Learning by Doing: How I Created My Documentary

Documentaries can be wonderful tools for classroom instruction because they offer are a great way to engage students' auditory and visual senses.  Stories become more impactful through the use of music, voices, colors, and moving images.  The last thing a teacher would want to do is to show a boring, unengaging video in the classroom.  With today's audience's attention being constantly fought over with increasingly spectacular visual effects and well-researched designs, the classroom teacher has to adapt to these storytelling trends, in order to make the information they are giving "sellable" to their students.  So, when our class was assigned to create documentaries about Guam's Gateway to Technology, I thought that I had to have something dynamic to capture my audience's attention.  I figured that that "something" was a good story, enhanced by audio and visual components, to present facts about the Guam's Gateway to Technology program.
In order to get my story, I started with Tom Petra's website, in which he provided a brief overview of the program- its history, goals, and how it was conducted (Petra).  I also wanted to showcase Guam as my beautiful island home to audience members who have just arrived here or have never been here before.  My love for Guam and what this island means to me were the unifying theme of the photographs, music, and the smiles of the interviewees in the introduction and the conclusion of video.

Guam's Gateway to Technology: Bringing Guam Classroom Instruction to the 21st Century, (0:10).

Guam's Gateway to Technology: Bringing Guam Classroom Instruction to the 21st Century,

(6:13)

In addition to showcasing Guam, I also wanted to showcase the technology resources and activities.  With the new Mac OS, the Quicktime application now provides built-in screen-cast.  This was great news to me when I first learned about it because I did not have to purchase or download another program into my computer.  I used this to capture the websites that were addressed by the interviewees, such as Edmodo and Weebly.  By screen-casting the images myself, I did not have to worry about citing these images because they are mine.

Guam's Gateway to Technology: Bringing Guam Classroom Instruction to the 21st Century,

(2:25)

Guam's Gateway to Technology: Bringing Guam Classroom Instruction to the 21st Century,

(3:05)

Some of the screen-casts were not mine, however; they were the property of Greenlight Media Productions, the teacher trainers, or the students of the program:

Guam's Gateway to Technology: Bringing Guam Classroom Instruction to the 21st Century,

(1:30)

Guam's Gateway to Technology: Bringing Guam Classroom Instruction to the 21st Century,

(5:58)

As an ESL teacher, catering to my students' needs was in my mind when making this video, and I thought about them as part of my audience.  For this reason, I asked my friend, Rosewin Borja, to help me incorporate a voice-over that sounded pleasant and that could model the English language with proper accent and crisp diction.  Also, in order to help ELLs I provided captions and wrote some parts down to be read with the voice-over when the information was lengthy.

Guam's Gateway to Technology: Bringing Guam Classroom Instruction to the 21st Century,

(1:50)

After deciding on the story, one tip that really helped me with the organization and planning of the video was creating a script.  The script helped me to visualize what I wanted and to give me direction of where my film was going.

Another invaluable tip I learned was when Dr. Cyrus suggested for our class to watch PBS documentaries.  This tip would be on which I would credit most of my inspirations because PBS creates documentaries in such high caliber.  This was also where I got the idea of creating stories within stories.  What I mean by this is...

• The entire documentary itself had one storyline and this was presented through the voice-over. 
• There were smaller stories within the interviews.
• The music told its own story: the soothing and inviting introduction welcomed the viewers, the upbeat, attention grabbing tune in the middle helped carry out dry facts that would drag otherwise, and finally the same soothing music in the conclusion that would make the audience feel good that they hung on till the end.
• The images tell their own story, too: the scenic views of Guam, the actual buildings of the Department of Education and the University of Guam that helped reinforce the settings, and other visual examples that supported the voice-over.

Video documentaries are storytelling in a more elaborate and dynamic level.  And surprising to me, I believe that I was able to reach that level of storytelling with this documentary.  I hope that describing my procedures, inspirations, and tips help you if you decide to create a documentary.


References:
Cuenco, R. (2014). Guam's Gateway to Technology: Bridging Guam classroom instruction to the 21st century.
Greenlight Media Productions. (2012).
Payumo, J. (2012). Tutorial.
Petra, T. (n.d.). Guam's Gateway to Technology. Retrieved from https://sites.google.com/site/guamsgatewaytotechnology/.


Resources:
Apples, Inc. (2014). iMovie. 10.0.6.
Apples, Inc. (2014). Preview (screen grab). 8.0.

PLNs: Lifelong Learning in the 21st Century

 
Initially, I was not keen on joining a Professional Learning Network (PLN) simply because I did not know what the term meant.  I was familiar, however, with Professional Learning Communities (PLCs) because it is part of the culture that my school has been trying to build and foster.  Also, it did help that I presented on PLCs with a team for the 28th Annual Pacific Educational Conference in Saipan last year, in which we had to conduct some research for the presentation.  With the use of deductive reasoning, I figured that PLNs are similar to PLCs.  I will not go so much in depth on what I've learned about PLCs but I must mention that collaborating and learning with other teachers within the school community and beyond is critical to the profession (DuFour).

So what is a PLN?  A PLN is "a tool that uses social media and technology to collect, communicate, collaborate and create with connected colleagues anywhere at any time. Participating educators, worldwide, make requests and share resources" (Whitby).  In short, it is bringing professional learning to the next level- by connecting with other professionals globally through technology.

To get started with my PLN, I joined Twitter since it is very popular, and therefore I could have many, many choices on which companies and professional groups I'd like to follow.  I cannot commend enough the smartness of the design that Twitter has that has made sharing information to all parts of world so easy.  It is fast, accessible, relevant, and focused.  Groups that I'm following currently include @neatuday, @edutopia, @rmbyrne, @ScholasticTeach, and @ESLlibrary.  I follow them for new instructional strategies, research pertaining to student learning development, and articles on educational trends.  As an ESL Reading teacher, I love @ESLlibrary because it has great ideas for lesson plans and language learning strategies.

Another PLN that I joined is English Companion which is part of the Ning Network, a social media platform that has more focus on what you want from your community.  I joined English Companion because it caters to the various range of needs in teaching English- from teaching remedial reading levels to teaching AP classes.  The forums and blogs enables its participants to interact, exchange ideas and give assistance to each other.  One thing that was difficult about this network though is the amount of information from so many members that can be quite overwhelming. 

One area of improvement for me as a PLN member is to participate more and contribute with my own ideas in order to make my PLN interactions not just one-sided.

References:

DuFour, R. (2004). What is a professional learning community? Schools as Learning Communities, 61(8), 6-11. Retrieved from http://www.ascd.org/publications/educational-leadership/may04/vol61/num08/What-Is-a-Professional-Learning-Community%C2%A2.aspx.

Whitby, T. (2013). How do I get a PLN? Edutopia. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/blog/how-do-i-get-a-pln-tom-whitby.

Image:
Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/sites/default/files/styles/feature_image_breakpoints_theme_edutopia_desktop_1x/public/slates/collaboration1.jpg?itok=GEGYz-NT.

Teacher, Teach Thyself

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