The Student Film Festival - A Life-Changing Experience

ISTE2012 -- The Student Film Festival - A Life-Changing Experience -- Scott Smith - Visalia, CA
http://www.vusd.org/webpages/ssmith/index.cfm?subpage=27094
http://slickrockfestival.org/

In June I was able to attend the ISTE2012 conference in San Diego, CA. One of the sessions I was excited to attend was about building a quality student film festival. Canyons School District has produced a student film festival each year since the birth of the District. In 2012 we were ready to raise the bar and increase the level of involvement, calibre of entries, and magnitude of the festival. We had great success and were inspired to do even more to build our festival in 2013. This ISTE session, "The Student Film Festival - A Life-Chainging Experience," gave me a lot of great ideas for expanding and improving the Annual Canyons District Film Festival to even greater heights. Following are notes and ideas I picked up from this ISTE session that might help you with your film festival efforts as well:

Why a student film festival?

• Core academics are strengthened
• Writing
• Research
• Cross-Curriculuar Connection- students write scripts in their ELA class, research issues in their social studies class, and tap the acting and musical talent of students in their schools
• Generative Skills are developed
• Executive Skills
• deliberation, team organization, deadlines, scheduling, managing disappointment
• Communication Skills
• know the audience, emotional impact, body language
• Work Ethic
• "good enough" is defined by the audience, lives change when students see hard work rewarded
• Vision Beyond the Ego
• connection to a local issue, local person, local problem; lives change when students add value to the world
• Resiliency & Self-Reliance
• 21st Century Skills are acquired
• Critical Thinking
• Creativity
• Communication
• Collaboration
• Dropout Rate Drops
• Fun is Back

"In the age of high-stakes testing, the curriculum has narrowed. Compliance now characterizes student learning more often than engagement. Inviting students to be creative and innovative is too rare. Teaching that promotes critical thinking, problem solving and decision making has all but vanished in schools. Juxtapose this culture to the high-energy, creative act of student filmmaking. Fueled by YouTube and inexpensive video equipment, students now have access to a medium that was unreachable prior to NCLB. When students make films, deep thinking takes place. Attention to detail goes way up and new learning sticks. Central to this type of learning is an authentic audience … and that’s where the student film festival comes in." --Scott Smith

Invite students to find something they love.
When a student film festival is produced, the following things happen:

• Standards become clear
• Clarify the standard, rubric, detailed criteria, quality defined
• Students realize quality when they see top films from top filmmakers
• Product is guaranteed
• A festival means a deadline, the Festival becomes a powerful "nagging" teacher tool
• Students learn the sometimes hard lesson of deadlines
• There are closets filled with half-written novels... Films get completed!
• Student work is validated and celebrated
• Student achievement increases
• School culture improves
• The upside of school is amplified
• Something good comes from this school
• The school shakes hands with the community instead of extending the hand for donations
• Students are engaged in the community and giving to the community, not just asking for support and money
• School multimedia programs expand
• From club, to class, to program, to pathway
• As popularity increases, demand increases

"Digital filmmaking allows students to share their voice. Too often this voice is limited to the popular student or gifted or advantaged student. The student film festival experience has taught me that students with challenging backgrounds have a rich voice. Working with high-poverty, high-risk students helped me appreciated the level playing field that technology lays. Students of all stripes can make films. Students of all stripes WANT to make films. The student film festival not only affords them the opportunity to make films but it motivates them to make films." --Scott Smith

