Resources Galore!

The annual Scottish Learning Festival takes place next week (21st and 22nd September) at the SECC in Glasgow, and for any teachers  fortunate enough to be able to attend I would recommend a visit to the Into Film stand G25 in the Exhibition Hall, where they will be showcasing their new ‘Scotland on Film‘ teaching resource. With links to Curriculum for Excellence, the resource is  designed to help educators and young people  explore Scotland through film, focusing specifically on the two central themes of Language and Identity.

‘Scotland on Film’ is an engaging, curriculum-linked teaching resource for educators working with 7-18 year-olds, comprising downloadable teachers’ notes and a PowerPoint presentation with embedded film clips. As well as supporting teachers in engaging with film as a core learning tool, the resource is designed to celebrate Scotland and the rich contribution it has made to film. The activities focus specifically on two central themes: Language and Identity. From classic cinema through to modern day representations of Scotland on film, the resource touches on history, myth, and culture.  It also uses film with accompanying Scots language texts, encouraging students to explore the language in historical and modern contexts. The sections on identity cover many aspects of what it can mean to be Scottish, from personal identity to rural and city living.

“Film is an important text within the English curriculum and we seek to utilise it at every opportunity. It also serves to provide a supporting context for other avenues of study; such as novels, functional writing and stimulus for creative writing.”  Michael Daly, John Paul Academy, Glasgow

Created in partnership with Education Scotland, The Scottish Book Trust, LGBT Youth (Scotland) and Arpeggio Pictures, ‘Scotland on Film’ encourages and supports teachers to use film as a core way of teaching the curriculum. Films featured include Fantastic Mr Fox (PG), Water Horse: Legend of the Deep (PG), Sunset Song (15) and short film Take Your Partners, while activities range from discussing what films made in Scotland tell us about Scotland, through exploring ‘book-to-film’ adaptations, to poetry writing and simple filmmaking.

“It has been fantastic working together with Into Film on this new resource. An essential element of my work for Education Scotland promoting Scots Language is the development of new materials that not only show the vast vocabulary and interesting linguistic history of the language, but also to create modern and vibrant ways for Scots to be explored within the learning settings of today.”   Bruce Eunson, Education Scotland

As part of its UK-wide programme to place film at the heart of young people’s learning, Into Film, an organisation supported by the BFI through lottery funding, will also be showcasing the benefits of its school film clubs, which provide  free access to thousands of films and related resources.  Visitors to the stand will have the opportunity to set up a club on the spot with help from Into Film staff, pose queries about existing clubs, sign up for the charity’s free ‘Teaching Literacy Through Film’ online course (created in partnership with the BFI), and get a sneak preview of its newest curriculum-linked resources.

Those who are unable to attend the Festival in person can listen to the keynote presentations live online at the following times. Check the SLF website for more details.

Wednesday 21 September, 10.30 – 12 noon, Opening keynote address, John Swinney MSP, Deputy First Minister and Cabinet Secretary for Education and Skills.

Wednesday 21 September, 12.30 – 13.30, Fixing the past or inventing the future, Dr Yong Zhao, Presidential Chair and Director of the Institute for Global and Online Education in the College of Education, University of Oregon.

Wednesday 21 September, 14.00 – 15.00, Leading with evidence for educational improvement, Dr Carol Campbell, Associate Professor, Ontario Institute of Education, University of Toronto.

Thursday 22 September, 14.30 – 15.30, Taking on the impossible, Mark Beaumont, TV presenter and broadcaster, record-breaking round the world cyclist and ultra-endurance adventurer.

The keynotes will also be available to watch online retrospectively.

Found In Translation

One of the highlights of last week’s Scottish Film and Learning Festival was Rob Smith’s presentation ‘Using Film in the Classroom‘, which you can hear (though unfortunately not see) on the Radio EduTalk website by clicking here, and I would suggest that one of the reasons Rob’s workshops and Literacy Shed website are so popular, is that he is thoroughly convincing when he argues that using film in the classroom is the key to unlocking creativity, especially when it comes to the quality of children’s writing. And that is the point. Reading or watching film is often seen as an alternative to using printed texts, which leads to a polarised debate about the relative merits of films and books. ‘Books allow you to use your own imagination, while in a film the director has done all the work for you’, the argument goes, ‘and surely the only way to improve writing skills is by studying WRITTEN texts?’

