Sunday, November 24, 2013

Now I see the sunshine (Ricky Nelson)

A few years ago I was a media studies teacher. Hang in there - there is a point to this...

I had a practical video component in the course. The idea being that students would design a script, storyboard their video, shoot it and edit it. This process would take weeks to complete. The biggest time was spent on post production edits and soundtrack dubbing. The editing suite would only handle one group at a time.

Weeks I tell you, weeks!

It was actually a pretty stressful time as a teacher - making sure the video cameras were charged, allowing students some latitude to work outside the classroom, making sure everyone was engaged and focused, booking editing equipment and helping students with the technology that we had.

Weeks!!

Ah, the bad old days.

Last week I gave my Year 10 a film assignment. They had posted their favourite adverts onto Schoology and we'd watched them in class. The brief for the film assignment was to create a new ad in an existing campaign.

The students got to it.

I watched as two students (Z and R) decided on the format of their new Snickers ad. It was to be an extension of the Betty White advert that aired during the 2010 Superbowl.

.

They enlisted my help (they needed an 'old geek' they told me) to play the Betty White/Abe Vigoda role.

They told me what they wanted. R and I rehearsed it for a few minutes. Z was the camera person/director who filmed us (R and I were joined by Imo) on her iphone. She and R then edited the footage on their ipads and added the Snickers logo to the end. It took minutes!

We then watched it in class with the other students who'd completed their own ads, after they had all uploaded their videos to the class' Schoology page.

https://www.schoology.com/system/files/attachments/files/m/201311/course/40716439/SNICKERS_528aa0964a3fc.mp4


All this happened in a period! Less than an hour!

This was thrilling to see. As a teacher I had pretty much nothing to do but sit and marvel at their expertise.

It was wonderful. Literally!

No comments: