Mr Bass Online

Yesterday I wrote about how content can be the basis for mentoring when you take an initial text and, using the same kind of content, morph it into something similar but different. Yesterday it was Gary Brolsma’s, Numa Numa video. Today I want to talk about a second way to look at mentor texts, that of technique. In the writing workshop this can take the shape of students analyzing a particular style of writing and emulating it in one’s own works. Continuing my theme of thinking about how this can translate to video and the creation process when it comes to that medium, the techniques that are used in movie making can often be imitated through software. One of my favorite ways this is done is through animation.

The following video is one created by a group of  elementary students who were  studying ancient Egypt and tasked with telling a story about an event. Rather than write a paper, they chose to tell their story through clay-mation and create their own video. With support for their technology integrator and teacher, they created a storyboard to guide them through their story and began the revising and rewriting until they had it just the way they wanted. By their own admission, they hadn’t ever written that much for an assignment ever before.

Once they had written the story and felt ready they immediately began diving into the clay to make the characters. This was the fun stuff. The stuff they could do without planning, or so they thought. Having never created an animated movie before, they had no idea what was in store for them. They knew they had a story inside that they had written out, but making it come to life in clay was a completely different thing. To guide them, their teacher had them look for examples to show them how to go about making an animated video. They found a few and got started, but after only a few frames, they realized they needed more direction and turned to the teacher for help. The teacher, who had also never created animation before called in reinforcements in the form of the building’s technology integrator. Without this available support, there’s a very real chance that the project would have died right there as the teacher was not what you’d consider a techy. This is the end result.

From where I sit, this was a successful project. The students told their story and showed their understanding and ability to transfer their knowledge to a new medium. However, there are many lessons to be learned through this project’s story including:

1. The students who created this video were creative and resourceful, but they didn’t create clay-mation. They had seen it somewhere and it it had inspired them to try something new. In one of their minds they had a mentor piece that guided them to this point.
2. We can’t assume that because something has to do with computers that students will be able to do it without support. They needed feedback, guidance and instruction to be successful.
3. Bringing in new mediums can change the scope of a project making it more challenging or complex.
4. When given choice and opportunity, students can and will create content that surpasses what we had envisioned.

My next example is from a middle school. In this student’s class they were reading, To Build A Fire, by Jack London. In this case, the student was talented when it came to drawing and also wanted to create an animated story taking an excerpt from the book as her inspiration. She had seen animation techniques and wanted to try something a little more advanced and ambitious. This is her creation.

In this case, the student was inspired by technique as well as content and went about creating because of it. She knew of the techniques and chose to put them to work in their own project.

When a work (be that a video, text or other medium) leads someone to explore a space that is unfamiliar to them and gives them guidance, it can most certainly be classified as a ment0r to the new work. Whether it’s mentoring content, technique or both, these are the basis for much of the creation going on in today’s world.

As this series goes on, it strikes me that each of us involved are adding to the thinking of and mentoring each other through our writing. Thinking about Kevin’s example of the choose your own adventures through video, or Tony’s project with his kids, I will take these “mentor texts” with me as I work with teachers and add to their thinking while they add to mine. The more I think about this subject, the more I see the inspiration that mentor texts can bring to students.

Tomorrow I will pull in the final way that mentor texts can influence the decisions that our students make and inspire them to create. Until then, be sure to check out the posts of the others participating in the series and please, let us know if you are thinking/writing about mentor texts as we are. We want to learn from you.

More on mentor texts this week from:

Katie DiCesare at Creative Literacy
Troy Hicks at Digital Writing, Digital Teaching
Kevin Hodgson at Kevin’s Meandering Mind
Tony Keefer at Atychiphobia and
Franki Sibberson at A Year of Reading

All posts are being aggregated at Mentor Texts in the Digital Writing Workshop.

Tonight is the film festival for my district and I wanted to briefly record some thoughts that I have as we go into the evening about how this will benefit students and bring an authentic audience to their work.  In the next few days I expect to take some time and reflect on the event itself, but right now, I still have a ton to do.  If you do a podcast or are interested in what this might look like, feel free to contact me.  If you’d like to see a little bit of how we run ours, visit our site.

Film Festival Reflection MP3

I’ve been thinking a lot about authentic audiences for the past few weeks and decided that it might help me to talk through some of my thoughts on the film festival that I run and the reasons that I think it’s so important.  If you listen, hopefully you’ll be able to learn from me and, in turn, I would like to learn from you.  Below you will find the two videos that I reference in the podcast as well as a link to the gallery of all films that were created for the film festival.  Leave me a comment or drop me an email with your thoughts about whatever comes up for you.  Thanks for stopping by.

Life of Bus One

Outsider Jeans

2010 Parkway Digital Film Festival Gallery

Authentic Audience – MP3 file

Last Thursday we hosted our second film festival in the Parkway School District and, from the reaction we got from parents, teachers, students and administrators, it was a resounding success. If you’re interested in seeing some of the films, visit our gallery.

