A larger-than-life hand fills th e screen of the TV monitor as 10-year-old Mario carefully adjusts three colorful paper figures. Against a student-constructed scenic background depicting Denali National Park, he moves the characters—self-portraits of himself and his groupmates—away from the ranger station and only slightly closer to the tent. Chelsea stands next to the tripod and video camera while Melissa surveys the scene. Mario's hand disappears from the monitor screen.
Melissa says loudly, "Clear." Chelsea presses a button on the remote control, watches the tiny red recording light on the camera appear and then disappear, and announces, "Check." Mario's hands fill the screen again as he leans over the background and arranges the characters for the next shot of their video animation movie.
On the opposite side of the room, the Death Valley group is creating a travel brochure to accompany its part of the class's movie about U.S. national parks. Komal sits at a computer and types his section, which describes in detail the various animals and plants that live in Death Valley. Gabriela imagines "The Devil's Golf Course" and continues drafting her contribution to the brochure, while J.P. sits at another computer and uses the Internet to complete his research about coyotes.
At the same time, two more groups work collaboratively at filming stations in other corners of the room. Another group spreads a map of the United States on the floor and uses the bar scale to measure and calculate the approximate distance the group must travel from Greenbrook School in South Brunswick, New Jersey, to reach its national park. The last group of 4th graders focuses on animation math, using the knowledge that each shot of video equals ¼ second. With a stopwatch, students figure out how many shots they will need for each section of dialogue in their movie. Children's voices fill the classroom as they discuss their tasks, question one another, and synthesize their discoveries.
The Benefits of Video Animation
How can students acquire academic skills and knowledge, use technology meaningfully, feel confident about themselves and their learning, value the process of working together, understand the creative process, learn to sustain a vision, and have fun in school? Video animation is a technological tool that allows teachers to implement and integrate key educational goals. This multidisciplinary and multisensory hands-on approach nurtures the multiple intelligences and learning styles of students. Filmmaking enables educators to help our students develop multidimensional thinking while strengthening their basic skills. Video animation is not about technology itself, but about the individual development and the learning that technology makes possible.
The video animation process helped me, a first-year 4th grade teacher, to give students a fun learning experience as I challenged them to integrate and use their knowledge and skills. Within a few weeks, my students mastered the hands-on technique of using video animation to express a point of view, to communicate information, and to tell a story. They used video cameras and the animation process to express their creativity, knowledge, leadership, teamwork, and academic skills. They experienced many opportunities to make decisions and to solve problems, and they engaged in research with a sense of purpose. They drew connections among the various disciplines and recognized how all the parts—social studies, science, writing, reading, and math—were essential to creating the whole: a 15-minute animated movie that exhibits what they learned. And they had fun.
Learning the Technology
I first experienced filmmaking as a teaching and learning tool through the Children's Media Project, a multifaceted, not-for-profit organization that combines art and technology through the electronic media arts. The project conducts workshops and programs for students and educators that give students access to the tools of video as well as the thinking and practical skills needed to produce their own creations. The staff members and the director offered technical and conceptual support throughout my class's entire filmmaking process. My school had one camcorder with video animation capability, and I obtained two more cameras and a monitor from the Children's Media Project.
The National Parks Project
I realized that my 4th graders could use filmmaking to become active and motivated workers in pursuit of their own learning. I focused on national parks as a way to integrate the social studies and science curriculums in my district: regions of the United States and ecosystems. National parks provide a perfect connector. By the end of the project, we had also integrated math, reading, writing, and research skills.
I created groups of three students diverse in skills, interests, and backgrounds. As a class, we discussed the animation process as a way to study the national parks. We then broke the large project of moviemaking into smaller, more manageable tasks. Students first identified and compared regions of the United States, then each group chose a region of the country and a national park within that region. The next set of tasks involved exploring the park by researching its ecosystem and geography, food webs, human and geologic histories, size (area and perimeter), populations, seasons, and weather. Students then created class graphs to compare and contrast their chosen parks on size, age, and highest and lowest points. One student wrote in his journal, Some of the tasks were difficult because you couldn't find some of the stuff in the books. We couldn't find anything, so we had to look even harder.