If you listen to Rob, you will discover the fallacy of both statements, and if you accept that using books and using film in the classroom are not mutually exclusive, you will have made the problem disappear. Keep in mind also that there are many ways to create texts, and the written word is only one of them. Which is why one of my Ten Tools For Reading Film is the grandly titled ‘Generic Translation’, an approach which allows teachers and students to experiment with media and come to understand the possibilities each of them presents. Take this example of a short animation, based on the Charles Bukowski poem ‘The Man With The Beautiful Eyes’. What better way to develop an understanding of metaphor than by studying the printed text and the animation side-by-side.

You will find more detailed suggestions on how to use this film in the classroom, as well as many others, at the Moving Image Education website by clicking here.

To listen to more talks from the Scottish Film and Learning Festival see previous post.

A Feast of Film

Introducing the first Scottish Film and Learning Festival

You know that feeling you get when you have been planning a big event for the past few months and suddenly it’s over? That’s how I’m feeling today, after a truly fantastic day at the first Scottish Film and Learning Festival in Glasgow on Saturday. The area around George Square really did have a festival feeling, as the Great Scottish (Children’s) Run was also in town, but not even the samba band immediately outside one of the conference venue’s seminar rooms could dampen the enthusiasm inside. For those of you who were not able to attend this time, here is the complete list of presenters and presentations. If you click on the title of the presentation it will take you to some further information or resources related to the speaker and/or the presentation topic. A big thank you to John Johnstone from Radio EduTalk who came along and captured some of the presentations, which you can hear by going to the EduTalk website.

John Murray – Reading Explorers

Jo Hall – BBC L.A.B.

Sarah Wright – The Show-Stopping Toolkit

Rob Smith – Using Film in the Classroom

Mark Reid – Cinematheque Francaise and Understanding Cinema

Tim Flood – Draw What You See

Jonathan Charles – Using Storyboards to Develop Visual Literacy

Claire Docherty – Using the Scottish Film Archive in the Classroom

Bill Boyd – Ten Tools for Reading Film

Sarah Derrick – Discovery Film Festival DCA

Athole McLauchlan – Film Studies in Social Studies

David Griffith – From Shots to Sentences

Barbara Hill and Gordon Brown – SQA and the Scottish Survey of Literacy and Numeracy

Jo Spence – Into Film Programme for Schools

Craig Steele – Movie Mashup

Jennifer Jones – Commonwealth Digital Project

Glow Scotland – Using Glow to Enhance Visual Literacy

Bruce Eunson – Film and the Scots Language

Using Film Boosts Literacy Development

Scottish Film and Literacy Festival

Click on the image for more details of the festival programme.

Just as I am making final preparations for next week’s inaugural Scottish Film and Literacy Festival, brought to you in conjunction with Rob Smith of The Literacy Shed and Scottish Film Education, another independent report appears to show that the use of film in education can significantly increase young people’s attainment as well as engaging reluctant learners.

A team of film educators spent the last academic year working with teachers in Leeds to show how film can be used to improve attainment and progress in reading and writing. Leeds Partnership Project: Improving Literacy Through Film (2014/15) recorded a number of improvements in pupils who were regularly engaged in film watching and filmmaking, including:

96% improvement in average points’ progress in reading
60% improvement in average points’ progress in writing
75% improvement in attitude to learning

The report tallies with the education charity Into Film’s own findings, in which 96% of teachers using film in class said it increases pupils’ levels of engagement, 74% said it improves their critical thinking skills and 70% said it boosts literacy.

“We’ve used film clips previously to support subject teaching but not to meet specific objectives; the CPD has enabled us to use film to develop language and comprehension. Our SATs results this year were great: both progress and attainment in reading and writing have improved compared with last year which we feel has been largely as a result of integrating the Into Film strategies into our teaching.”

