Learning With Film And Video (1985)

The student population in our schools gets more and more diverse. There needs therefore to be some kind of common focus, some way to bring all of these individual differences to bear so that they can come together for learning. Society expects us to teach these young children to solve problems, to be creative, to be to large degree independent thinkers, to be parents, to be workers, to be citizens. If we are going to get these things, we must provide the tools. Any business seeking to get good work from its workers provides them with the necessary tools. The classroom is where all of our expectations for schooling come together. Here is where we expect youngsters to learn to read, to spell, to write, and to figure. Creative teachers try to meet these demands with a whole variety of instructional materials. But we must begin with some kind of common experience with which all of these children can identify. All right. There you're seeing the roots and the H2O, the water is going to go from the roots up the stem and it's going to go all the way to the leaves. And the leaves are the place just like you have on your sheet. it. Leaves are the place where sugar is made. There it goes. Up, up, up, up. It goes up to the stem. In teaching science, films can explain what the kids have been doing. They tie in what the hands-on stuff means. Really seeing the motion really gets the point across. After I watch films, I go and do the other things. Like if the film has like a science project, I go try it out and see if it really works and how it works. I teach some pretty sophisticated concepts to these elementary children and they could talk to you about atoms. They could talk to you about molecules, but I really cannot show it in the classroom. It would be difficult for me to explain what's really going on without the use of a film. [Music] Film is a kind of media that really pulls a fascination from each of the kids that I don't think any other media has. It enhances everything that I'm doing in my class. It's a dimension of really being there, of really experiencing things, seeing people from another country, in another culture, seeing their habits, seeing their occupation, how they work together. All of those things add so much to a child's understanding not just of their own culture, but of the world around us. One of the things that I really enjoy doing with films is the discussions that follow where I will have the children explore their own situations and compare it to those things that they have seen in the film and it works out just terrific. They were very dedicated to what they were doing. They didn't stop stop their work and start doing something else. They they kept on the job no matter how difficult it was. Yes. Uh sometimes some jobs um helped others the success of other jobs. For example, um the person who made the like the buckets to carry the fish and if he didn't make it, they wouldn't be able to carry the fish. Good. Anything else that you noticed that where one group of people or a particular person depended on somebody else? Yes. Their small crew that they had on the boat couldn't have brought the boat in all by themselves without having the town come in and help them bring it in. Anybody else? Yes. Even though the man was reading his newspaper at night, when the woman was folding it and stuff, he would still cooperate. Film adds a dimension that is not covered anywhere else. I spend most of my day teaching seventh graders world history and geography. And I find that students are so ethnosentric, so unwilling to accept the values of other cultures that uh the easiest way for me to introduce those cultures into the classroom is through the use of films. And so I was able to take the students out of this cultural feeling they had that these people are strange or weird as they would put it and into thinking about uh how people adapt and use an environment that they are in and that that environment causes some differences among people that but that we're really basically very much the same. Well, as a teacher, I think we need as many modes as possible to work with students. Uh because you have different learners. You have some that learn by picking up a book and reading it on their own. You have others that um learn better by hearing. You have some that are kinesthetic learners and some that are strictly visual learners. And I think a film is wonderful to use in a classroom because it takes advantage of at least two of these modes of learning, the audio and the visual at the same time. As a librarian, I use every kind of stimulus available. I like to use films because in films, everyone is equal. It doesn't depend on anyone's reading ability. They bring all of their experience to the films and then the films increase the experiences that they have culturally, nationally, in science, in stories, in poetry. It just builds and builds and builds. The books do come off the shelves. Not only the books that deal with the film, but books that relate to that film. People think that back to basics means that you have to get away from AV and that's not so. It means maybe you drop needle point 101, but using media can bring students back to the basics of reading and writing and math and can make the experience a more pleasant one for them so that they're they're more turned on to learning in general. And it can make it easier. It can enhance the whole teaching process. The cone is full of useful mathematical shapes. slice it again. I remember trying to get the concept into the child's head that multiplication was really just addition. Once that film came on and showed five bright green sets with three black dots in each and some little elf came around and counted them, the ch every child in that room understood it. Every child was focused in and listening. Teaching junior high school children by the very nature of their um their age, they have a lot of nervous energy and they're always busy. All right, class your attention, please. Now, when we turn this on, I want you to make some notes. All students cannot follow directions. Well, all students cannot read at the same rate. But through film, students can relate to what's happening. There's movement, there's there's color, there's sound, there's music. And most importantly, the educational value is usually very good. Seen through our telescopes, but through the electronic eyes of spacecraft, they have become known world. Obviously, we cannot see the planets the way we can see them through films. The student cannot get an appreciation