I’ve written about it before, and I’ve been trying to think about what I want to say about the work that students did for it.  The stories that we heard about the work that students did was amazing and I’m hoping to get some of those stories out, but, for now, until I decide what I really want to say about it, I’m going to refrain other than to say it was a good night. From watching my own kids walk down the red carpet, to the pride I felt knowing that we had over 1300 people in attendance as we honored the work of approximately 1000 kids, I just simply still don’t know what is the most important piece to chronicle.  So, as I think, I hope you enjoy some of the films.

As I’ve written before, I was the coordinator of a Film Festival in my district this last spring.  While the night went exceedingly well, upon looking back on it, there are several things that I’ve been looking at for next year. A friend of mine, asked me to reflect on the program through the lens of the NCTE 21st Century Curriculum and Assessment Framework.  Because there were so many different types of entries in the program and such a range of curricular areas involved, it’s tough to really bring all of it together so I’ll be general and we’ll see how this goes.

Develop proficiency with the tools of technology

In many cases, one of the main goals that teachers had when they started their film festival projects was to get students familiar with the tools of technology.  Focusing on the tools is a starting point in many cases, but once we got beyond how to edit video and where to begin a project, we started to focus more on the evaluating the sources that were found.  The process became as important as the final product.  We looked at the literary skills that were involved in working through the problems, evaluating possible solutions and working together to become creators rather than simply consumers of information.

Build relationships with others to pose and solve problems collaboratively and cross-culturally

One of the biggest successes of the film festival process was the collaborative nature of the work. While some were individual submissions, the vast majority were done as a group.  They worked thorough many problems and found solutions that were acceptable for all involved.  Additionally, many came away with a new understanding of the possibilities of working together.  When talking with students about what they learned, they weren’t just focused on their own part of the project.  They were learning from each other and, in many cases, stopped relying on their teachers as the sole people with the correct answers.

Design and share information for global communities that have a variety of purposes

Students who participated in the film festival were creating content that would be viewed by a greater audience.  The students were expanding their realm and evaluating the purpose of their films and the response their films would have on the audience both in the festival and later online as they were archived in a gallery.

Manage, analyze, and synthesize multiple streams of simultaneously presented information

Again, because of the nature of this project, information came from internet sites, databases, books, video, interviews, etc.  This proved to be beneficial for teachers as they asked their students to evaluate the reliability of the informaiton they found as they worked through their research process. Then, in most cases, students took that information and created their own meaning from it.  This new meaning resulted in a transformational experience in which students were not simply consumers of the information, but made it relevant to their own world and work.  Through those projects, students had a far deeper understanding of the material, had exercised their higher-order thinking skills, and created a relevant product that they were proud of.  One example of this is “The Great Car Robbery” created by a group of high school students who were studying the Niobe Myth.

Create, critique, analyze, and evaluate multimedia texts

One of the things that we’ve asked some of the students to do is to reflect on the experience.  We’ve gotten a variety of responses but mostly, because of our medium, students talked about the challenges of technology and  video editing.  However, when pushed, those who’s projects were of high quality realized that they learned a great deal through their projects that had nothing to do with the technical process of making the video.  They were working with concepts, solving problems and working together as they analyzed and reconstituted the information in a meaningful format.

Attend to the ethical responsibilities required by complex environments

Probably one of the biggest questions that students and teachers had when working with the materials had to do with copywrite and fair use.  Because the films that would be shown at the festival would also be shown on the Higher Educagtion Channel, we worked to compile a list of resources teachers could use that wouldn’t violate copywrite.  This was tough for many teachers who believe in and use fair use in their classrooms.  However, it was a great opportunity to model real world methods and have conversations about the implications of using the work of others.  This is something that we’re still trying to work out right now.  One of the things that I hope to accomplish this year is to provide other ways to find music, pictures and video for use in films.  I’m not sure what this will look like, but I want to show students that there are a number of places that provide royalty-free materials that we can use.  This was a learning experience for both student and teacher.  Truly, some didn’t think it was worth it.  However, I think it’s important to model ethical use of information as we work with students.  The film festival was a great vehicle to do just that.

I’ve been meaning to write about the Film Festival for awhile now and just haven’t made myself do it.  Looking at the NCTE Framework as a tool to think through the process and the projects provides some insight into how effective it might be in the classroom.  There are many changes that will be made this year and the framework will help to work through some of the issues that might be important.

Yesterday, a few of my colleagues and I took a trip to Effingham, Illinois to see the 6th Annual AHA Film Festival.  This festival has grown over the years from 150 to around 1500 attendees and incorporates two different school districts.  Essentially, two English teachers, Joe Fatheree and Craig Lindvahl, have collaborated on a multimedia class and decided to recognize their student’s work in a public forum.  As Joe described his classroom, it reminded me of the project based classroom that I had a few years ago.  Just as in Joe’s class, my students created films and told their story.  We talked about and studied cinematic techniques and tried to create an avenue in which students who weren’t strong writers could still tell their stories.  They wrote, rewrote, filmed, refilmed, edited and reedited before they came away with a product that they could be proud of.

