When I was a student at USC Cinema School in the mid-90's I had a discussion with the Dean, Elizabeth Daly, in which she told me her theory of learning film. She said that film is a language which virtually everyone learns to read at an early age -- a one year old child quickly learns how to make the connection between a shot of a person picking up their car keys then a shot of the person driving, filling in the actions in between. But for some reason for the past 100 years only a few individuals have learned how to "write" in the language of film. But that is now changing, thanks to new technology.
For the past three years we have been doing a workshop at Scripps Institution of Oceanography with the graduate students in their summer course in which they write, film, and edit their own short films. For the first two years all 20 or so students "pitched" their ideas for 60 second PSA's (Public Service Announcements), they voted, and the four winners were produced. This past summer I switched things to allow every student in the class to make their own film, producing 17 minute-long films, each focusing on the research activities of a Scripps scientist.
We have just posted the entire collection of student films on the Shifting Baselines website. I have to say, each year I have been impressed with the level of sophistication and capability of the students. There is a change underway in the communication of science. What was once the channel of communication for only a few is now increasingly becoming an accepted means of communication for all. And that's a good thing, as the stuffy previous generation makes its way out the door for a more savvy new generation of scientists and science communicators. Out with the old, in with the new!
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Congratulations on what sounds like an effective student experience.
But, really, "the stuffy previous generation"?
As far as the early seventies, I taught introductory composition (English 101) in which each student not only wrote essays, but made his own film. The students' math, history, and psychology professors volunteered to participate in the planning, teaching, and responding. The university bore all the expenses.
It's nice to know scientists are now doing this too. I hope you'll soon be able to expand the teaching of good communication techniques all the way down to beginning science undergraduates.
In our best attempts to keep up with Randy here on the East Coast, this past summer we gave a group of elementary school teachers participating in our MARE Summer Institute a little over an hour to create their own videos. During the morning teams of teachers investigated Island Beach State Park, NJ, while developing their own research questions with little guidance from the staff. It was a great opportunity for them to practice their personal inquiry techniques while playing with technology that their students are very familiar with.
Given the short timeframe and limited training, we were very impressed with what they came up with, armed with little more than digital cameras and microphones. Today's technology is making it happen.
After all, if students today think and communicate this way, it's imperative we provide teachers the skills to encourage effective techniques.
Hopefully, in a small way, we empowered a few more teachers to use inquiry methods and technology to make learning ocean science fun and relevant for their students.