Roxy Prust, Park View Primary School, Leeds

Although the report focused on the use of film within the English and Literacy curriculum, participants were encouraged to think about using film in other curriculum areas and subjects. It also demonstrated that, while teachers were generally enthusiastic about using film in the classroom, they were often unaware of where to find the best resources.

It is a fortunate coincidence therefore that the report comes as Into Film launches a number of topical new resources to help teachers use the accessible and immersive medium of film to support the curriculum.

19th Century Novels on Film. Created in partnership with NATE, using A Christmas Carol as an example and offering a range of generic approaches which can be applied to all 19th Century Novels.
Macbeth–Power Players. English Language and Literature resource marking the release of STUDIOCANAL’s new film adaptation of Macbeth, with five activities themed around the film to encourage GCSE students to respond to the text critically and imaginatively.
Malala Youth Voice. A programme of resources inspired by the release of Fox Searchlight’s upcoming documentary film He Named Me Malala, designed in collaboration with National Schools Partnership to enable young people to develop their own confidence, public speaking and campaigning skills.
Suffragette – Social Changers. A resource supporting citizenship, history and politics, focussing on Votes for Women and using upcoming film Suffragette as a springboard.
Anti-Bullying on Film.  Created in partnership with the Anti-Bullying Alliance, using films including Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Cinderella, About a Boy and The Color Purple to start discussions about bullying and related issues.

Into Film will be featured at the Scottish Film and Learning Festival. It is an education charity that seeks to put film at the heart of children and young people’s learning and cultural experience. Supported by the BFI (British Film Institute) together with funding from the film industry and a number of other sources, it has recently announced its latest programme of free educator training sessions in film literacy, and has opened bookings for the Into Film Festival 2015, which returns for a second year from November 4-20 with its UK-wide programme of free screenings, workshops and teaching resources for 5-19 year-olds. Into Film Clubs, providing access to over 4000 classic and popular films, are available free to all state funded schools and colleges.

See also:

Time To Get Into Film

Film Shorts as Literacy Texts

Ten Tools For Reading Film

Time To Get Into Film

See. Think. Make. Imagine.

It may be too late for Christmas, but one of the best professional development offers for teachers in the UK at the moment comes absolutely free, and it will still be available in the New Year. Into Film‘s recently expanded catalogue of teacher training covers all ages and stages, from nursery education to media studies, from beginners to seasoned film critics. I have written often on the blog about the potential of film (and specifically short films) to impact on literacy development in young people, and how, very often, it is only the teacher’s fear of what they regard as a lack of specialist subject knowledge that holds them back from using it more often. Now the solution is to hand.

Intofilm-cpd-brochure-v2 (1)

“Film is a powerful tool to engage young people, capture their imaginations and bring the written word to life. Our programme places film at the heart of education to engage and challenge students and bring texts to life. Our training demonstrates the benefits of using film as text to develop learners’ critical thinking, analytical and contextualisation skills. These skills are equally applicable to and transferable between film and literary texts. As film is both visual and auditory, learners develop skills of description, deduction and inference, as well as the ability to decode texts and translate images and sound into words.”

Into Film website

Recently I spent a couple of days working with fellow Into Film CPD providers on the new resources at the London Connected Learning Centre in Lambeth, and I have to say I came away truly inspired. Whether you are looking to use practical filmmaking to develop creative skills, to deliver aspects of the curriculum through the medium of film, or to develop a better understanding of the language and grammar of film itself, there really is something here for everyone.

 “The CPD session last month was extremely beneficial to me from both a teaching and learning perspective. I have already started implementing some of the videos into my own teaching practice…It genuinely was one of the most useful and practical courses I have been on for a very long time.”