Building a Student Film Festival

• Start with a mission
• How close to the industry to you want to take the kids?
• Do you want to focus on an event or issue in the community?
• What are your production, copyright, and release expectations?
• Identify existing resources
• Find the county film commissioner 
• Contact the county human health services department because they have a lot of money to support the education of health issues in the area. If you can connect your festival to those issues, they can financially back you.
• Local junior colleges and/or universities - work with their film departments
• Define the scope of your Festival
• What grade levels?
• What's the standard?
• Market, open up social media channels
• Establish a brand
• What is a name that will get people interested/intrigued?
• Is there a name you can use besides the district film festival?
• Make a budget
• Communicate your content expectations
• Check out the criteria examples used for the SlickRock festival
• Secure judges - Do you narrow down the entries first? - Each judge is only asked to judge 3 or 4 categories - 4 or 5 judges per category - View the entries before they are sent on to the judges to filter - Phanfare can be used for the judges to view so only the judges know where to go to find the films - Judges' scores narrow down to the top 3 nominees, then hold a dinner to debate who the final winner will be
• Find local industry people
• Local film critics
• TV, news, movies, commercials
• Online judging
• Make a to do list and delegate
• Produce the event and recruit an historian to document it.
• Post-market to build next year's festival (Strike while the iron is hot.)

What is the role of the teacher?
"The teacher’s role in this context is meant to clarify the learning target for the student, to offer frequent descriptive feedback, to expect excellence, and to open 'broadcast channels' so the student’s work is appreciated by a wide audience...
Digital filmmaking advances academic achievement. In the new Common Core, students are asked to write more toward authentic topics, to persuade, to narrate. Films require a well-written script that defines the characters, the conflict, and the resolution. Films can be narrative stories, persuasive essays, situation analysis, or dramatic/comedic representations. Filmmaking is likely to open cross curricular doors. An issue may be researched in a social studies class, the script written in the ELA class, and acting and music talent is tapped from the arts department. The teacher’s role to frame clear learning targets for each film assignment and offer regular descriptive feedback is vital. But the Festival motivates the task and caps the experience." --Scott Smith

Examples of Festivals

• International - ISMF
• California State - CSMF
• Regional - SRFF
• County
• District
• School

FAQ

• How do you handle submissions with adult themes?
• Only the adviser can submit a film to the festival for a student.
• The principal has to sign off on the submission.
• You can censor and deny films for too much violence or mature themes.
• Teach the students that they can leave some things to the imagination.
• What about films that seem to have too much adult help?
• Have the students sign on their form that it is a student-created film.
• It still might happen.

•  Copyright issues?
• Release forms required for all information, media, and people in the films.
• Teach the students about copyright.

• What about the large numbers of entries?
• Limit the number that can be submitted per school.
• Play all the entries all day starting at 9am in the large theater.
• Then have a cycle of limos to bring the kids from a couple blocks away and a red carpet for the awards ceremony.
• Hire the junior high band to play at the red carpet.
• The others are there to take photos and greet all the kids coming out of the limos, news crews are interviewing, and younger kids are asking for their autographs as they go in for the awards held in the big movie theater.
• Get 3 or 4 girls to wear their prom dresses again a second time to hand out the envelopes and awards.
• Show clips of the nominees and show the complete winner.
• Pick a time that fits your district's social calendar.

Ideas for Improving Your Festival:

• Make commercials for local companies.
• Music videos - music has to be composed and recorded by the kids
• PSA - about local issues
• Foreign Film category - films created by foreign language classes
• Find the county film commissioner
• Issues can be a category with specific requirements rather than a theme for the whole festival. ie. The Suicide Prevention category
• Poster contest for the next year's festival during the current festival - announce the winner of the contest at the current year's festival
• Hold the festival at an actual theater - try to remove your festival from the school feeling so that it feels like industry

My teammate Camille Cole and I have presented several times about the benefits of podcasting in schools. The benefits of podcasting parallel the benefits of producing a film festival. If you would like to view the presentation  we created about our podcasting projects, click here. We have also developed an outline of topics that teachers may want to teach their students as they prepare them to create festival entries. You can look over these topics and film examples here.

