As I watch students (myself included, as always) work on video projects for their foreign language, English, or other classes, I see a striking similarity between those videos and my family’s home movies. Just like home movies, most of these student videos are lacking a thesis and a design to support them. As technology allows us to integrate creative projects further into our curriculum, we need to give students the tools to funnel their creative efforts into an effective and cohesive whole.
The need to teach students how to design is not a new idea. Dan Meyer has been posting wonderful lessons from his class on Information Design. Scott S. Floyd in his year-end photo post writes:
While we focus on design being important in educating our youth (or their learning), I have begun to pay particular attention in how things look around me. I think that giving our students the opportunity to understand and appreciate the elements of design will allow them to create better finished products to display their learning.
There are many ways that one can approach design. Practitioners of the visual arts might look at it in terms of the principles of design. My background, however, is in theatre and video production. I will also add that my teacher/mentor Mr. Patrick Huber gets full credit for instilling this process in me.
If you asked a director of a theatrical or video production for the thesis of their production, you would surely get a cogent statement of purpose. It might be as simple as “My production is ‘historically accurate’” or a more grandiose theory about the world we inhabit: “by allowing ones’ ambition, not rationality, to take control of the choices we make, we lead ourselves into our failure” (That Scottish Play) or “our perception of our environment is a function of the people in it and our relationships with them” (The Zoo Story). Once a thesis is decided on, a concept for the production is formed that expresses the thesis and every design decision made during the production serves the thesis. This gives directors (or designers, or actors) a basic structure on which to base their production. Used correctly, a thesis can be the most powerful tool in a designer’s arsenal.
I would argue that the reason watching student videos can at times be excruciatingly painful is that they lack a cohesive design. Often, they represent a hodgepodge of ideas strewn together with very little thought to creating a unified whole. However, when students begin with picking a thesis, and then work from that thesis, a pattern, a design, begins to emerge. When the question for every single decision is “what supports my thesis?” those awkward transitions, strange cuts, and random effects begin to make sense.
Let us take, as an example, foreign language video projects. In my school, it is not uncommon for a foreign language student to be producing a short three- or five-minute video to demonstrate their mastery of the curriculum. Normally, the first “production meeting” starts with the question: “What can our video be about that makes it easy for us to use the required tenses and vocabulary?” And so, a script is written and design decisions are made with one goal in mind: satisfying the requirements. The problem is two-fold: While the video satisfies the requirements, it does so only minimally, and while the students are using the class’s language, they may not be fully expressing an idea with the language.
Rather than simply asking our students to combine video technology with their foreign language, we need to be asking them to use both their foreign language and video technology to express an idea. Asking students to reach beyond the requirements is where the real gold lies: it is when we really start to see how well students can use the tools given to them.
This isn’t, of course, limited to foreign language videos. I would classify student video productions into two categories: (1) videos demonstrating mastery of material (such as the above foreign language example), and (2) videos demonstrating the material (such as a video one might produce for a history class explaining some historical event). In this second case, the purpose of a thesis is simple: to make the video interesting. If students are trying to convey information in a video, they need to hold their audience’s attention. Structuring their video and design decisions around a thesis is a powerful tool for creating a cohesive and powerful piece.
I leave you with a series of questions: How and when do you teach students design skills at your school? What types of design skills do you teach them? Do they have the design skills to effectively utilize the creative mediums you provide them? What attributes have you found make student designs particularly effective?
Edit: Changed the title, and corrected some small errors. ~AJC (2008-01-07)
Your points really reach beyond video though, to encompass all communication....a “thesis and a design” or a “strategy and a plan” seem like simple concepts but are frequently overlooked as we write, speak, create or even go through life.
And, “Asking students to reach beyond the requirements is where the real gold lies: it is when we really start to see how well students can use the tools given to them”....reaching beyond the requirements is something that I wish WAS the requirement and the way everything was approached.
Marianne
Zoe (afro girl)
Now I’m not saying that if it’s not going to change, why write about it. That would kind of be like saying ‘my clothes are just going to get dirty again. why wash them.’ I just think you (all) need to come up with some viable solutions instead of passively criticizing/complaining.
