ICT/Film:
My vision of how ICT fits within the wider context of education can be summed up with the following question:
“How can we inspire young people to use technology in a way that will empower others to take action and bring about social change, while enabling the students themselves to grow in confidence as authentic authors of work that reflects their character and passions as well as helping them develop a balanced, reflective and service based set of values by which to live?”
Technology and especially the way young people interact with it, is too often portrayed in a negative light. Some of that critique is valid but much of it also ignores the wealth of positive benefits that can come as a result of using technology as a force for good.
As a way of countering views of technology as an exclusively negative influence, I developed, in collaboration, with an amazing team of educators, a number of ICT units that frame technology as a motivational persuader and a force for positive social change. Summaries of these projects along with selected examples of student work are included below:
For further information on how this was accomplished and the resources developed to support these programs, take a look at the documentary section of this website.
Example 1: Documentary film (G9)
Students were given the brief, under the auspices of the unit question “how can we use technology to drive social change?” to research, write, storyboard and film a short documentary on a topic which was relevant to their community, either in the local or the global sense. Students worked for parts of the project in groups but each student produced their own finished documentary. The best of these documentaries were entered into the Beijing "Flux" film festival and won the best documentary prize two years running. A winning entry is included below:
Example 2: Public Service Announcement (G10)
Students were given the brief, under the auspices of the unit question “how can we use technology to inspire others to take action” to develop a public service announcement which addresses a need identified by them within their own community either at a local, national or global level. Students researched, wrote, storyboarded, filmed and edited their own finished piece of work:
