Videos, Skills, and Attitudes
In Global Citizen Videos for Expats, I wrote about my students using technology to take action — through a series of student-created videos they intend to educate and persuade the local expat community in Tianjin to live in more eco-friendly ways. Today I read in Connecting Your Mission Statement to the Community, David Carpenter’s thoughts about students producing videos. He says students draw from multiple intelligences to develop a storyboard, write a script, book the talent, act, film, direct, mix music, and edit a video. I want to back that up.
Having just completed my first student-created video project earlier this week, I finally experienced firsthand the skills it takes to create a video. It took three students five days to write one storyboard for a three-minute video. I had planned for one period. Writing the script took two days. On the first day of writing, the students realized that they had gaps in their knowledge. By the end of the second day, they had completed more research, gathered some hard facts, and discovered they actually had something to say. I really enjoyed watching the action drive the inquiry here. On the day we scheduled to shoot, one of the main actors was absent. Frustrated but undaunted, we managed to revise the storyboard, improvise a new script, and shoot the scenes on the scheduled day. We found mixing the music and editing the video more challenging than we expected. It took a lot of effort on my part, and I’m still not sure they buy it, to convince the students not to use crazy special effects and transitions just because it’s cool.
My students enjoy videos with music, voice, and images but now they also appreciate what it takes to create one — research, communication, thinking, social, and self-management skills. Some of you will recognize these as the PYP transdisciplinary skills, one of the five essential elements of its curriculum. I believe that this video project required my students to draw from all of these skills more than any other project we took on this year. In addition to that, it brought out some of their best attitudes — curiosity, enthusiasm, creativity.
Their first video highlights the problem with plastic bags in our city. While walking the city streets to film the video, one of the students commented on the number of plastic bags blowing around the streets, poking out of the dirt, and stuck in trees. In the classroom it never seemed to disturb him to talk about this problem but on the streets it clearly disturbed him to walk through this mess…a learning experience for him, a lesson in teaching for me.
Next week, we intend to share this video with our school and local expat communities. You can see what they had to say about plastic bags right here.
Need reusable bags? from Tod Baker on Vimeo.
Tod, I’d be curious. What would the results be if your students could only make a 30 second video? I say this as most TV ads are about this long. Would this requirement change anything?
Brian,
Your question leads me to an important part of the video project that I neglected to mention — reflection.
Learning comes from doing but sometimes that’s not enough. Creating videos, for example, is complex. It deserves in the end a carefully planned reflection.
Like a good road trip, a video production needs a scrapbook. Students and teachers need something to look back on, something to show them how they got to their destination. So documenting the steps is a key part to learning from a video project. That documentation, whether it be photos, anecdotes, diagrams, sketches, storyboards, drafts, or whatever, needs to be displayed and talked about, reflected on and analyzed. We can document the process and reflect on any video production whether it’s 30 seconds, three minutes, or three hours long.
So, yes, I think we can get the same results from both a 30-second and three-minute video production as long as we document what we’re doing and create time to reflect on the process as well as the product.
Thanks for stopping by.
Cheers,
Tod
Tod, I thoroughly enjoyed watching the video. Its quality shows the effort the students put into it. Also, the fact that they are talking about something that affects them personally and locally makes it meaningful. I guess that their sense of accomplishment through their awareness video will make a difference in the way they face their local communities and the power of their voices. Fantastic! Congratulations to them and to you. Interesting question Brian raised. This could be a challenge, like getting the same idea and remixing it for a 30-minute video! It would be interesting to see the results!
Hi Carla,
A 30-minute video? Well, we’re all newbies here. Maybe with continued inspiration from Marco Torres and his team, I can continue to engage students with digital tools and inspire them tell their stories.
Thanks for stopping by.
Best,
Tod
Sorry, Tod, I meant 30-second video!!! 30 minutes is like a movie! No. Just 30 seconds.
Hey Tod,
As I mentioned in another post, we just finished our Shanghai Student Film Festival -next week we’re going to meet to discuss the next step -which could either be a China or Asia region film fest. Either way, maybe you’d be interested in helping us organize some participation from Tianjin?
David,
You can count on me.
Cheers,
Tod
Great Tod! Glad to have you and Tianjin aboard.
Videos, Skills, and Attitudes /U Tech Tips/ – In Global Citizen Videos for Expats, I wrote about my students … http://tinyurl.com/4jnkplQuote
[...] social network, tianjinexpats.net. I discussed the educational benefits of this video project on U Tech Tips. I sent it around to all my Facebook friends who live in Tianjin. And you can view it on our IST [...]