading and editing process can take a bit of time depending on the skills of your students. The teacher and I also created a slideshow of the step-by-step process to edit the images. This was really helpful for students to follow along if they were new to photo editing. Some students worked in pairs to have the directions up on one screen and the photo editing on another computer. Some didn't even need to use the directions at all!

Again, the most important part of this lesson wasn't to utilize a green screen, but to allow students to empathize with the soldiers in the Civil War. Incorporating a writing piece helped to meet that goal while having fun. Keeping in mind the true objectives of the lesson will help you design something that integrates technology effectively and meets your content goals at the same time.

Resource: How to Create Green Screen Photos with Google