Daniel Cooper, Assistant Head, Ysgol Park Waundew

*Accessing the Into Film CPD is very simple. Generally speaking there should be a minimum of 15 trainees in a group, though exceptions can be made for those in small schools or more rural areas. Senior Leadership Teams, Heads of Department, Youth and Community group leaders, library staff, and local authorities can book free bespoke training events, with sessions ranging in length from 30 minutes to a full day. Literacy CPD and Filmmaking CPD strands may be delivered separately or as a complete package, and an Into Film CPD Practitioner will work with your event organiser to customise a session or sessions which are appropriate to the immediate needs of the group.If you are an individual teacher who would like to attend Into Film CPD training, but are unable to convince enough of your colleagues at this stage, you should visit http://www.intofilm.org/cpd-events where you will find a growing number of centrally-organised events taking place across the UK.

Why Not Start A Film Club?

Into Film will also support teachers who want to set up and run film clubs in their own schools. To ensure that children and young people get the best educational and social experience from their clubs, Into Film also provide film club leaders with comprehensive training and support. Leaders are introduced to Into Film’s expertly curated film catalogue, then given advice and support on programming films which are appropriate for audience and purpose. Additional advice and resources are available should schools wish to develop filmmaking as part of their offering to young learners.

*If you are in the South or South-West of Scotland, and wish to have free Film Literacy training in your school or local authority, please feel free to contact me directly. Contact details can be found at the top of the blog under ‘About’ or use the Comments section of this blogpost and I will contact you.

Related Posts:-

Film Shorts as Literacy Texts

Literacy, Film and the Scottish Survey

Ten Tools For Reading Film

Assessing The Past, Predicting The Future #edcmooc

This is the final week of the E-Learning and Digital Cultures MOOC, so it is a time to look back and to look forward. What have I learned over the past five weeks, not only about the topic, but about the nature of the MOOC itself, and are MOOCs the way forward for education, or simply the latest fad? First, the reflection. I have really enjoyed engaging with the course materials and with the other course participants, through the discussion forums, Twitter conversations, Google Hangouts and other channels, but then I have become used to this way of learning over the past five or six years, so I was reasonably comfortable with it from the start. It could also be said that since I am no longer looking for full-time employment I have no more need for paper qualifications, and therefore my approach to the course, and to learning in general, has changed.

However, it would be easy to infer from all of the above that because of the very nature of the MOOC – free entry, high dropout rate, no formal qualification – that it is more ‘casual’ than traditional college or university courses. Not a bit of it. The course is highly-structured, deadlines are quite rigid, materials are well chosen and challenging, and tutor support is of the highest order. The standard of teaching is of a very high quality, at least on this MOOC, but unlike that in many conventional settings, it is highly focused and responsive to the needs of individual learners; feedback is more or less instant. There are no group lectures, but an introductory video to each block of study sets out clearly the themes and expectations for the week ahead. Whether these things are true of all MOOCs I have no idea, but for two very different takes on online learning I would recommend that you read this article, All Hail MOOCs. Just Don’t Ask If They actually Work, from Time magazine September 2013, and this post from the Learning with ‘e’s blog, The persistence of distance(learning) by Steve Wheeler.

“But what about assessment?”, I hear you ask, because while the internet has opened up the possibility of learning in all sorts of new ways, assessment still dominates much of our thinking and much of our conversation when it comes to education. Bear in mind that the course is only five weeks long, with a recommended study time of 5-7 hours per week, but since you asked, to ‘complete the course’ we have to submit a ‘digital artefact’ and evaluate the work of at least three other participants in the course, using agreed criteria – real peer assessment in action! The following notes are from the course guidance on the final assignment.

What do you mean by digital artefact?
We mean something that is designed to be experienced on and through the medium of the web. It will have the following characteristics:

• it will contain a mixture of two or more of: text, image, sound, video, links.
• it will be easy to access and view online.
• it will be stable enough to be assessed for at least two weeks.

Try to have fun with this and use it as a chance to think broadly and creatively: anything goes in terms of the form of this assignment. As long as you keep the assessment criteria in mind you can be as experimental as you wish.

(Have FUN with this assessment? Doesn’t sound like an exam to me.)

