RichardRadio

I got roped into filming The Year 9 Mini Enterprise project last week and really enjoyed it. My experience with taking and editing digital video is limited to little clips taken on my stills camera, but my experience with podcasting, both on this site (its been a while I know) and in schools stood me in good stead. Plus from Adam Curry to the Twits I’ve listened to a lot of grass roots media in the last 2 years.

So rather than just take some panoramas of the Hall I went round and talked to everyone thrusting a camera in their faces and tried to get the low down on Mini Enterprise, which I didn’t know anything about. Basically pupils are given a stall in the hall or on the field and have to make money by selling things to other students, teachers and parents (although not many parents came). Most were really good at talking about their businesses and the problems they had faced.

Some of the video was shown straight from the camera onto the projector in the hall at the end of the day and the kids were really exited about seeing themselves starring on the big screen.

The best type of editing is done at the time with the record button and I was happy with how well the raw video hung together. I was in Robert Scoble mode I just wanted to compress it and dump it on the network (eg. here) but you just can’t do that in schools. Anyway expectations were escalating after the preview in the assembly, so I thought I would try editing to give the film some idea of start and concentrate some clips showing the different kinds of things the kids were getting up to at the begining before getting into the meatier conversations.

The only firewire cables in the school are nailed to the desks next to the G5 Macs which probably isn’t a bad idea, but I’m not a mac man and I had to get up to speed with iMovie. The only time I get to see apple applications is on Steve Jobs keynotes, and I;ve always wanted to have a go with the iLife suite, but frankly, its not as easy to get going with iMovie as it is with Movie maker. I found it all a bit slow too.

Anyway a couple of sessions later (long sessions) I had my first cut to take home on DVD (used iDVD) and show my flat mates. They actually watched it from begining to end. I took their comments on board and produced version 2 which at 38 minutes long took well over an hour to encode and burn.

The question now is what to do with the final video, Burning DVDs can save a lot of privacy problems associated with publishing images of kids online, and I’m new to teaching and to the school, we need to work through all the issues. But as a brainstorming exercise I wanted to list the potential collaborations that could come from sharing it (in current format or in smaller bits) on the network.

1. During the holidays, Y9 students could write online comments on individual busineses, how they presented themselves and how they understood the issues.

2. Y8 children could also see what happened and start thinking about ideas for next year.

3. Parents could comment and maybe offer suggestions and future collaborations eg. I run a business and I can offer X help next year or I would like to offer work experience placements to Y number of children next year. I believe that this type of communication is more likely to happen (and for the school to reply) if they watch it online and have a comment box to type in rather than if they watching in the living room and send a message later.

4. The whole of the school will be talking about the best “performances” DVD distribution will mean less people get chance to see it. They can send friends links to the best bits.

5. Other schools can assess their Mini Enterprise experiences with our school’s, and maybe get in touch to collaborate eg. by pairing up groups to provide consulatancy advice to each other.

The kids broke up yesterday but some had to come in for catch up sessions in various subjects today. Interestingly only the ICT labs were used.

A number of ICT Students came in but their main teachers could not attend (training). I printed out their assessment sheets and negotiated a To Do list with them (making sure it had a date AND time on it). I thought that it would be good to have a hard copy on the desk as various teachers from various subjects were coming to supervise at different times.

Naturally these are catch up kids and there was some reluctance about them being at school when others are at home, without their To Do list they would slip away at the first lapse in concentration.

However my experience was generally positive. I was able to give substantial amounts of one to one time mainly to check that they knew the structure of the project, and what they had to do.  Once they knew this and realised they had support all the problems that they have had over the year seemed to unravel.  The room was full of independent learners working to their own deadlines.

On a technology note, why can’t kids write their to do lists on a blog so everyone can see it (and expect it to be there) even if it’s just inside the firewall. These kids were actually working on ePortfolios, so the blog could link directly to the ePortfolio or the draft work done that day.

Update:

On my way home I remembered a podcast that I heard from Terry Freeman that was on a similar theme. Well worth a listen (it’s quite short). The podcast features a (fictional?) 14 year old girl called Kirsty who talks us through her school day in 2010.

Future Gazing Part 1: The Podcast

Because of course I’ve been worrying about scaling up from the 45% timetable of teacher training to the 90% timetable of the NQT. With most teachers using manual paper based planning and reporting systems that means more of what I call sausage machine education. Dismal. More work requires more effort. And yet the child still feels like just another piece of meat passing through the sausage factory.

Digital age economics are not like that. And thats what we need to be using. Thats what spurs me on.

What with finishing the second PGCE placement (April and May) then rushing back to Uni to finish the last 2 assignments (Early June) and drinking and partying (late June) plus a little trip to Copenhagen (very nice) I hint that I haven’t had time to blog.

But frankly I intended to start blogging again after I handed in the last assignment, but I couldn’t get back into that mind set. The course was so all consuming, there was just this vacuum left after finishing. Don’t get me wrong it was nice to relax and catch up with some old friends, but I’ve felt empty. I’m glad that my new school allowed/wanted me to start work before the UK summer holidays (starting around July 23). I needed the kick back into action. These last 2 days I’ve been catching up on reading some of my favourite blogs and getting some new Podcasts – getting back into the space I was in last year before starting the PGCE and I feel better for it.

Partly it is returning to my routine of reading, thinking and forcing myself to write. But the confidence of the blogosphere is infectious, it’s a place where things are possible and the future is yet to happen, there is a journey ahead (away from sausage factory education – more later)