The Canyons School District Ed Tech team has already begun preparations for our 2013 film festival. I am excited about the great ideas I picked up from Scott Smith at ISTE and how they will help us improve our festival even more. Check out our website to keep tabs on our film festival and to get information about submitting films! http://prolearning.canyonsdistrict.org/annual-canyons-district-film-festival.html

ISTE 2012: Engagement Emergencies - Activating the High-Tech/Couch Potato Generation

--Annette Lamb alamb@eduscapes.com

Workshop Resources:
http://eduscapes.com/sessions/emergency

This summer at the ISTE (International Society for Technology in Education) conference, I attended a three-hour workshop focused on activating students of the "high-tech/couch potato generation." I think a lot of parents and teachers worry about our tech-savvy students doing nothing but sitting and staring at their computers or other electronic devices all day rather than getting up, getting active, and getting involved. This workshop proved to me that using technology does not mean merely sitting. Teachers can and should plan technology-enhanced lessons that get students more active, more involved, more excited about learning, and more in touch with the world.

VARK (Visual, Auditory, Reading Kinesthetic) and Video - Mix Modalities

Active Senses + Content with Context + Relevant Technology

In any technology-enhanced lesson, teachers can give their students a variety of learning experiences, including kinesthetic experiences. The combination of visual, auditory, reading, and kinesthetic learning experiences increases the number of exposures students have to content and allows them to process and repeat it in a variety of ways. For example, when choosing to show a video to introduce new content, a teacher can do more than just have students watch the video. Students can view the video, then re-view the video with specific questions or ideas to focus on, then get up and try what was taught or demonstrated in the video. Try having students use video along with manipulatives and off-computer activities that allow them to demonstrate their understanding. Have students participate in active thinking assignments before, during, and after viewing a video clip to make what they are learning from the clip more relevant, and more clear.

There are a many great websites that provide free online videos that are perfect for instructing and activating students. Here are a few you might like to check out:

• Teacher's Domain - lesson plans and ideas to go along with video clips
• Activity TV
• BBC Learning
• WatchKnowLearn
• More ideas at Annette Lamb's page about VARK & Video

Physical & Virtual Experiences

"Computers are no long just screens and keyboards." Computers are interactive devices now, and they can be used to access information in a variety of ways that activate students. Following are some examples of ways your students can use technology to learn and activate their senses:

• Auditory: In the Google Chrome browser, students can use the microphone available on google.com to conduct searches by speaking their search term instead of typing it.
• Activity Idea - Assign each student to research something specific about an animal (what it eats, its habitat, etc.) by speaking their search into the google microphone, then have them verbally share what they have learned with a small group.
• Visual: In the Google Chrome browser, students can click and drag a photo into the search box on images.google.com.
• Activity Idea - Give each student an item (ie. money from another country) and have them find out what it is or gather information about it. This would be a great attention-getter that would give students background information before reading a novel, conducting and experiment, or learning about a historical event.
• Verbal: The Rubber Duck Decoding Theory - Why do we always get better ideas when we're in the shower or the bath or driving in the car? Sometimes we need to get out of the same old scenario where we sit at the computer and stare at the screen while we try to think. Instead of staring at the screen, when students have a problem to solve or thinking that needs to happen, have them talk to a rubber duck. Have them tell the duck the problem or get up and walk around and talk to the duck about possible solutions. Getting out of that same old staring at the screen scenario can help students think more clearly. Verbally explaining the problem and possible solutions or sharing knowledge already gained can help new ideas flow. 
• Activity Idea - Have students create a video or picture explanation using a rubber duck as the teacher. Have them record themselves using the duck to explain or themselves teaching the duck.
• More ideas at Annette Lamb's Physical & Virtual Experiences page

Physical & Virtual Connections

Another way to connect students' technology use to active engagement is to help them make connections between the virtual world and the real world. One way to help them make these connections is by using creative work examples found online and created by others for inspiration, then having students create their own product. Following are some ideas of how online examples can be used as inspiration for student creations:

• Place: Learn about a place you have only seen in a movie by researching it on the web.
• Place: Introduce students to online maps like Google street view, Google map-making, and Google trail views. Talk about how the maps were made and how they are useful. Then, have students make their own!
• Story: Use the Rory's Story Cubes app to generate ideas for a story.
• Story: Create a storyboard on Storybird, Comic Creator, or other sites.
• Exhibit: Build a physical exhibit (wax museum, diorama, display board) with a recorded narration to go with it. Use sites like Voki, Vocaroo, or Blabberize to create the narration. Link the recorded narration using a QR code that can be displayed next to the physical exhibit.
• Exhibit: Use QR code to take a physical exhibit beyond the physical display. Have students create a list of questions to include with their display. Have them create a website that houses the answers to the questions. Generate a QR code to display next to the questions that directs peers to the weblink where they can find the information they need to answer the questions.
• Video: Have students view online videos, music videos, instructional videos, etc, then have them create their own video projects.
• Word Clouds: Have students view murals, timelines, infographics, word clouds, and word shapes online, like the Lincoln Douglas Debates, Student Bullying, and The Presidential Timeline. Then have students create their own using sites like Wordle, Tiki-Toki, and Image Chef's Word Mosaic.
• Data Collection: Have students conduct their own data collection or use existing data sources (Gallup, FedStats) and use online tools (Create A Graph, ChartGo) to organize the results.
• Interactives: Have students make computer interactives come alive with connected, off-computer activities. Combine hands-on activities with data collection tools. For ideas, check out Thinkfinity activities, Illuminations activities, and Science NetLinks activities.
• More ideas at Annette Lamb's page about Physical and Virtual Connections

How can these types of activities really benefit students and increase learning? Technology-enhanced, multimedia learning projects that connect the physical and virtual worlds can provide opportunities for students to entertain, emote, inform, instruct, challenge, engage, provoke, and persuade. Following is a list of each of these skills, ideas for teaching these skills, and learning goals achieved when students practice these skills: 

• Entertain - visual storytelling, language development, creative writing, diary, re-enactment, speculative project, experiences
• GOAL: Convey a story, imagine a world, illustrate an idea
• Emote - show not tell, share insights, connect to emotions, activate a poem, demonstrate traits, convey concepts
• GOAL: Express a feeling, illustrate an abstraction, move an audience
• Inform - documentaries, histories, databases, photo essays, represent ideas, categorize, show patterns, share results
• GOAL: Analyze information, explain causality, visualize ideas
• Instruct - tutorials, directions, demonstrations, presentations, experiments, procedures
• GOAL: show strategies, explain concepts, teach others
• Challenge - present issue, challenge thinking, visual story starters, introduce problems, inspirational examples, extend a story
• GOAL: create dilemmas, envision problems, kickstart projects
• Engage - news programs, visual journal, travel logs, yearbooks, highlight programs, create welcomes, showcase work
• GOAL: announce events, document experiences, reflect on lessons
• Provoke - PSA (Public Service Announcement), stir interest, influence thinking, impact behavior
• GOAL: arouse emotions, heighten awareness, change attitudes
• (PSA examples on The Ad Counsel channel on YouTube)
• Persuade - illuminated term papers, advertisements, book/movie trailers, apply advertising techniques, promote action
• GOAL: support arguments, show perspectives, convince others

Technology & Tactile Learning

"Our young people risk losing an essential connection with physical reality." - Thomas Elpel
Teachers can help stop students' disconnect with physical reality by providing a balance between hands-on, tactile experiences and technology-enhanced experiences. Practical, tactile experiences are important for learning and life. Technology can aid teachers and students in the creation of practical, tactile experiences and help make these experiences more rich. For example:

• Paper-based activities: Students get so used to technology that sometimes doing a paper-based creative project is novel and exciting to them.
• Activity Idea - Go to Dear Photo.com and check out their project. Have your students generate their own Dear Photo project and write a description of their work.
• Use technology to create a physical product: Use the two worlds together. Technology can enhance our activities as we add the tactile back into what we do.
• Activity Idea - Create a "Fortune Teller" or a Cube as a review for a unit. Use a template on the computer to create the fortune teller, or assign students to figure out how to format it in a blank document themselves.
• Dynamic Paper: Use technology to create graph paper, number lines, tessellations, spinners, and other paper-based activities.
• Activity Idea - Use the Dynamic Paper online app from Illuminations.

Generate, Motivate, Innovate, Activate

Generate - When students use technology to "create a tactile story," it can help them explore stories, relationships, and patterns. Following are some resources that can help students generate more tangible experiences and products using virtual tools:

• Redkid
• Build A House
• My Fake Wall
• Fakebook (create a character or historical figure's Facebook Page)
• Fake Receipt Generator

Motivate - Getting students' attention and helping them see relevance in learning experiences can motivate them to learn more. Technology tools can help increase curiosity in students and add stimulation and variety to their learning through the use of humor, novelty, and a "sense of the unexpected." They can also help students find their niche (explore their own personal interests), see value in their work, and make connections to the real world. Following are some ideas for motivating students by creating novelty in the classroom and by connecting the virtual world with the real world:

• Novelty: Create a special day, and use these special days/events to create technology projects that tie into the required curriculum and the real world. (Constitution Day, Pi Day, Ones Upon a Day)
• Relevance: Join an online collaborative project where students can contribute to real data collection or become citizen scientists. (Lost Ladybug Project, Wildlife Sightings, Global Schoolhouse Registry, CIESE Projects)

Innovate -"The key to student engagement is involving students in transforming information into something new..." Teachers can use technology to help students think in new and different ways. Students need to be moved beyond copy and paste to create their own innovative projects and problem solutions. Teachers can help students become more comfortable moving "between on-computer and off-computer activities to help students with transformation."

• Lego is a great example of using technology to create inventive on- and off-computer projects. Check out their site for activities, ideas, and information about Lego Digital Designer and Lego competitions.

Activate - Games, online and off, are a great way to help students learn. In order to be effective educational tools, games should include four elements. When you create a game, and any lesson, be sure to GRAF it.

1. Goal. You need a way to win or achieve the goal.
   As educators we need to match goals with purposes and reasons for learning.
2. Rules. You need to know what you may and may not do.
   As educators, we need to provide guidelines for learning.
3. Action and Attitude. You must do something along the way. Make it fun and interesting.
   As educators we need to make leanring meaningful and challenging.
4. Feedback. You need to know how you are doing.
   As educators, we need to provide ongoing opportunities to self, peer, and teacher assessment.

• Go to the Google Game: Creatures wikispace to try a Google Game.
• Use a search engine to sort the real Dr. Seuss quotes from the fakes.
• Find out about the Google April Fools Day jokes that have been done.

Thanks to Annette Lamb for her great ideas and for reinforcing for me that technology tools are all about activation and creation. For more ideas, check out Annette's Engagement Emergencies Website! http://eduscapes.com/sessions/emergency/index.htm

UCET12: Rock Your Curriculum with GarageBand Song Parodies

Rock Your Curriculum with GarageBand Song Parodies
--Diane Main

https://sites.google.com/site/rockstarteachercamp/isterockstar/garageband
http://www.dianemain.com/
Email: dianemain@gmail.com
Twitter: @dowbiggin

Side Notes:
To make a quick QR code for a URL, use the goo.gl shortener, then add a .qr on the end and it will create a QR code for you.
Google Certified Teacher applications due in July for New York.
Flip Teaching by Ramsey Musallam - Watch the TED talk.

GarageBand Karaoke: Steps to Achieving Awesomeness

Get Started
Pick a song you want to parody.
OR pick a topic you want to create a song about, and identify a song that works well for that topic.

Get the Song
Go to iTunes and buy the real song and a karaoke version of the song.
Preview the karaoke versions, as there may be a lot to choose from.
Usually the ratings (popularity) are helpful.

Get to Know the Song
Spend some time getting to know the real song.
Listen to it several several times through to get the feel for the rhythm of the lyrics.

Get the Lyrics
Go online and find the lyrics to your song.
Skim through several versions to make sure you get an accurate set of lyrics.
Some of them are pretty messed up.

Get Your Doc On
Create your document (Google Docs) and copy and paste the lyrics into it.
Have the original lyrics on the left and start adding your parody lyrics on the right.

Get the Standards
Go to the State/Common Core Standards and find the content you are making the song about to try to customize the lyrics to the standards.

Get Ready to Rumble
Look in your iTunes "Purchased" and make note of the artist of your Karaoke song so it's easier to find in GarageBand.

GarageBand
Drag your karaoke song in as one track.
You can bring the original song in as another track too if it helps you. (Sometimes they line up well, sometimes they don't.) You can record along with the original and delete the original later.
Create a Real Instrument vocal track to record your vocals.
Add as many vocal tracks as you need for your vocal recording.
Decide which vocal effects you want for each vocal track. Try them out and see. (Live performance is good.)

Get Your Gear On
You will need:

• Microphone - external mic (not the built-in, not the mic on your iPhone earbuds)
• Snowball mic from Blue
• Yeti
• Headphones or earbuds (otherwise the song will record over itself)

Get Ready to Clean Up
You may need to record your own background vocals to cover up and background vocals on the karaoke song because you can't remove them.
Record those background vocal first.

Get Real
Give yourself permission to record in pieces. It's too difficult to get the entire song perfectly in one take.
Make sure the audience can understand your lyrics!

Get Your Groove On
Clean up your pieces of recording and listen to it several times through to find parts that don't sound like they fit.

Get Tricky
Use multiple tracks of the same vocal effect and volume to make it sound like more than 1 person is singing or to cover up when you needed to take a breath or couldn't sing something fast enough.

Get This Show on the Road
You can export the song as an mp3

Get Crazy!
Create a podcast in GarageBand with images to accompany your song.
You can create an enhanced podcast in GarageBand or create a movie in iMovie or create slides and time your recording in Keynote.

Examples:
http://www.dianemain.com/
History Teachers on YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/user/historyteachers
Chains by Laurie Halse Anderson - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFGGMTmBbx4
Out Here Graphin - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h1OtKtfWiDA

Create your own to teach concepts.
Have the students create their own about concepts they have learned.
Don't worry about how your voice or the kids' voices sounds. Just have fun with it. And it's not live performing, it's pre-recorded, so that is easier.

Lights! Camera! Action!

The smell of popcorn and the sounds of Academy Award winning music filled the halls of Union Middle School on February 16th. Students, parents, teachers, and administrators walked the red carpet past movie stars and paparazzi toward the auditorium for the 3rd Annual Canyons District Film Festival. It was a night filled with anticipation, excitement, trophies, swag bags, and of course movies!

The Educational Technology team pulled together to create a wonderful evening celebrating the creativity and skills of students from elementary, middle, and high schools around the District. Everyone was greatly impressed by the quality of the projects created by these students. Special thanks to all who contributed, including our host, Jeff Haney, and the faculty and staff at Union Middle School.  Congratulations to the winners! (View the winning films here.)

To me, the Film Festival provided clear evidence of the educational benefits of film-making. In the words of Nikos Theodasakis, "The filmmaking process from initial idea to final presentation is loaded with opportunities and experiences that make it such a powerful and appropriate tool for 21st century classrooms."
These skills include:

• use of digital tools
• working with multimedia
• research and information evaluation
• connection between curriculum and the world outside the classroom
• planning and designing
• analysis
• synthesis
• critical thinking
• creativity
• communication
• visual literacy 
• oral, visual, and writing presentation skills
• personal and group expression
• negotiating, communication, and other interpersonal skills
• collaboration
• awareness of community, family, and self
• digital citizenship

With all of the potential learning opportunities, I encourage all teachers to consider using film-making as a teaching tool in their classrooms.  Feel free to visit the Ed Tech website for more information about the Canyons District Film Festival. I look forward to more amazing film entries next year!