Why do you want me to make a digital artefact?
Text is the dominant mode of expressing academic knowledge, but digital environments are multimodal by nature – they contain a mixture of text, images, sound, hyperlinks and so on. To express ourselves well on the web, we need to be able to communicate in ways that are ‘born digital’ – that work with, not against, the possibilities of the medium. This can be challenging when what we want to communicate is complex, especially for those who are used to more traditional forms of academic writing. Nevertheless, there are fantastic possibilities in digital environments for rethinking what it means to make an academic argument, to express understanding of complex concepts, and to interpret and evaluate digital work. In EDCMOOC, we have an opportunity to explore and experiment in a supportive and relatively low-stakes context. That’s why we want you to make an assignment that makes the most of the web – a digital artefact.

What topic should I choose?
There is a lot of flexibility in this assignment. You can choose to focus on the theme of ‘utopias and dystopias’, or on the theme of ‘being human’. You should use your artefact to express a question, an idea, a problem, a hope, a worry or a provocation that the course has raised for you. Consider how you can express something of your own context as an educator, student and/or technologist. What has the impact of this course been on your understanding of e- learning?

Actually, I am proposing to submit this series of blogposts as my digital artefact, but just for a bit of fun, I thought I would also try creating a short video clip which reflects a couple of the themes of the past month or so. The clip was created in iMovie, using the Trailer feature which allows you to choose which genre of film you are going to release (and makes things easier for beginners like me). It is also a very useful tool in the classroom if you are introducing young people to filmmaking, Thanks to a fortuitous tweet from one of my PLN, Kenny Pieper, I found these great templates for Planning a Better iMovie Trailer, which means you can spend some time working out what text to include – a good exercise in précis, since the more words you include the harder it is to read – and select your images in an appropriate sequence.

The images I used are from the Creative Commons, except the first three, which appear courtesy of my friends at Dreaming Methods and Inanimate Alice. The little running man was filmed on my phone at a street crossing in Girona, simply because it made me smile. I cropped it in iMovie itself using the cropping tool before inserting into the clip. The reason for creating the trailer was to encourage me to learn something about iMovie, which I had never used, and to express one or two of the course themes in a short timeframe.

One of these was what seemed to be the view of many technological determinists, that increasing technological advances will inevitably lead to a dystopian future, and the other was the fascinating idea that our use of metaphor tends to shape as well as reflect our view of the world. The green man on the ‘information highway’ is a very simple metaphor for the feeling that many people have when trying to navigate the world wide web – that they are in a very busy and potentially dangerous place – and he may also represent those ‘eco-warriors’ amongst us who are concerned that advances in technology are not made at the expense of the sustainability of the planet. I hope you find it interesting and amusing, and please feel free to evaluate it using the agreed criteria below.

Assessment criteria

These are the elements peer markers will be asked to consider as they engage with your artefact. You should make sure you know how your work will be judged by reading these criteria carefully before you begin.

1. The artefact addresses one or more themes clearly relevant to the course
2. The artefact demonstrates an understanding of one or more key concept from the course
3. The artefact has something to say about education
4. The choice of media is appropriate for the message
5. The artefact stimulates a reaction in you, as its audience, e.g. emotion, thinking, action

So what of the future of MOOCs themselves? What I liked about taking part in the MOOC was the collaborative aspect of the learning – the sharing of ideas, the conversations around the key topics, and to some extent the random nature of some of the interactions. We were advised from the start that it would be impossible to contribute to every forum, to respond to every text, and to keep track of everything which was going on. This is an aspect of MOOCs which I imagine many people will find difficult. Similarly, if everything is conducted online, you could argue that the ‘human element’ is lost, and that there is no substitute for meeting people face-to-face, but one of the advantages of MOOCs is that they bring together (virtually) people from all over the world. The fact that the MOOC is free is important, allowing access to people regardless of their means, but what I find particularly appealing is this key message – when the focus of education is on the taking part, everyone’s a winner.

Comic Genius. Not Just for Kids.

An enduring superhero makes the transition from page to screen.