We went so that we could get some pointers and ideas on how to run our own festival happening in about one month.  While our scope is different (ours is grades K-12 and district wide, while AHA encompasses two high school classes) and we are not awarding prizes for our festival, the meaning is still the same, we want to celebrate student work through video.  I learned a lot yesterday and, as I was driving home (and laying in bed awake thinking about the day) I began to think about the quality of the films that the students in Effingham had created.  To be frank… they were outstanding.  They were still student films and they are definitely still learning, but as I thought about many of the student films that I’ve seen in my years teaching, I think these are among the best.  Not because of the equipment that they used, nor because of the fact that Joe and Craig are both film makers. No, these students understood that film making is really storytelling.  They were telling a story and that was the focus of the entire class.

The technical capacity to make films is getting significantly lower.  With cell phones capable of capturing video to Flip cameras to more traditional video cameras, the equipment is getting cheaper.  Nearly every computer out there has a video editing application built into the operating system and now there are even online video creation tools that can be used.  The rules have changed when it comes to the tools.  However, the methods of storytelling remains very much unchanged.  So that makes me wonder (yet again) do the tools really matter?  There will always be technical obstacles that must be addressed, but does learning what to click on in Movie Maker, iMovie, Premiere or Final Cut Pro really what we should be teaching, or should we be more focused on the process of storytelling?  Yes, learning the program has it’s place, but when you’re telling a story, what do you focus on, the tool or the process?  For me it’s always been process.  Technical details can be worked out and many times, I’m not the one to figure it out.  If I can teach the process, regardless of what tool is chosen, the story can be told.  It just makes me wonder, how many districts are teaching the tool rather than the process when it comes to digital storytelling?  And for those that are, how can that mindset be changed?

Additional information about the AHA Film Festival can be found here:

• Online Student Film Festival
• AHA YouTube Channel
• Main AHA Film Festival Page

Today was a day well spent with an awful lot of learning. I started the day at an METC Advisory Committee meeting in which we revisited the conference from last month. It was a good discussion which included ideas about virtual conferences and reflections on the conference.

Upon leaving that meeting I went to one of the elementary schools in our district because the Higher Education Channel was coming to our district to do a “Behind the Minds” filming of some of our students as they work on their films for our upcoming Film Festival. Since this was my brain child, I wanted to be there as students talked about their films and were interviewed for the show. Jennifer Young (another TIS) and I were there to supervise and help the students as they worked on their films. These were fifth grade students who had done a presentation earlier in the year in which they became a person who has had a profound affect on society and who stood for something great. Anne Frank, Jane Goodall were among the people they chose and they had footage of them acting the part of these figures. Now they were in the process of whittling down their films to meet our two minute guidelines. During their interviews they discussed problem solving, collaboration and storyboarding as they described the process. They used film terms and talked at great length about what they wanted to say through their films. The entire process was nothing short of awesome. Watching students talk about and reflect on their process was truly transformative and they were very eloquent in their discussions. Through the work of Jennifer Young (another TIS), the morning was a success.

Upon leaving the elementary school, I accompanied the film crew to one of our high schools where they interviewed two junior girls about a sociology project that they embarked on last semester. They too were eloquent in their discussion, but one thing they said really stuck with me. “In all of our other classes, we had to do PowerPoints.” While I’m not completely against PowerPoint, it was clear, when talking to these students, that PowerPoint is an overused presentation technique in their school. They relished the opportunity to do something more meaningful and, as I watched their video, I think they succeeded. Their video was compelling and far more intriguing than any PowerPoint that I’ve ever seen. When they were done, I was interviewed in regards to the details and origins of the Film Festival. It was a great day. Watching students grades 5 and 11 talk about their learning really made me proud of what we’ve done to facilitate the Film Festival in our district and making it about the celebration of student work. I guess more than anything, I’m continually impressed with the abilities of today’s students. The show should air in the next few weeks and will be available online. I’ll post again when it can be viewed.

As a classroom teacher, I always enjoyed creating video projects with my students.  We did audio and video podcasting and other films when they lent themselves to the curriculum.  Last year I was helping Melissa Pomerantz do a documentary film with one of her classes and in our conversations we talked about ways in which to get this film out to the world. Thus began the brainstorm for a student film festival.  I pitched it to my boss who liked the idea and then I took it before the rest of my team members hoping that they’d all be into it too. They were and thus the Parkway Digital Film Festival was born.

I am happy to announce that the film festival is coming to fruition beginning with our official announcement today as seen in the video I’ve posted below.  I’m really excited about the possibilities of this and will probably be writing a lot about it between now and April. I put the video of Susan (a colleague) together and have it hosted on Parkway Digital (our district YouTube that we built to share video).