for the vastness, cannot understand or fully appreciate the solar system by me lecturing or by reading about it. In science, there are many things uh that films can bring us that nothing else really can in a typical public school classroom. uh the films that have been made with electron microscopes, the uh oceanographic films with underwater cameras, a lot of the geological processes, uh erosion, uh weather cycles, and again it takes them right to the place. It's a class trip without having to go anywhere. Let's take a look at foreshadowing. What did you physically experience in the film that told you there was foreshadowing happening? Ally when they were tying the noose around his neck that it that made the whole audience I was seeing and I felt for him. I felt uhoh. In preparing a class for the film experience, I ask the students to relate the literature that they have read to the film. So they should be able to find examples of exposition, whether it's through dialogue or description. They should be able to find examples of coincidence, foreshadowing, irony. They should be able to tell whether the story is being told objectively or subjectively by looking at the screen. That means that they have to watch carefully just as if they were doing close reading on a story. They have to watch [Music] carefully. When you're watching it, you're hoping that it might really be reality, that things might be going his way, and that it's not a dream, and he's not just thinking it, that he's really going to get away and he's really going to get to live. when the guns missed him and he went on down the waterfall and everything. Um, it was as if you wanted him to succeed. How is what is up on the screen shown in the story? I noticed how like when he was going down the stream, there was no marks on his neck. And then as he started running, the marks started showing and then as he was getting closer to his wife, the marks were like really standing out, which might indicate what? Which would indicate that the rope around his neck was getting tighter. It seems as though it was like a rough way to heaven or something because it it was all like in shaped domes and then the gates just open for him like you suppose you'd walk on clouds or whatever to get to heaven and well he just walks through grass and then everything's like a whole fairy tale land or something. Everything that he's ever really wanted. What does that do for the audience at that very moment? The irony situation in Al Creek Bridge works extremely well. The students never expect that kind of ending and they are interested in seeing once they have read the story how the filmmaker is going to get that jolt at the very end across to his audience. And the jolt is always equal to the first time that they have read the story when they see the [Music] film. If anyone's concerned about the effect of film on children, this is definitely not popcorn time. They are engaged by it. They're excited by it. They're thrilled by seeing the literature come to life. Face it, students skip over the descriptive passages many time. They don't understand the significance of that. And the tone that's very hard to understand. And the tone of a work is usually carried over into the film. The emotional impact of a film in a history class cannot really be overstated or understated. It's just simply important for the students to sit there and see on the screen history unfolding. as history teachers, that's our job is to is to introduce kids, especially junior high school kids who have their mind on a million other things, um to think about the past, which is almost contrary to the basic nature of human beings at the age of 13 or 14. I find that with with many of my students, they seem to think that they've seen everything and done everything, and they just sort of have a couldn't care less attitude often times. And by showing them a film, it it really does make them care. Delta 1 19 to weather center. Our position is now 90 m at 213. Request you hold back the snow 1 hour. Roger 1 n. This is the international weather center. Here are the immediate plans for North America. We're letting it stay sunny for the remainder of today, but clouds will be seated at 3 tomorrow afternoon, Eastern time, and they'll be fine rain for 40 minutes. It's like, who has the right to control? it's going to rain for 40 minutes today and it's going to be 90° weathers tomorrow and it's going to snow over here and all of this stuff. I didn't like that at all and I don't think that it's normal because it just throws it all off. Okay. I disagree with Erica because as far as the weather control goes, it would be better um to populate more areas like in the Sahara there's no weather and with weather control you can probably put the clouds here or put it there. Many of the students will go with the film and I can develop it with them in such a way that we can get into far more intellectual discussion after having just seen a film than we could ever have done with just a textbook or something that I might have said. Whereas we need to develop their literacy more extensively. I think we need to also make use of the strengths that they have which are a certain visual sophistication that perhaps my generation didn't have. Once you've used a film or a video and then you take them from that to verbalizing the concept, you've helped them to clarify in their own mind. You've helped them to focus in on things. If our goal is to have children who are reading, thinking adults, uh, we should use everything that we have. There's no way I can be as interesting as a film every day. Perhaps I might hit it five minutes a day being as dynamic as a film, but a film is probably the best teaching tool for the children of the 80s. In order to do what we expect them to do, teachers use everything that they think will be useful to the task. But creative teachers have also discovered that they can do things with visual media not otherwise possible. They can provide a focal point for diverse groups of youngsters brought together in the classroom. They can transcend the peer culture, for example, at the high school level in order to get youngsters more interested in what the school is trying to do. And they can take youngsters beyond the four walls of the classroom to provide them with experiences not otherwise possible. Once purchased, a film can be used over and over. The equipment can be used over and over. If we want to keep creative teachers in the classroom doing the job we expect of them, we must give them the kinds of tools they need. [Music]