As we enter another festive season, books remain one of the most popular of Christmas gifts, but in the age of digital, with its ever-increasing choice and variety of reading formats, there is one statistic which may come as a surprise to many. Nearly one in four adult comic readers is 65 years of age or older, according to a report from US media analysts Simba Information. One of the leading authorities on market intelligence and forecasts in the media and publishing industry, the company believes that the market for comics has been driven by a series of successful film adaptations in recent years, most notably Warner Bros.’ The Dark Knight, which stands as one of the highest-grossing films of all time. Yet, as Overview of the U.S. Comic Book and Graphic Novel Market 2009-2010 clearly shows, the industry remains misunderstood at best.

“Despite notable efforts from many in the industry, comics and graphic novels continue to be repeatedly mislabeled as just another children’s book category,” said Warren Pawlowski, online publishing manager for Simba Information and an analyst within the company’s Trade Books Group. “With nearly a quarter of the comic reading audience beyond the age of retirement, there is a misconception that needs to be corrected.”

The report, which delves deeper into the persona of the modern-day comic reader, with detailed demographic comparisons to book buyers and the general population, also provides bestseller analysis of the three major segments within the comic industry—comic books, graphic novels and manga—featuring multiple listings of the top titles and publishers by both title output and total dollar sales, as well as sales forecasts for the coming year. Until the last few years, the comics industry, particularly the graphic novel segment, has been a market largely untapped by traditional book publishers. However, a growing number have come to embrace it, with both publishers and retailers realising the numerous and significant opportunities offered by this diverse market.

A landmark work. Joe Sacco’s The Great War.

Sure to be top of many ‘best books’ lists for 2013, especially as thoughts turn towards the 100th anniversary of the beginning of World War I next year, is the latest work of art and possible magnum opus from the American journalist and comics writer Joe Sacco. In an extraordinary, 24-foot-long wordless panorama, The Great War depicts the events of a single day – the launch of the Battle of the Somme on 1st July, 1916. It is a day which has come to epitomise the madness of the First World War. Almost 20,000 British soldiers were killed and another 40,000 were wounded that first day, and there were more than one million casualties by the time the offensive halted a few months later. From the riding exercises of General Douglas Haig to the massive artillery positions and marshalling areas behind the trench lines, to the legions of British soldiers going ‘over the top’ and being cut down in No-Man’s-Land, to the tens of thousands of wounded soldiers retreating and the dead being buried en masse, The Great War is a landmark work in Sacco’s illustrious career, and ‘makes visceral one of the bloodiest days in history.’

“The Great War seems to work in slow motion. The reader’s eye doesn’t dart quickly over the pages, pulled along by a sense of narrative; rather, we are invited to look closely at every inch of every page, and it’s only in this intense inspection that the horror hits. Over there, an officer quietly vomits. Over here, a horse is put out of its misery. And in this corner, a soldier twists on a stretcher, his arms thrown out in front of him as if he wants nothing more than to embrace death. Most of the time there are so many men in Sacco’s trenches – at the Somme, soldiers were forced to spend the night before the beginning of the offensive on their feet – that all we can see from our position behind the lines are the massed ranks of their helmets, piled and gently curved as if they were just counters in a particularly heinous form of tiddlywinks. So when a face or a gesture is visible, you’re pulled up, caught out, remembrance suddenly sour and fierce rather than merely mournful.”

Rachel Cooke, The Observer, Sunday 8 September 2013

Click here to see my full list of recommended picture books, comics and graphic novels for all ages.

See also:

The 13 Best Children’s, Illustrated and Picture Books of 2013

Related Posts:

Getting Serious with Comics

The Wonderful World of Comics

Understanding Comics

Lighting a Spark for Reading

I was quite impressed with this advert for the Kindle Reader from Amazon when it appeared during prime-time TV on Saturday night. It features a number of children extolling the virtues of reading, and seems to send out a very positive message to other kids. Even this sceptical viewer was feeling quite uplifted, especially as it appeared during the commercial break in one of our most popular television talent shows, a spectacle which often reminds me of the classic Groucho Marx quote: “I find television very educating. Whenever somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”

Predictably, it wasn’t long before the advert, rather than the show, was the subject of a conversation on Twitter, where one perceptive viewer/tweeter was quick to point out that it appeared to reinforce the commonly-held view that girls read and boys………well……..usually don’t. I must admit that I hadn’t noticed this on first viewing so I went back to check. What I discovered was that there are two versions of the advert, one for the UK and another for the US market, and while in the US version, there is more or less an equal number of boys and girls, in the UK version girls outnumber boys by approximately two to one. This in itself raises a number of interesting questions.

