As I’ve disclosed in my last post, I have a Communication Production Technology class that consists of students who really don’t want to be in school. They remind me of the Welcome Back Kotter class. Now, they’re not bad or anything like that it’s just that school isn’t their thing. Pete Reilly talks about a similar class that he had when he was teaching. These students find school to be more like a prison than a place that offers them opportunity.
Now, the class I teach really has a very open curricula which allows for some very interesting opportunities with technology. Specifically there is the opportunity to do different things with audio and video. This semester we are focusing on video with added audio. We began by doing some examination of audio programs, specifically we examined the various sound effects that were part of War of the Worlds and how tension, atmosphere and mood were created using voice and other sound effects. This went okay. I then had them do something similar with a reading or they could do a newsreport of their own. We brainstormed how this might work and we went over the process – plan, storyboard, script, material (sound effects) gathering, reading and editing. They were then given time. This is where the wheels come off the cart. It was much conjoling on my part to get anything done. The final products were done at the last moment with two of them being very late.
We’ve moved on to video in the meantime. We have watched a few really bad 80’s music videos and compared them to what is produced today. I had them find the videos we watched so we could compare them to the 80’s videos. We discussed the reasons for the improvement in quality – digital equipment, sound recording, computer effects and editing. They then did some reading on the effects of YouTube and had a written assignment. We are at the stage where we are doing some practice taping and then will be adding audio to the shots to practice the meshing of the two formats. They have ideas for their still-life that they are tape to practice various camera shots. Still like pulling teeth on a charging rhino.
We are working up to their doing a documentary on a topic that they have a passion about. I am going to show a brief documentary type video from YouTube, brainstorm ideas that they can do. We’ve been through the video pre-production and production process and will go over it again. I hoping that something will spark their interest and they’ll get away from listening to music and watching trailers.
These are the students that see no use in school. They feel no one is listening to them. I was hoping that this would be something that they would get into. Instead, they just want to watch trailers or videos and listen to music. They’ve fully embraced apathy. Now, maybe with another teacher, this might be different. As principal, I’ve seen all these students in my office for various reasons. Maybe that’s it. Maybe they see me as the disciplinarian and can’t get past that. I’m really not sure. Any ideas?