My students also researched and wrote travel brochures while undertaking the exciting process of filmmaking. Each group collaboratively wrote a story unique to its park and used filmmaker's planning sheets to coordinate the three levels involved in making a video: image, words, and sound. They invented characters—themselves!—and created backgrounds by using watercolor paints, markers, and collages made from construction paper and photocopies of photographs. Other tasks included calculating animation math; filming cooperatively; choosing music and sound effects, such as prairie dogs barking in the Badlands; and recording the sound. A highlight was the Denali Park group's decision to include a musical selection that the students played on their own band instruments.
I divided the tasks into four sections: discussions about regions and parks, research, the filmmaking process, and publishing. Each group chose when and how it would accomplish the tasks and monitored its learning and progress on a large chart. Although much of the work was collaborative and some was independent, all students were responsible for all learning.
Filmmaking is a cumulative process. The concrete evidence of each step offered countless opportunities for assessment and guidance. Students received continual feedback about their individual and group work from me and from one another. They wrote in their journals about their experiences, successes, and frustrations. Each group maintained a folder of its ongoing and completed work and paced itself by using the class project chart. The travel brochures and the finished video offered a means by which both the students and I could evaluate their learning and work.
We assembled the short group movies into a coherent whole. Students realized that when they combined their small-group movies, they created a more complete picture and that when they worked together, they created possibilities that did not exist when they worked alone. In his journal, a student reflected, I feel that our movie turned out great and we worked hard on it. We had good teamwork, by not getting too much hands in the movie. When I saw our finished movie, it looked like a real movie. These 4th graders worked hard and truly knew and understood all dimensions of their project.
Extending the Project
Teachers can apply the project's format and the technology with equal success to any curriculum need or grade level. They can create projects that engage the whole brain and all its intelligences and that provide opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration. Motivated students and teachers engage in learning that has depth and meaning. They will develop perseverance because each new step in the filmmaking process depends on the successful completion of previous steps. Although filmmaking is fun and creative, it also produces evidence of critical skills and higher-level thinking processes that are transferable.
Using video technology to integrate curriculum and to create meaningful learning experiences can be difficult and messy work. It is challenging, rewarding, exciting, and scary to give a lot of freedom to the students and to guide the process as it unfolds. The teacher becomes a coach and a facilitator and the students are the workers and the learners. But teachers don't need a lot of experience with video technology or filmmaking to successfully coordinate a video animation project. Video animation is an uncomplicated approach to teaching and learning that combines art, academic content areas, and technology. We all can do it.
Our students live in a media-saturated culture. We know that they are already skilled at reading the languages of image, word, and sound. To participate actively in this information age, children must also know how to write in these increasingly dominant languages and must be able to think on these multiple levels simultaneously.
My students effectively navigated creative risk taking; learned how to work independently and as team members; planned and prioritized as they worked through obstacles; and expressed respect for their teammates, the equipment, and, most important, themselves. During the last month of school, these 4th graders were consistently motivated and engaged. In her journal, one student observed, During the making of the movies I felt good because I knew that I was doing my best work. I liked making the backgrounds and the characters. I also liked moving the figures. Students demonstrated focus, excitement for learning, and attention to detail in doing their research and in taking more than 3,600 shots of video. Sometimes groups even chose to work on their animation instead of going to recess. One group decided to film its Redwood National Park section of the movie twice because the students truly cared about doing their best work. Every student in my class benefitted from an extended creative and interdisciplinary process.
A World Premiere Event
When kids learn how to sustain a vision, they learn how to believe in themselves. Not only did my class of 4th graders present their knowledge and their movie about national parks with pride, enthusiasm, and confidence, but they also initiated, planned, and hosted their own world premiere. They had worked hard and they owned their project completely.
"And we made it all ourselves! We hope you enjoy our movie." At the premiere, Kathleen and Julia spoke for their classmates, who stood behind them, dressed up and ready to present their animation video, Our National Park Trips. Each 4th grader had already described some of the important facts about national parks, regions of the United States, ecosystems, and filmmaking to the audience of parents, friends, families, and teachers. Kathleen carefully moved the microphone to the side. Eighteen glowing students took their seats of honor in the first two rows. The lights dimmed and the countdown flashed onto the large movie screen. As the music began, the magic that this class of 9- and 10-year-olds had created and experienced appeared on the screen.
