Fear is in never trying, fear is in giving up.  Never fear the unknown, never let the system win and when all else fails, back it up, wipe it out and start over... Robin

Spring 2012 Portfolio

Television and Video

Walk into most classrooms today, public or private, and the first thing that probably stares you in the face is a television monitor.  Television and video have become much more prevalent these days.  Whether the monitors are being used to send messages to every classroom at the same time (such as morning announcements) or teachers are using the monitors to share things such as video's on specific subjects, or news items via cable, more and more teachers are finding having television in the classroom is bringing the outside world inside.  Although it is a great idea to be able to use television or pre-recorded movies (dvd's) in the classroom, some teacher's may be missing out, if they are not giving their students the opportunity to use television as their own medium.  Video is a great affordance students can use to create projects and movies of their own, to enhance their own learning process and share information they have learned with other students.

There is a lot to learn about creating video's, but once students are taught the process, it is a skill they can take with them.  The one thing students need to understand is the amount of preparation involved (figuring out the basics, storyboarding, assigning tasks, etc.), prior to their picking up the camera.  From my own experiences, I think this is where teacher's may be having the most difficulty.  If students have no prior video experience, teacher's don't have the time to spend teaching students the correct way to shoot a video, so the end result may not be as clear, or as good, as the student wants it to be.  Time is an issue for all teachers, and perhaps it is lack of time  that has teacher's shying away from this very resourceful learning tool. 

Below are links to the video's my group and I shot on April 26.  Our job was to take storyboards that were done by other members of the class and turn them into video's for the entire class to enjoy.  We shot the video's completely as described in the storyboards and, as our "audience" discovered, some of our storyboards were missing some very critical pieces, such as dialog.  The type of video we shot was called "in camera editing", which meant the only way to edit was to film each scene exactly as we wanted it, pause the camera and move on to the next scene.  We did have a few issues with stopping and starting, but eventually got the hang of it.  I will admit, the raw video was pretty good (as seen in the link on the left), but the 4 video's on the right are much more refined after a few transitions were added, a few lines of dialog and credits.  I realize the purpose behind the video's we did was to show you didn't need anything else to complete a video project, however, if the affordances are available, I believe students should be taught how to use everything at their disposal.

Our final assignment was a video essay, trying to convince parents that video games were not all bad and that some could even be beneficial when it came to teaching and education.  Our job was to write the essay, based off of quotes and findings from the books we read the last part of the semester, create the storyboard, add the dialog and types of shots we wanted to use and then film the essay.  Each member of our group had to participate in front of the camera, as well as behind the camera.  We filmed the essay using a flip cam, using in-camera editing.  Not all school's can afford fancy recording equipment and editing software, nor do they have the time to teach a full video class.  By showing students the simple act of in-camera editing, they can use any camera at their disposal  - even the ones built into their phones - to put together a video project for class.  In this project there was no editing done.  The transitions were added by the flip cam software when the video was rendered.

http://vhs.gmu.edu/videos/1113/MMRT.wmv

Script for Video Essay

Some educators may not believe there is a need to bring technology into the classroom, such as video and video games, but I strongly believe that if you make learning fun and interesting, you will get students more involved and the more involved the student, the more the student will take away from the classroom.  Textbooks have their time and place, but so does technology and by not bringing technology into the classroom, teachers are missing out on a very important resource.

To tie what I have learned into what I am teaching my own students I came up with a Lesson Plan that teaches students how to plan and create a video.  The lesson plan is broken into 6 sections and the section outlined here is section #2, which addresses brainstorming and treatments.  In order to explain the full lesson plan to them, I also wrote a Letter to Students outlining what they will need to do and what they will need to know in order to help them put together the best video possible.