Here’s a possible solution: It may not cure all of the bad imovies out there, but, why not suggest the teachers grade it as a work of art? Speaking from personal experience, kids will probably put more time into creativity if their grade depends more on it, however forced it may be. I know some US History teachers probably aren’t versed in the principles of design, but I’m sure they can tell when someone was thinking outside of the box.
While I think having a thesis is a good place to start, students need to know about kinds of shots and what they tell us about characters, how scenes are cut together, etc. before jumping in and creating something.
I think it’s admirable that you want to involve a higher level of design into the otherwise bland student video, but expecting students to be able to show mastery of the subject matter as well as adding interest to the video is a bit far stretched. Wouldn’t that be changing the whole dynamics of student under achievement?
If teachers raised the bar, sure, I can see students raising their level of excellence accordingly. To be honest, though, unless a student really cares about the subject, and loves it, what would be their motivation to spend extra time on making their video watchable?
I know that you are interested in design, so it makes sense that your personal standards of excellence would be higher than the average student. You would probably enjoy the thoughtful process of crafting an interesting and informative film. It would probably turn out fab, too. But what about someone who hated making videos but was required to make one for the class? That would be torture for them to go beyond the old requirements.
Personally, I love making films, so it matters to me that they are interesting and well designed. But I HATE it when teachers expect you to think their subject is boss. It is not. I mean, it might be my favorite, but unless it _is_ my favorite, I don’t want to augment my time requirement for that class unless I really like it. If I did, I would choose to do so on my own volition, not because of requirements.
Did I completely miss your point, though?
Can you also define design again? I’m still unclear on that.
@ Zoé (2): It is great to hear you take pride in their work. My philosophy has always been that the first priority is producing something I am proud to have my name, if not, I’ll take the late grade. You also make a great point about learning about the technology, not just using it - something that we attempt to do at our school.
@ JV (3) and Lindsea (5): Perhaps I should have been clearer about this, but I am not asking students to put more effort into their videos or make them into works of artistic genius. What I am proposing is a different way to structure students’ effort. Instead of having students put their effort into meeting the requirements of a project, they should be putting it into advancing a goal, their thesis. I don’t expect to turn students into great designers overnight. Rather, what I propose is a modest first step in getting students on the right track.
While much of design is artistic, subjective, innate, what I am discussing lies in a much lower artistic plane. Artistic talent shouldn’t necessarily be required for a foreign language video, but I see no reason why the components of a video shouldn’t make sense together. Doing so is as simple as asking yourself one question each time you make a decision: “What advances my thesis?”
@ Matthew (4): I think that is a wonderful goal, but for many teachers (of non-video-centric classes) such a requirement might place video-based projects outside of their reach. The process I describe here is, I hope, a decent first step to a middle road.
We don’t do them really this side of the Atlantic... definitely not in my school.
I do however think that Lindsea brings up a very good arguement. Students will usually just switch off if they are in a subject which doesn’t interest them and although they will possibly enjoy making a video more than they would answering questions I don’t know if they would manage to motivate themselves to putting in place a plan to express an idea which they aren’t too keen on to begin with. Many students, me included in some cases (whether due to disinterest or lack of time) put in the bare minimum because they know it will be acceptable. Is there any way to combat this?
A couple people (JV and Lindsea) raised concerns about whether people would be motivated to take on a more involved design for their projects. On the other hand, I wonder whether the design aspect could, for some, serve as a motivating factor.
For (a personal, anecdotal) example: I was in grad school last year and had to write a particularly tedious-seeming term paper. When, finally, I changed the way I thought about it–deciding in my mind to make it a design challenge–I was suddenly refreshed and newly engaged with the material, and I learned a lot more as a result.
Lindsea writes, “I HATE it when teachers expect you to think their subject is boss.” I wholeheartedly agree. And I think design could be such a fruitful element in learning precisely because it cuts *across* subjects.
Put differently, I would love, eventually, to be able to say to my math students something like this (but without the absurd wording, of course):
“You’re right. ‘My’ subject, math, ISN’T boss. But truly good design is universal, so (hopefully) there’s a certain basic level of personal value to this project regardless of how interesting or important you find the math itself.”
Anand, what type of projects do you have for math? At my school we just have the lesson, do the homework, and, every week, take a test. If you do have projects, have you ever had a student who exemplified what Anthony is talking about?
Well, I know that other teachers have had projects where students make poster presentations about various topics, mathematicians, famous theorems and problems, etc. I haven’t done anything like that(–yet: this is my first year–), and so I haven’t heard from students about what it’s like for them.
