Giving myself room to learn…and my film-making debut

I’m a proud proponent of technology integration in schools and I’ll happily talk about it til the cows come home if you let me. I’ve got all sorts of ideas about the opportunities for deeper learning afforded by many social media like blogs, Twitter, Skype, and wikis, to name a few. I could go on and on. But there’s one area where I feel like a total fraud…

I’ve always talked about wanting to make movies and digital storytelling projects with my students, but never had the chance to given resources in the buildings where I’ve worked. I secretly let out sighs of relief after learning this fact. Shame on me.

Even in my personal life I’ve limited myself to snapping photos here and there and taking videos on my digital camera. The videos have just ended up on my Flickr in their entirety. The idea of editing and piecing together something more cohesive just seemed beyond me and difficult.

But I’m happy to say that I have never been more wrong about something.

I’m doing work again for Powerful Learning Practice in a Program Administrator role. This is a great job because it allows me to work while collaborating with teachers around the world and I get to attend webinars with thought leaders around the convergence of education and technology. I’m there to work, but I always walk away with a renewed sense of inspiration about my practice as a teacher.

Such was the case last week. I helped moderate a session with teachers from Texas. Dean Shareski was presenting on video techniques in the classroom. He asked participants to take a video of themselves using the built-in cameras on their computers or devices they had with them and to upload those videos, each around 10 seconds, to his Flickr. In less than 10 minutes a page in Dean’s Flickr was populated with videos of teachers around Texas trying their hand at video making. Dean then took all the videos and edited them into a short.

After seeing the ease with which me and the other teachers learning in this session were able to tell short stories about ourselves in video, I was ready to try it on my own. I was inspired.

Dean shared a video he made using the 5 x 5 format, which involves telling your day in five, five-second video increments. It’s fun and gives people a taste of life in your shoes. I decided to try something similar using a terribly old camera – a point-and-shoot Canon Powershot that is around six years old. The camera records video in a fuzzy fashion, but it’s what I had at the moment.

Throughout the day I recorded snippets of my life here and there. I’d get the camera running, set it down, and record. I captured much more than five second increments and I knew I would have to edit the video to create a more clear story. I sat down with my memory card and proceeded to upload the videos from my camera into iMovie on my Macbook (it took a while for my computer to load each video even though they were quite short).

Once I had all the video clips in iMovie, I set about playing with the program. I’ve never even opened this program before this project. I learned how to play each video, right clicked around to see a drop-down menu of options, hovered my mouse over different buttons to get informational text (maybe this should have been a screencast…another thing on my list to try). As Sheryl Nussbaum-Beach often tells educators participating in PLP, we learn through playing and we need to give students and ourselves time to do that. Rather than get frustrated with not knowing the program right away or seeking out tutorials online, I just let myself goof around for a while.

Eventually I figured out how to edit a part of each clip (click until a yellow box appears and drag each side of the yellow box to the part of the video you want to clip). I selected five-second portions from each video and dragged them into the project window. I played it over and over as I added and edited, making little adjustments here and there.

Once I was satisfied with the clips (there were about 12), I needed to add some transitions. This couldn’t be any easier. You just drag a transition of your choice in between the clips where you want a transition and that’s it. You can make the transitions longer or shorter if you want, but I stuck with the default of .4 seconds. The last thing I needed to do was add a frame at the beginning and end of the video to give some information. I dragged a title screen to the beginning and one at the end, choosing a black background and adding my text.

Export the video and it’s ready to upload wherever. Not including the time I spent recording here and there during the day before, this whole project took me an hour – and that was without any experience in iMovie.

My point in writing this post isn’t to paint myself as some sort of tech savant able to catch on quickly – I’m not. My point is to show teachers that you don’t need to wait for someone to show you how to do these things. You don’t need a long in-service with tutorials. Just give yourself a small chunk of time to play around with a new technology. These days user interfaces have never been easier and more intuitive – you practically have to try to screw some of these things up. Hey, but if you do screw it up, learn from that failure and try again. And you don’t need to be an expert to know how to use these tools with your students. You’re an expert in teaching. Make sure your students know what you expect from them and decide what tools might help them achieve that and then let them loose. Allow them time to play, don’t stand in front of the room making everyone try each and every tool together. Be there to help and let students that have figured it out help the ones a little farther behind. It will be messy. No doubt about that. But you and your students will come out on the other side with highly transferrable skills and techniques to demonstrate learning. Plus, it will be fun. I promise.

And without further ado, I give to you A Quiet Day filmed in my still-very-new home of Breda in The Netherlands…

A Quiet Day from pickledtreats on Vimeo.

What to do with all this time?

Since completing my teaching assignment with Green Run High School in Virginia Beach in June, I’ve made another big change. I now live in The Netherlands. As romantic as it all sounds, leaving your home country for a new one is complicated in ways that defy explanation. Paperwork and regulations, many of them in a language not your own, compound the complexity. Needless to say, I haven’t been able to just step foot onto Dutch soil and walk into a teaching job.

So what is there to do with all of this time and mental freedom? My biggest fear is that I will squander the time and look back with regret. Fear of regret may be my biggest fear right now. In response I am cultivating a plan for my own year-long professional development program. I say a year because, while I may have a chance to substitute teach, I most likely won’t get a real stab at teaching again until next year when school starts again.

Rather than look longingly at tweets from some of the teachers I follow about their new lessons and successes in the classroom, I’m going to draw inspiration from them, and the many other blogs and books I read, to fuel my teaching career. I plan to comment on blogs and join the discussions, to not just read but reflect and analyze and reflect again. Bookmark the great stuff. I’m going to try my hand at podcasting and video blogging. I’ve started a blog about my expat experience and am looking into freelance writing opportunities I might otherwise pass on if I was teaching. A year off doesn’t have to be a dip in your CV – it can be an opportunity.

While I spend a lot of time scouring my general education and English education Twitter lists for thought-provoking links and ideas, I’m trying to branch out. Because, let’s face it – I have the time. I started by checking out this TED Talk from Sir Ken Robinson recorded in 2006.

If you’re not familiar with TED Talks, you’re missing out on high-quality inspiration and mind expansion. TED is a network of conferences running under the slogan “ideas worth spreading.” They’re short, sweet, and powerful. Speaking of teachers I follow on Twitter, Meredith Stewart discussed the many ways TED Talks can be used in the English classroom and offers some specific talks and ideas for lessons on her blog.

Robinson is inspirational and funny despite the jarring message that schools are killing the inherent creativity of children – that by the very nature and structure of schools we are snuffing out much of the creativity upon which our future depends. I was very fortunate as a child to experience the Montessori school method for preschool and kindergarten. While getting more distant by the day, my memories of those years are quite fond. Learning to hold a baby by playing with a doll. Practicing pouring from a pitcher. Learning multiplication with big blocks covered in gold pearls. Feeding the hamsters. Painting on the sun porch and hanging the tempera image on the window for drying and display. And the best part – having my own choice in what I wanted to learn or practice that day.

Who says we can’t do those things with our high school students? Why are choice and freedom talked about as important to students, but never actually implemented? Is it because we can’t seem to reconcile our need to “control” students with our knowledge, deep-down, that they need freedom and ownership more than anything else? And what is the source of that need to control students?

You can follow me on Twitter @pickledtreats.