Two weeks ago, I mentioned that I began taking my Media Specialist AQ with AML. Even though it's a lot of work, I enjoy taking AQ courses. They often help inspire me to try new things or look at existing practices with a new lens and fresh approach.
My camera roll on my phone suggested to me that the two big topics that preoccupied me this past week were creating a green screen mini-movie project with the Grade 2 students that are in the class where I'm partnering with their teacher for social studies, and taking my Stage 1-2 ESL students to the playground to reinforce the vocabulary they were learning from the prior week's lesson.
Both of these involve media environments. One is digital and one is physical, but both can be very exciting and motivating for students.
Green Screen
Another important media literacy education concept is to compare and contrast. In addition to comparing the two lessons from this week, I wanted to compare the most recent green screen experience with my last one. My thoughts? This one was completed much more quickly than the previous projects. It took us four periods over two weeks, instead of one period a week over three months. We took some short-cuts this time around. We didn't make storyboards on paper; we compiled the plans orally. I did some lessons related to Key Concept #2 (Media constructs versions of reality) and a lesson "about" rather than "through" media when I taught them how the green screen worked, by erasing the background and allowing the producer to insert one of their own. Our script was also very quickly assembled, with the teacher typing suggestions provided by the group of students. I was the one who used iMovie to stitch the visuals from DoInk with voice overs into a final product.
Why the speed? This was not meant to be the final product for this unit, so I didn't want it to "take over". I also find that students sometimes lately have trouble with persevering on long tasks.
I can't show the final result here, because the film shows the face of one of the students. I wish I was able to take photos of the "making of" process, because it was interesting, but by using just a single cell phone to compile it, I didn't have enough devices (or extra people) to create this artifact. Yes, I could have had the students do it, but many of them were involved with the filming and then the script writing. These are some of the stills we used.
Some of the following reflections and personal questions come from my Media AQ log:
It was fascinating to see the class reaction to the video. We watched it at the end of the day on Thursday. The kids were so loud that they could barely hear what was said. They squealed about seeing J (our human protagonist) on screen. They exclaimed when they saw the puppet they were responsible for manipulating. I’ll have to think more about why they reacted like that, instead of sitting transfixed to see the fruits of their labour.
I did have some questions about the final product. Could it be considered cultural appropriation? After all, when we were at IMLRS 4, we learned that there are certain Indigenous stories that are only allowed to be told at certain times of year. Since this is a creation story, is this a sacred oral text that only Indigenous people should tell? What other things can we do with this video?
Playgrounds
