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January Issue
Vol 29|No 3|January 2019
Making Movies
By Jamie McKenzie (about author) Given the widespread and easy access to video cameras on students' smart phones, schools should be taking a serious and sustained look at ways to blend the use of these tools into the learning activities of today's classrooms. Reciting a poem or producing a commercial are two examples explored in this article, but there are many more possibilities. When I began teaching in the late 1960s, video cameras made their first appearance in schools, which allowed those of us who taught social studies and English to engage students in making movies related to the curriculum. Students were thrilled, but that technology was far more clumsy than what is now available on many students' smart phones, and most schools were then lucky to have just one camera for the entire school.
RecitationTeachers have asked students to memorize and recite poems for many decades prior to the arrival of computers and smart phones, an activity that was not always greeted enthusiastically.
The smart phone's video camera allows the student to make as many performances as may be necessary to reach a level that is pleasing. This may then be submitted as the actual product, or the teacher may also insist upon a live performance, as speaking before an audience requires the capacity to set aside stage fright and engage with direct eye contact and magnetism.
CommercialsMedia literacy experts argue that students must be skilled at producing persuasive videos at the same time they know how to debunk and deconstruct those that are aimed at them. Teachers can take advantage of the video capabilities of smart phones to ask students to create 30 second spots selling a product, a candidate or an idea. Media literacy involves the capacity and the inclination to cut past the distortions and manipulation often typical of today's news, communications and entertainment media in order to build an understanding of the world that is at least partially grounded in reality. The article mentioned above provides lesson plan suggestions to develop the critical thinking skills to deconstruct media messages and search for the truth. In addition, it lists resources such as the excellent lesson plans from The Center for Media Literacy (CML) - a nonprofit educational organization that provides leadership, public education, professional development and educational resources nationally. http://www.medialit.org They offer "Five Key Questions That Can Change the World: Deconstructing Media" - Cornerstone lesson plans for K-12 across the curriculum. There are many ads available on YouTube like the Chevron ad and the Greenpeace parody of the Dove commercial below that deserve challenging and debunking. Both of these present claims worthy of fact-checking.How about the claim that the exploration for oil in the Gulf has been done without environmental incidents? How about the claim that "98% of Indonesia's lowland forest will be gone by the time Azizah is 25?" Other possibilitiesThere are many excellent Web resources for those who wish to explore other ways to incorporate the use of video into the curriculum.
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