I have seen some of the posters, and there are certainly some that make use of good composition, color, typography, etc. to make a nice presentation... However, I’d really love to work on coming up with projects where the design aspect was *deeper* than just presentation–i.e., where working on the design becomes a way to learn the actual math.
So far, the assignments in my own classes haven’t exemplified the kind of thing Anthony’s talking about on a large scale. I’m starting small. But I have seen some nascent results:
* creative illustrations & descriptions that add meaning and depth to a given problem solution
* good (and, to my delight, visibly *improving*) use of space on the page, both aesthetically and practically speaking. This is especially the case with algebra
* when asked to write a story that accounts for some of the weird/unnatural-seeming aspects of exponents, many people did a nice job of making the story a complete *whole* (rather than, say, a typically bare-bones math answer).
This last one in particular seems to have potential: I wonder if design thinking can help people learn how to exercise their judgment when it comes to writing proofs.
Teachers in my district are required to post Essential Questions for each instructional unit. Although we grumbled at first, we found that the EQs serve as a focus for planning and assessment.
If students had to come up with EQs for their projects, written or visual, it might help them to refine their vision and fine tune their end product. Planning is key.
Call it “Essential Question” or “thesis”, it’s obvious that planning and structure are as important as creativity in producing a successful video product.
Thank you for starting this conversation.
diane
I would (almost) pay you money to entertain your concluding question in a future post.
Because you put your finger on one of the most vexing questions for a teacher: Is there any way to combat students “switching off” because they don’t like my subject area? (Teachers generally know there’s a potential for passionate “switching on” at the heart of their subject area. We sweat blood trying to find that switch in our switched-off students.)
I love comment threads on s2oh. They’re so good
In contrast, one of my teachers had done a poetry cafe at a previous school. Students either drew or used the Flickr CC section to find images. Some of those were quite compelling, especially if the poetry wasn’t the pointless rhyming type that elementary students often settle for and we teachers (who aren’t poets) struggle to move them beyond.
That experience, combined with your blog post, is finally helping me think about how to do the unit this year. I knew I wanted movies with a focus, but lack of video cameras will force us to use stills again (hopefully budget will go through for next year so we can remedy that).
I’d be interested to know how much experience students have with video at your school. I’ve found that with elementary students, they can’t plan a movie until they’ve made at least one movie.
Unfortunately, teachers may FEEL that teaching any media literacy is out of their reach but really a twenty minute lesson (combined with the hands-on activities and a debrief) might do wonders in the way of improving video projects.
In twenty minutes I might teach the way that music affects a scene, the difference in meaning between close-ups and wide shots, and perhaps how the pacing of edits changes mood and tone. All teachers are pressed for time so I would relate this to whatever subject matter you’re teaching. In other words, if it’s a history class we’re looking at historical films, foreign language...a foreign language film, etc. I’m not a math teacher but in editing and music there are certainly many instances of mathematics to be discussed.
I agree that you need to have a thesis for these videos but if you just set up the camera and press record a thesis isn’t enough for a compelling film. A thesis combined with a variety of shots and edits (related intelligently to that thesis) might produce something more cohesive and media literate.
“What is ‘DESIGN’”?
“Umm, the planning bit”...”The drawing bit..” was what a couple of kids said.
I then asked them if they agreed with this idea (definition):
Design (invention) is the creation of something in the mind.
We wrote it into our jotter as a starting point. It is of course my job as a teacher to help them refine their ideas and really get stuck into the design process.
I feel that the design process is such a broad concept that I wanted them to think about the significance of what they are going to do in my classroom. (We are going to design and make wooden toy boats).
I asked them why do we design? Why is your phone different from the one you had 3 years ago? Why are things different from each other? WHAT IS THE POINT? What would happen if a line was drawn somewhere in history and from that point on we stopped designing?
Kids might not see the point of making a wooden toy boat or see the point in making a video but I would hope that they can see the point in the process of Design and most importantly getting practice at doing it. They will see at the end of the design process (hopefully) that they themselves have also evolved.
Yes, there are many students who do the minimum. And many teachers who set the bar too low because they don’t really understand what constitutes effective design. But I think that many students lose interest in getting better in digital communication because they do not receive effective instruction on good design, or feedback as to what they have done well, or guidance on how to improve weak areas.
