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By Michael Schoonmaker, Author, Cameras in the Classroom Fourth grade teacher Erin Bronson was more intimidated by the technology factor of videomaking than any other teacher I had worked with before her. She worried not only that she knew nothing about how to make a movie, but also whether she could even determine an appropriate context for it in her class. She was, after all, a teacher—not a filmmaker. What Ms. Bronson failed to realize, just like most of my introductory-level college students studying filmmaking, was that the true challenge of filmmaking has less to do with technology and more to do with content. In other words the key to successful filmmaking has more to do with a filmmaker having “something to say,” than in the filmmaker possessing technical filmmaking skills. Erin Bronson, like most teachers I’ve worked with, had something to say. She had something to say because she had a clear mission as a teacher: to enlighten a group of children on various subjects, mostly along the lines of state-mandated curricula. Her fourth grade curriculum delivered a wide range of learning objectives, or “things to say,” from reasonably easy concepts to sometimes very difficult ideas. Her job, like any teacher, was to bait her students into the “trap” of knowledge. She did this by devising lesson plans and class activities around her curricular objectives. Based on my past school video experiences I encouraged Ms. Bronson to think of a lesson or curricular objective that video might enhance, perhaps even a topic that she found difficult or problematic in the past. The first thing that came to her mind was “research.” Ms. Bronson thought that if video could help her students get more interested in research and study skills so they could understand the value and relevance of these practices, it would be a great accomplishment. Research was something 4th grade kids were not typically enthusiastic about. Perhaps incorporating video into the research process would “charge up” this lesson plan for the students. Ms. Bronson reflected back on process of working videomaking into her curriculum: The kids were very excited,. They just loved the whole idea and they asked right away, “Can we do it?” … So we started listing ideas of things that we could do and things we should include and…a format of how they wanted to do it. They wanted the idea of a documentary that they would be teaching something and it would be something we could show kids year after year. The class was working on a state history unit that focused on New York’s Erie Canal. She wanted to use this unit to teach not only the topic, but also specific research and study skills: how to access information and incorporate it into a learning activity. Students would receive a research topic, then go the library to retrieve information about that topic culminating in a written report. We determined that the difference with a video project would be that the report would be written for a TV-news presentation. It would still be written on paper, but paper was no longer the ultimate destination for the words—the television screen was. As the project unfolded, Ms. Bronson also saw other curricular advantages: One thing that we need to work on is speaking skills. We need to be able to do presentation. The fact that students needed to be able to put together a project, the need to research… all these things were things we use all the time…we have some kids that obviously speak and some kids who don’t...but they were working towards that whole process and that was definitely part of our curriculum. The video project was providing a playing field for the application of many more curricular activities than Ms. Bronson had expected. Where Video Falls Short The very few failures in K-12 videomaking I have witnessed all had one circumstance in common. They were without purpose—videomaking pursued only for videomaking’s sake. This is not to say that every successful videomaking experience must be chained to deeply rational purposes and strict educational objectives. But if such experiences stray too far from the context of the learning environment, they tend to become purely recreational, self-serving and in the end not all that valuable, even to the children. There is no contest in the debate between videomaking and learning. Learning is the horse, and videomaking is the cart. The Erie Canal unit was not just any topic to Ms. Bronson. It was a topic close to her heart that she wanted the children to truly learn and enjoy, and she was not quite satisfied with the way the lesson had been going in previous school years. It was a topic in need of a dose of learning impact. She hoped video could contribute to that impact. Once all the video elements were collected, Ms. Bronson was actually quite a natural when it came to directing the final production, and her crew was fabulous as well. Part of it had to do with the fact that they had to do it, because they committed themselves to the project. None of them had ever done anything like this before, but it didn’t matter. They didn’t have their own production staff to do it for them, so they had to step up and perform in their roles and get the job done—and they did. The most important part behind the experience was that they had a learning objective that transcended their video work—they had something to say. They had a clear objective to attain, a show to produce and it was all theirs. The topic was history and it required a great deal of research and preparation in order to pull it off. They were learning their social studies curriculum and research and study skills in the context of their media production. These experience-centered lessons were sticking. Ms. Bronson later shared her perspectives on the use of videomaking in her curriculum: I think that it motivates kids a lot. I think that it gets kids to want to do more on this topic. I noticed kids when we said “OK, we’re going to study the Erie Canal,” they were like, “OK, well whatever…” And then it was, “OK we’re going to do this [video] project,” and then it was like “Oh! Well, now we have to do this because we want to be part of this project!” So they were a lot more motivated….they had to do their part. They had to then be part of the team and that was another big plus. Even though we were working in small groups, we were small teams and then we were within a bigger team. And so it was really a bonding experience, really it was really an amazing experience. So I think that then you get so many of these little extra benefits from it that it’s worth trying. It doesn’t have to be extremely sophisticated. I think that just putting on the camera…the kids are just fascinated by it. After our videomaking experience, the benefits were clear to Ms. Bronson. Ironically they had nothing to do with her fears of media, or even media in general: the benefits were all about her main objective—enlightening 4th grade students. Michael Schoonmaker is Chairman of the Television-Radio-Film Department at Syracuse University’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, and author of the book, Cameras in the Classroom: Education the Post-TV Generation. . He began his production career with MTV, then joined NBC’s Olympic production unit. He has taught television and filmmaking courses at the University for twenty years, and worked with K-12 teachers and students for the past fourteen. |
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Horse Before Cart: A Teacher’s Role in Video Production |
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Available now at The Broadcast Bookstore |
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July, 2008 |