Are Amazon aware of differences in reading habits, or was the difference in the adverts purely accidental?

Is the perception (or indeed the reality) that girls read and boys don’t, only a British thing?

Are there real differences between reading habits in the USA and the UK?

Are the adverts themselves likely to reinforce  or challenge the stereotypes around reading?

Is reading on a mobile device more likely to appeal to boys rather than girls?

What are the likely long-term implications – for readers and teachers – of reading from screens instead of paper books?

I have also uploaded the US version of the advertisement here so that you can judge for yourself. If nothing else, I think showing both versions to your class would be a great starter for discussion, along with the questions I have raised. If you are really ‘up for it’, as they say on X-Factor, having your students make their own version – with Kindle readers or ‘real’ books, or indeed a variety of reading materials – has the potential to be a very worthwhile project. Just think of the creative buzz as they write their scripts (I love reading because……….), choose the best ‘actors’, pick their favourite books, seek out the best locations and bring the whole thing together. As an added bonus, there’s a real ‘job’ for everyone  in the class and a vested interest in making it work. Lights! Camera! Literacy in Action!

Further Reading: Learners as Producers blogpost by Steve Wheeler.

Visual Literacy – No Longer a Luxury

We are fast approaching that time of year when we gather together to celebrate the birth of the moving image. More television – and especially films on television – will be watched in the next three weeks than at any other time of the year. Living, as we do, in a predominantly visual age, surrounded by moving image texts, one would think it almost perverse for schools to ignore the extent to which these texts shape and influence our daily lives. Yet teachers still often find it difficult to justify using film as a medium in the classroom when they should be concentrating on raising ‘traditional’ literacy standards, and this despite the fact that various studies have recognised that working with moving image texts can improve those very skills. Digital Beginnings, an extensive study carried out by Jackie Marsh and colleagues at Sheffield University in 2005 concluded that in England “the introduction of popular culture, media and/or new technologies into the communications, language and literacy curriculum has a positive effect on the motivation and engagement of children in learning”, that “practitioners report that it has a positive impact on children’s progress in speaking and listening….”, that “parents feel that media education should be included in the school curriculum” and  that “this should be so from when children are very young.” In 2006, an independent evaluation of Scottish Screen‘s MIE (Moving Image Education) project in Brechin, conducted by the University of Glasgow, reported that ‘all teachers were aware of a significant impact of MIE on pupils’ listening and talking skills….by the second round of interviews, teachers reported significant developments in writing skills.’

Cartoon by deleuran at http://www.toonpool.com

Most young people have watched countless hours of film and television before they enter pre-school education, and already they have set about building, in their heads, a rich audio-visual library. Unfortunately, it is most often a library – to extend the metaphor –  in which the texts are simply piled up in a disorderly heap in the middle of the floor. Rarely do they have any understanding that what they are watching and listening to is a sophisticated text which has been painstakingly constructed and edited, and not simply the result of pointing a camera at real-life and real-time events.

In order to illustrate this point, in the course of preparing this post I contacted the Dutch filmmaker Michael Dudok De Wit, creator of the hauntingly beautiful animation Father and Daughter, which won the Academy Award for Best Short Film in 2000, and asked him how long it took to make (the film itself is eight and a half minutes long and not a single frame is wasted.) This was his response:-

“It’s exactly as you say, animated films like these belie their complexity. It was a challenge to make the final result look simple and whole, but this challenge was enjoyable and very motivating. I worked on the film about four years on and off; I interrupted the production to teach and to do some commercial work. Altogether it took me about two years to make the film (writing, direction, most of the animation and all the backgrounds). I had one animator helping me for roughly four months and one assistant animator for two-three months. Two technical experts did the scanning, colouring, camera movements and compositing (combining all the different layers) for about three-four months altogether. The music composer and sound person each worked for about week, and finally, the film had two producers (for international funding reasons) who altogether devoted several weeks of their time each. One could say that if one person would have done everything alone, the film would have taken three years to make.”

