Can we improve teaching and learning by capitalising on students’ out of school cultural experience?
The aim of the project was to capitalise on students’ out of school cultural experiences to improve teaching and learning in the school. We started by looking at YouTube culture and the proliferation of young people sharing home-made instructional videos. Many young people are adept at creating videos to demonstrate how to cheat at ‘Call of Duty’ for example, but unable to see the use of such sophisticated learning methods in a school context.
Media practitioner Shirley Anne Wood was selected to work with a group of Year 7 students to create a series of ‘How2’ instructional videos for staff and students to watch. The idea was that once the students were trained up by Shirley, they could teach other students how to do it, in an effort to maintain a knowledge base within the school. The future plans are for teachers to request videos to be made for use as learning resources in the classroom.
Shirley worked with the students after school over a period of 4 months, sharing the technical and group work skills necessary to succeed as a functioning media production team. The group struggled at first, finding it difficult to take responsibility and communicate with each other. The vocational context of the project (students were given deadlines and specific roles) removed the conventional ‘responsibility dynamic’ between teacher and student, leading them to eventually embrace their responsibilities and create three excellent instructional videos.
Who was involved?
Media practitioner Shirley Anne Wood
Year 7 students
Impact
It is apparent that the vocational model works well with students as young as Year 7, indicating there could be scope for development of this technique.
The headteacher is dedicated to filtering this out to the rest of the school and has made plans to integrate this into the curriculum for next year.
Shirley Anne Wood said: “The project started from no knowledge of video production, to confidently re-shooting video, audio and editing with little guidance and each group confidently delivered.”
Results
The school now has a functioning media team that is able to create basic instructional videos for staff and students.
