If it’s not about the technology and it’s not about the product… then can we agree it’s about the PROCESS?
Yesterday, Dean Shareski at “Ideas and Thoughts from an Ed Tech” posted a piece entitled, “I Need More Videos” . Although I posted a comment, I felt a need to dig a little deeper.
I’m curious about the messy stuff that leads up to many of the end products I see from students and teachers on the web. How was the room organized? What issues did the teacher have to deal with? How many students were involved? What specific tasks did they have? How long did the entire activity take? How do you know it was ‘good learning’? Can we see how you assessed, say “creativity” – can you run through an exemplar and talk us through your assessment process? What ideas did the students have for improving the process and product?
I most certainly appreciate seeing (or hearing) end products such as mathcasts, clay animations or podcasts but in order for me to replicate such effectively, without running into what might be the same problems that the originator solved on their way through, I’d like access to the process mess (or, conversely the orderly design/production phases!). Because in the end, I may want to go beyond re-using the content in another’s video to teach my students something and I may also want to fly beyond inspiration – I just may want my students to actually experience the learning like those who have produced before them.
So this is a plea to all teacher/student producers…. Do not to downplay the goodness you can share by walking backward from your product and publicly exploring the process required to produce the end-product. And I’m not talking about the technology how-to’s… that’s often the easy part… I’m talking about the class organization and management design.
I think back to the first time I did audio in the classroom with a social studies class (we didn’t get to podcast the results, policy wouldn’t allow it – I blogged the activity here)….we got through the project, but I think, if the principal had visited in the ‘middle’ of the process – I’m thinking it would not have been a pleasant day for me. I’m sure she had not seen such chaos in her typical learning environments. Wouldn’t it be nice if through the sharing of more video of ‘raw’ classroom views, a general acceptance arises to the type of ‘studio classrooms’ Clarence Fisher talks about?
I think about some of the workshops I have presented. I show end product, talk about the tools and how they factor into the end product, talk about the pedagogy… and the teachers are basically left to extrapolate the “how” with REAL students – in their own classrooms.. on their own – Surely, I can do more to help teachers work through the class management issues that go along with having students learn from creating and producing.
Why don’t I emphasize more of the classroom management process? My first thought is that it’s the boring part – way beyond the glitz of playing with the technology… But secondly, it’s also difficult to pull off the informational “management How To” in a group setting because typically, each class is very different, teachers manage different, the classroom space is different – classroom management is far from a prescriptive process…. A video of the process is a perfect solution though – as Dean says, “[the videos] have had at least as much impact if not more than than any book or blog post has done in terms of igniting conversation and action” There is so much to gain by such video — think of the visual cues available that will generally go way beyond even the lesson at hand. Kind of reminds me of the School Bulletin Board blog and accompanying flickr account – not only are there specific ideas for content display, I learned a lot about classroom culture, norms, what is being taught, bulletin board ambience, etc. By showing video of the classroom process leading up to a final product, the teachers watching can do a lot of self-monitoring and reflection of their current practice vs. what they are seeing…I’m imagining thought bubbles such as, “Oh, that’s how they did that, I’ll have to do it this way in my class” or “Sheesh, her students act a lot like my students, yet she was brave enough to try such a technique”.. Okay, a little ideal and naïve, I’m sure, but there is definite potential with raw process displays.
Let’s say tomorrow, we decide to apply digital storytelling to a content area. I’d like to learn more about my process by seeing your process! Do you mind sharing your ‘behind-the-scenes activities? Once we both have raw video in hand, for our methods to come across succinctly and interesting enough to provide the punch that Dean highlights… it will take some time in the editing process (we will desperately need to compress time, just like in the movies!)… Who has time for the editing task? I guess this is one reason we need to recognize that schooling really is a community activity…it would be great to collaborate with community volunteers and/or students in your locale to complete the task. In my community, we have a cable television company that is mandated to provide community support, I wonder if they would help out?
And here, I’ll put my words into action… if you provide the raw video, I’ll certainly make a stab at editing it for you… REALLY!! And Dean will then get his wish too, “More video”!