As I work with teachers, I need to remember to help them understand the link between examining media design and then analyzing those techniques for use with their own students. I appreciate this post and the comments - I suspect some of the ideas will turn up in one of my trainings!
I hope others will throw links in here to resources they find valuable along these lines. I hear Dy/Dan has done some good stuff too.
Dean has more design training resources on his blog.
Provocative and wide open to a wide array of solutions, I believe. I could easily use it to spark dialogue with both clients and teaching colleagues alike. Well done; yet another reason why I’ll be returning to this blog on a regular basis.
BTW, I added a link and and a snippet of your point to Dan Meyer’s blog tonight. An idea aligned conversation going on over there that felt ‘right’ having your voice thrown in the mix. For what its worth, here’s where your ideas were added:
http://blog.mrmeyer.com/?p=565#comment-45209
I’ll let you add to the mix over there. But wanted to make sure that some new eyes found your writing, as well as all the “School 2.0″ voices.
Keep on keepin’ on! Love where you guys are taking this project.
Cheers,
Christian
The reason is they’ve never had to deconstruct video, they way the deconstruct writing. And most would agree that students are better writers than videographers.
Matthew makes a great point about a few minutes to discuss the key elements. For the most part, there’s way too much emphasis on the technology and tools and little on composition. Even if teachers have no experience, they do have experience deconstructing stories. A few discussions and conversations about design and quality would be a great start.
The other is to require 2 versions. Show version one to the class or post it online, wait for feedback and do it again....I guarantee if you do this right, the results will be exceedingly better than giving students cameras and saying, “make a movie”.
It isn’t design.
This design thing is just too abstract, I think. It’s awesome but too easy for me to toss out there on my blog and retreat behind, simply because I own a copy of Photoshop and know how to use grids. But what do the teachers who don’t have any training, amateur or otherwise, or own functional software do?
I’ve realized now that more important than design — what, in fact, CONSUMES design — is storytelling.
Design (a term which means a lot of different things) concerns itself so much with the placement of things, how to order a set of charts to most effectively impact an audience, how to compose the people in a photograph to tell the most compelling story.
But there’s always the story.
Storytelling is the umbrella above design. It’s HARDER than design and simultaneously accessible to every single person on Earth, young and old, regardless of education or station or toolbox. It’s been around since forever, the setting up of heros and villains (your “characters”), the establishing of a guiding goal (your “narrative”), the careful positioning of challenges between them and their goal (your “obstacles.”)
My point is that, if you know how to tell a precise, articulate, and moving story, if you know how to build intrigue about a character in the first act, how to lull your audience into a happy, contented place in the second act, only to punch them precisely in the gut in the third, you have this fantastic skill which applies absolutely EVERYwhere.
Essay writing. Music composition. Graphic Design. Videography. Salesmanship. Teaching. Especially teaching. Especially these days. This list keeps building in my head during hours when I oughtta be sleeping.
Storytelling is the skill. Everything else is just its instrument.
How much are you willing to pay. I will double it!! I think this is a great statement. Does it really matter to the student that just shuts off? Is there any way to get to that student that just decides to shut down to your class?
Anthony,
As soon as you throw in words like “thesis” into a project, you will lose half of your class. Why not just say “Focus” or “Main Idea”. The students that create this mediocre work you speak of, will do less with the more rules and restrictions that are placed. Sometimes saying less is more
But I think @Dan is on to something here too (and Dan, I’m laughing as I comment to you in a thread again - last time we both left hatchets in each other’s heads, if I recall. Silly bloggers). I’m feeling equally zonked and doubt I’ll say this right right now, but here goes a try:
Storytelling is prior to and higher than design. Who wants a well-designed crappy story? (And maybe we should call this narrative, not storytelling, to open the frame wide enough to accommodate expository presentations?)
Here’s a story: I was one of three teachers asked to give a presentation at the Apple Distinguished Educator institute in Bangkok last month. We all were asked to address issues in 1:1 laptop schools.
The first guy gave a slideshow about his 4-year old laptop school. Lots of slides, lots of text, lots of pictures, lots of information. When he reached the alloted 20 minutes, he was told to finish up within a minute.
