Dafna teaches Fine Arts in a Vancouver Board of Education (VBE) alternative high school program. Students there have, for various reasons, struggled in mainstream high school programmes. At her “school” a flexible structure, condensed (4 hour) day, and interdisciplinary approach to curriculum all result in increased attendance and improved grade 12 completion rates. Using classroom-based, small group and self-directed pedagogical approaches, students work through materials at their own pace, following Individual Learning Plans developed collaboratively. Currently the learning group Dafna facilitates has eight students studying Music 10.
Previously Dafna has created music videos of herself for her Music 10 Guitar students, which have been very well received. This year she has an even more exciting idea: having students make their own music videos of themselves.
The school has five (5) acoustic guitars available, and 4 iMac computers (which are used for other program components in addition to Music). Dafna has her own video camera and tripod, which students can borrow. Her Director has agreed to purchase 10 mini-DV cassettes for the project.
Because of the flexible nature of the programme, Dafna need only develop an estimated time for the lesson to be completed. She also has the option to make this an iterative tasks: one that students revisit from time to time over the course of several months. The iterative approach is more easily adapted to the school, so Dafna expects the activity to go something like this:
| Activity | Time Needed | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Camera basics | 2 hours | Done in class |
| Shooting video | 2 hours | Done in class and out in the neighbourhood |
| Editing video | 10 hours | Capture, cropping, transitions, soundtrack, titles |
| Post-production | 5 hours | Export to DVD, iPod formats |
Suggestions and Questions for Dafna
Based on the resources available, how might Dafna organize this activity?
I think that Dafna has misjudged a few of her time allotments for this activity. As there is only one camera in play the time she has allotted for teaching how to use this is too much. Most of her students will be able to figure out how to use the camera in a matter of minutes. However, as Rachel pointed out if they could get cheap digital alternatives they could do more filming and would not need to worry about the DV cassettes. As there is only 8 students and 5 acoustic guitars, this means that even when working in pairs, 3 more flip cams would allow for each pair to be filming and playing. However, I fear that her 2 hours of allotment for shooting is on the low side. I would expect that this is where the students will be most engaged and having fun and will want far more time to do filming. I would think that each student would want 2 hours themselves on their own video (which means if working in pairs they would need 4 hours to complete their filming). I think that an iterative approach would work well as it could be difficult to find 4 hours in a row to film. If students were given this as a term project, I think the film would be better planned out and more interesting.
Moreover, the editing will be tricky for Dafna with only 4 computers that are being used for other things. I am assuming that she has editing software on each computer. If not, this would mean she would need to find an online solution, which could limit the quality of the video. If she allows this to be a term project she will need to allocate time for students to do some editing and will also need to set timelines for minimum amounts of film to be edited by. If the end of the term is a deadline there will undoubtedly be a rush for the four computers toward the end. In terms of post production, I think that exporting to DVD might be one option, but that the students are more likely to want to upload the video to YouTube and embed it on their walls on Facebook. I am not sure that this process will take 5 hours. Once the hard work of the editing process is complete, it should be relatively easy to make the uploads and embeds.
This last point also takes care of the dissemination of the music videos, but Dafna will have to be very careful about issues in regard to copyright (especially if they use any external music in their videos) and privacy issues (especially if they film in public). Furthermore, she will need to be careful about using the students’ names in public forums like YouTube and Facebook.