How cool, putting the pieces together to make this project. Being a detective in finding the media to use, being a director in putting the pieces together, being a story-teller – my favorite part or scoring the piece with music and sound effects to give it emotion, its all very creative and inspires me.
When I first started to grasp this project weeks ago I pulled out an old sketch pad and started to storyboard a short story I’ve been writing, I soon discovered that putting together that story into this project was a bit beyond a first project. What I had discovered was that I had to work within the means of the WeVideo application and more importantly my own abilities. Although as often happens when creativity is flowing the very next day the next idea presented itself.
It came to me almost the moment I read it on her worksheet. She was Maren, one of the 8th grade Social Studies students at my Middle School observations. Her and her classmates were working on a civic engagement project, their task was to enact new legislation or change an existing law regarding some topic they felt strongly about. Her working idea was ‘Ban the Military’. In my heart I shared her sentiment. Being 14 years old she had never known a time in her life without war. But I was also conflicted, I was someone who had served. I wondered if she knew anyone who had served. I wondered how many people she had met who served and she knew nothing of their service or what it meant to them, I thought maybe one of her parents was a purple heart veteran or she lived in a gold-star house. I wanted to tell her something about the human qualities of people who call themselves soldiers.
My service was long ago, 38 years ago this week I celebrated my birthday in Army Basic Training. What did I know that I could share with her, what about my experience is universal and shows the humanity of the soldier? I wanted to show her the person in the military but also the military in the person. I was a person first and that is what I wanted to show her in this project.
As I started to work on this project I knew the ending that I wanted to share and I knew the beginning I wanted to show but the middle presented the biggest challenge, what did I want to show about the experience, what was important to tell in 3 minutes, and what resources would I use to tell the story. I brainstormed every element of the experience. I wanted to show some of the humor, some of the pathos, some of pride embedded in that brief but influential time.
That time plays such an important part in this project and in this story is I think at its heart. I find that telling a story, showing some element of growth over time, enhanced through the use of evocative sights and sounds brings the art of the storyteller into the future. The utility of this type of project in my middle school social studies class of the future would be that it allows for students to engage an authentic audience in a civic cause using the dramatic impact of dynamic audio/visual media presentation. Within the language arts setting the storytelling aspect of this project would clearly engage students in new ways of telling stories and interest a wider range of students in the creative process.
This project has taught me to release my reluctance and explore the tools of the application. I now have confidence, and this is in part because of my classroom observations, that clicking on the wrong thing almost never throws the electric grid into darkness. Previously during the video gaming exploration internal obstacles clouded my learning. The video game experience was apparently not my thing, it was not what I found inspiring or applicable to my ideal of teaching middle-school social studies. In contrast, this project provides opportunities for students to have their voice heard in a unique and powerful ways. And as I have started to learn the language of acquiring and using new applications to express often emotional viewpoints and catalysts for change, I changed, I was acquiring knowledge differently. The creative and expressive outlet found for individual voice within this unique medium increases its appeal for me. The range and possibility of subjects to be explored by students and the scope and depth possible for both creators and viewers makes this project exploration interesting. My observation of 8th graders for this project and seeing their willingness to help each other figure out how to use an application, or to click on anything or try any combination of keyboard commands until a solution is found was inspiring and added to my learning experience.
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