The second guy gave a slideshow with lots of examples of digital student work (much of it, I’m sorry to say, in need of crap-cutting and worse, to echo Dan, ideas worth watching in the first place - probably as much the teachers’ fault as the students, since the teachers assign this stuff). He also got fetishistic, predictably, about tools he uses. Jing this, Skitch that, blah blah blah.
When his 20 minutes were up, he was asked to wrap up in one minute.
(His school was an 18-month-old laptop school, by the way.)
It was my turn next. Imagine my joy at continuing the Chinese slideshow water torture with 20 more minutes of my own dripping slideshow.
I gave the presentation. When it was over, I said, “Was that shorter than my alloted 20 minutes?” The Apple guy said, “No - you went 30 minutes.”
Here’s why I think he didn’t make me finish:
1. I did have a story. I knew the age of the other two presenters’ laptop programs - again, 4 years for one, and the other 18 months - and I knew my own school’s 1:1 program was only 4 months old. So I gave this expository speech a metaphor: “Our 1:1 Baby Book.” The narrative thread of this informational “story” was: Conception - Labor - Birth - Potty Training.
To riff off some academic I read years ago in a literary theory graduate course, by giving the information some “narrative rails,” the audience enjoyed the ride and kept anticipating what was coming next.
And the occasional use of “ass” and “poopy” didn’t hurt, either. Somehow we need to mention emotion and voice in all of this. I didn’t talk like some constipated suit trying to impress. I was a guy in love with his story, telling it like the playful, caffeinated, silly bastard I enjoy being. I used my voice.
2. Also, Dean’s “design matters” (linked in comment above) and other explorations I’ve done since influenced my visual design. I had my story, but I wanted visuals without words. Pictures only. I didn’t quite succeed. I used slide titles and single-word lines of text. But to know my story and receive its information, you had to listen to me tell it. You couldn’t read it along with me.
A picture of a pregnant belly rising from a bubble-bath, of a new-born still gooey and umbilical in a doctor’s hands, of a poopy diaper-changing moment in some Flickr’d household - that was the bulk of my slideshow.
–
I still have a headache, but will try to sum up:
).
1. As Dan says (and hasn’t Warlick been stressing “telling a new story” for about a century?): storytelling first. I would add - and this was the point of my story - even expository can be transformed into a story via metaphor, extended analogy, allegory, etc. I got ten extra minutes to blather because people wanted to hear how my school is raising its baby. People like babies, generally (”especially with a little salt and pepper,” as WC Fields said
2. Visual design: I go back to Dean’s thrust (and again, Dan, I hear you’re doing good stuff too, but since we’re still stewing in our separate sandboxes, you know
) - throw out the templates, eschew text, and arrest with less.
Oops. My twenty minutes was up a long time ago.
I watched Tobie’s video not knowing what to expect. He did a great job with the storytelling aspect. Perhaps a bit more time spent on his week-long experiment (living, eating: details of daily life) and a bit less of the bike ride might have made the video even more compelling, but overall, I think it was 12-13 minutes well spent.
My high school Current Events class recently computed their carbon footprints, so I plan to show them Green Foot and ask for their comments.
Thanks for sharing.
diane
It’s picking an appropriate narrative structure for your [lesson, sales pitch, music video, presentation] and then playing within it in ways both interesting and consistent.
Like with your early childhood structure. You selected “Conception - Labor - Birth - Potty Training” (all interesting, consistent) rather than (eg.) “Conception - Manufacture - Birth - Shipping” (dubious interest, definitely inconsistent).
The latter approach generates a weird, dissatisfying discord. The other buys you an extra ten minutes in your presentation.
After you’ve got interesting, consistent applications you set up anecdotes or phrases in early applications (or “acts,” I guess) which pay off in later ones.
You set up consistent villains (though I can’t think of any options in your presentation that wouldn’t have been unspeakably grim) to generate tension, to defeat heroically in the last application.
If you’re adept enough to disguise all the rigging, girders, and scaffolding propping up your story structure, people think you’re a winner. They get the same satisfying feeling from your [lesson, sales pitch, music video, presentation] they do from their favorite movie or t.v. show.
This skill is important enough to teach students and, even better, it reaches across enough disciplines to spread the work across language, visual/peforming arts, history, even math, which I’m discovering through my information design unit.
In other words, this thing is ready.
regards
fluflaken