Friday 9 September 2016

Film Festival Reflection

I am almost finished with my film festival entry - it has been a great chance to do some different learning with the kids as well reflect on some of my teaching practice!  Unfortunately I will not be able to show you the finished result until it airs at the Manaiakalani Film Festival in November as it is meant to be a surprise for the learners to see a film they helped create and starred in debut on the big screen!

Today we came together to spend the day editing and bounce ideas off each other in relation to our films progress so far.  It was great to see such a diverse range of films and I was really impressed with everyone's ideas and skills with filming and the editing.  We were able to share what we had completed so far and get feedback from the cohort.

I spent most of the day shearing time off my footage which was originally around 20 minutes with the goal to get it under three minutes.  This took a lot of watching and then rewinding, however, I made links with an earlier discussion we had in the morning about rewindable learning.


The concept of rewindable learning is something that we have learned about a lot this year but having to use it myself today to better apply understanding to my growing iMovie skills - I can see the benefit in using in more so in my practice.  I have already started this week to make the use of video more as a resource in my design of learning and have had some success with some workshops we are currently running in our learning space.


By having resources available in a format that learners can rewatch, pause or skip ahead, this allows great agency of how the learner is managing their learning and allows them to become less reliant on instruction.  I also found that learners used these resources to come and have more critical conversations with me when conferencing.  I was hearing a lot of "Why would they say this?" and "What does this mean?" and we were able to use the videos to plan out our next steps.

So what does that mean?  If the design of learning requires it, then I shall be using more videos.  And more authentic ones at that where either I am creating the content for my learners or they are helping me co-construct them.

That brings in a nice segue with my film festival entry - it is a follow on from a video I helped a group create for our recent Break Through Exhibition where we created an educational video for learners.  We wanted to have a bit of fun with the topic and this is how the idea was created.

Reflections:

  • It was quite clear to manage the balance between how much of my voice was going into the film compared to that of the kids.  I had to step back a few times as I did feel that I was telling more than instructing.
  • I had to take the kids on the journey of film-making - it was an interesting conversation to have with many of them about why we would take multiple shots when they were happy when we did one.
  • I really noticed that I need to work on my instruction giving.  At first, I was giving multiple instructions and the kids were getting lost after the second one and because they started off well, I stopped checking for understanding quickly into shooting.  Once things went off track a bit, I realised that I needed to make sure everyone was comfortable with the next scene.
  • I actually forgot to have fun at one stage as I was caught up in the filming and directing of the video.
  • Finally I lowered my expectations - I know that I am not Steven Speilburg or Peter Jackson and the kids are not actors getting paid for their skills.  The main thing was that the kids were enjoying themselves and communicating the story that they had created.
At the end of the day, I am really impressed with how the kids were able to learn skills such as storyboarding and use their dramatic skills to create a piece of learning that we all feel proud to share with the wider community come Term Four!

2 comments:

  1. I've enjoyed reading the backstory of your filming Heath. Including the rewind able learning connection. I suspect that 12 months ago you would have had no idea that you would be taking this kind of activity in stride! Good on you.

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    Replies
    1. Thanks Dorothy, especially for the opportunity to learn the skills to take part in the film festival! Great to see that they are transferable over to my practice too!

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