With best wishes,

Michael

Since it is unlikely that children are going to be taught to ‘read’ moving image texts at home any time soon, it seems to me that teachers responsible for the development of literacy therefore have a responsibility, not only to use moving image texts in their classrooms, but to teach film literacy as part of the mainstream curriculum. In order to do this, teachers themselves need to be familiar with some basic concepts relating to films and filmmaking, including a vocabulary which allows them to discuss – and possibly create – moving image texts with their students.

If you are thinking of introducing moving image texts into the classroom the key to success, as with printed texts, is to begin with short films. A full-length feature film is a hugely complex piece of work and can be quite daunting to a teacher and students hoping to engage in critical analysis, while at the same time there are many advantages to using short films in the classroom. Shorts can be played in their entirety within one lesson while longer films lose their impact by being viewed over a number of lessons or by being screened only in extract form; the short running time of the films makes it possible for repeated viewings, allowing teachers and pupils to become quickly familiar with the texts and to explore them in more detail. Short films, like short stories, are not governed by the same conventions as longer films, and often provoke stronger responses from their audience. Finally, film and print, while different in many ways, are also very closely allied, so that the study of film can be used as a vehicle to improve the traditional literacies of reading, writing, talking and listening, and, importantly, film is an inclusive medium, often accessible to pupils who are more visual learners and who otherwise may feel that they have little to contribute. But don’t just take my word for it. Here is the celebrated film director Martin Scorsese talking about the importance of visual literacy.

See also my Ten Tools for Reading Film

See previous post for the best sites to find short films for free

Find some amazing resources at The Literacy Shed

Further Reading: Download a copy of Moving Image Education in Scotland here.

The Millionth Monkey’s Movie

It was once said that a million monkeys typing on a million typewriters for a million years would eventually produce the works of Shakespeare, but what if you gave them a movie camera? How many times have you seen a film and said, “I could do better than that”? Well here’s your chance to put your money where your mouth is and see how many people want to watch your movie!

Filmmakers (D-Media) and Film Fans (Close-Up Film) have come together to challenge our perceptions of how great movie ideas are born, and are using social media to ‘crowd-source’ the next big cinema hit. Launched on 6th December, the project will run over three months, with entrants first building up support for their movie concept. Open to amateur and professional filmmakers alike, voting begins on 1^st February 2012 and thereafter no new projects can be submitted to the site. Voters can vote for as many of the pitches as they like, but only once for each idea. The leader board will show the top ten projects each week.

How does it work?

1. Start with an idea, a character, a place, a plot, a sketch.
2. Post it on the website.
3. Tell your Facebook friends, Tweet family, and anyone else you can reach, to see if they are intrigued enough to come and have a look.
4. Get them involved, sharing ideas, passing comments, or just having a look.
5. Add to, alter and develop your movie pitch and see how many people you can persuade to want to see it on the big screen.

The more interest you attract, the higher you move up the leader board. Ultimately, the concept with the most fans wins.

Cost of entry is just £30. For this, you will have your own page on the Millionth Monkey’s Movie website, your work showcased to over 100,000 people, online resources,  access to film industry professionals and, of course, the chance of having your film made and seen.

The Winner will pick up two thirds of the net money received from the entry fees for the competition and the  support of D-Media in having the film produced, starting with a tour of the facilities at Pinewood Studios. Gina Fegan (The Tournament, Devil’s Playground) will also be appointed executive producer of the film to support the project.

The team behind the Millionth Monkey concept

The Runner-Up will win a tour of Pinewood Studios, including an industry lunch, and one day with D-Media and Close-Up to develop a realistic outline of how to take the project further.

The Weekly Winner, will be profiled on the weekly leader board and will win two cinema tickets.
To find out more and enter the competition, visit: www.millionthmonkeysmovie.com