Clapper Reflection: CSpan Unit
During second quarter of the 2016-2017 year our advisory took the CSpan Studentcam 2017 challenge. I had originally planned on doing this project and had some high hopes for it. Then election day came and most of us were desperately surprised by the result. That energy fueled the completion of the project.
As a teacher, I like these sorts of competitions, where there are clear rules and expectations that incentivize and require authentic academic work and the development of new skills. It also makes a clear ending point: the deadline set by CSpan. The students identified two high-schools -- one in Oklahoma and one in Maryland -- that have had great deal of success in winning this contest, which was cool as they didn’t feel like they were competing against each other. I’m not always a huge fan when students began messing with each other and we saw none of that here.
At a project-based school where so much of the work is interdisciplinary, this made for an almost perfect project. The English and social studies “content” should be evident and I felt good about the work we did researching, compiling, and presenting graphs as part of the film and as using key mathematical concepts. I built the deliverables as necessary for each other and to demonstrate how any project has a series of steps necessary for its completion: you can’t have a film without thinking about how to shoot it and you can’t shoot without a script and you can’t write a thoughtful script without having a research brief. Each bit of writing had its own purpose and audience, which made it higher quality academic work.
Like most projects, you have to eat your broccoli before you get to the cookies, but like most other projects, what looks fun and easy (filming? editing?) is actually quite difficult and utterly time-consuming. I face this dilemma with most projects: I want them to get going with “making” the project but I have to make sure that the academic pieces are in place. I also do not have any real skills in video production. Being able to hack something together isn't enough to allow kids to learn from me. Similarly, being able to watch the past champions was helpful during this process, particularly when kids realized that even if the corniest of videos required a great deal of work.
That being said, unlike last year, I didn’t confront the problem of kids not doing the script and intending to make a movie without any preparation. There’s something exciting happening at our school that even the kids who struggle have direct awareness of the idea that any project has a process and that the process is not only what allows a project to succeed but also separates it from the kinds of things you do in an after-school club or as a hobby. I think we’ll end up with 10-12 films being ready by the deadline and all but two students completing something by the time exhibitions begin next week.
Given the opportunity to do this project again next year, there are three things I would do differently. One, while I think I scaffolded the research process well and provided multiple ways for kids to learn to first sort, then critique, and then document articles, I did not do enough basic information. At the beginning of the project, I spent most of my efforts trying to impress upon them the kinds of information one might need in order to make a film, but I think I should have done more basic civics -- here’s how the government works or here’s some general theories on how Congress and the President make change. I don’t know how to do this quickly and it may not even be possible. In past years I’ve read the constitution but that’s a semester long effort to do right. I’ve isolated certain components and gone deep -- one year we talked about what the Bill of Rights might mean to you as a young African American in living in the city -- but I’ve yet to get to find a way to do this in a week or two weeks, particularly when kids are arriving with minimal background knowledge. Which is better: helping students form a basic understanding of how a law is passed as written in the constitution or fostering an understanding of how it actually seems to work in the early 21st century? Should I focus on the law in a pure form (the way it should work) or the current process (the way it does work)?
A second thing I would do differently and this seems to be true with every damned project, I would have scheduled experts to come in and deliver mini-seminars on various elements of video production. I’d make the seminars opt-in and stage them in half of the room: basic video camera work, basic audio recording, and basic editing. I’d find the cash to pay these folks for the seminar during the week before they started and pay them a bit more afterwards to come and hang out with the students as they did this work. One of the things they’d leave us with would be an understanding of the standards for their field.
Given CSpan’s traditional due date for this project -- mid-January -- there’s no real way to avoid doing this project during second quarter, which with the Holiday break, always feels cut in half and too short. I emphasized the research component and the script, leaving three weeks to edit and film. The assumption that students could develop a shooting plan didn’t necessarily work; having not shot video before I think it was more difficult than I thought it would be to conceptualize what’s going to be on the screen. In other words, trying to envision what will be on the screen before you’ve begun filming doesn’t come easily to anyone, at least without practice, and the activities I did for this didn’t work as well as I would like.
Lesson Plan Additions
Early
- In the past I’ve insisted on annotated bibliographies. I should have done that here. I would commit to coming up with 1 or 2 articles for each kid (I did this informally) and then have them come up with their own list.
- We looked at "winning" videos early and compared the winners to the rules and generated a list of traits that make these videos outstanding. What I would have done, in small groups, was have them to storyboard one of the winning videos to see how many scenes and what kinds of scenes each winner had.
Middle
- Distributing scripts without images and asking peers to brainstorm possible images. I would prefer drawing as doing this with a computer would lead to the same old find the first google image and paste.
- Pulling a minute from a documentary and playing it without video. I’d ask the students to think about what should be on the screen. Then, they should look at what was actually in the video and compare their own ideas. To conclude, we’d talk or write about what they believed the creative process consisted of.
- Similarly, I’d like to bring in a videographer and ask them to go through the same process with a piece they’d made.
Late
- While time definitely got the best of us, I would have made each student create a five minute rough cut of their video; maybe just an audio recording. I would have archived these and listened to 2-3 in each class. This would have helped with fidelity but it would also help with the crew who could not seem to get started. (There’s some broken hearts here at the end of this process -- I remember this feeling of having let myself down (and occasionally my teacher) vividly.
Additional reflection on CSpan process after having watched the winning video
First of all, the quality here is truly impressive. This script, if we were to somehow get hold of it, moves from topic to topic seamlessly. There are clear definitions (that are carefully sourced) and an early, thoughtful explanation of why this topic matters. There was a thorough historical analysis such that the topic is situated in American history after 1945. As we were debriefing, several students argued that we “wasted too much time” doing the script when this film seems to me to be an example of what a great script accomplishes. I had designed the template for the script so that interviews could be dropped in when completed, which leads to the second amazing part of this video:
I counted eight expert interviews, each of which was appropriately contextualized so that you were able to understand why they were part of the video. I thought (could be wrong) that they’d done a great job of presenting experts who represented both sides of an issue. When they presented CSpan clips -- there was one of Senator Cruz and one of President Trump -- each was followed with an explanation. These interviews seem to be one of the major separators between the winners and the non-winners and these felt like professional interviews. Getting someone to talk about what you want them to talk about in coherent, concise ways is a valuable skill and one that looks easy but is very difficult.
Third, while there was a personal connection, that personal connection was not central to the story; it lent a kind of weight to things but it wasn’t the only reason for the video. When we talked about the videos, the students tended to place a lot of emphasis on this idea, but as this video suggests, it’s helpful but not necessary.
Fourth, the authors exhibited impressive technical skills. The whiteboard drawings (they were actually blackboards) looked like they came from a professional studio. The sound levels on their interviews were balanced and we could hear them without problem. It wasn’t perfect -- the sound mix on their voices was often lower than some of the interview pieces -- but that’s the difference between an A- and an A. I would have dropped the music altogether (or dropped the levels) but that’s another minor, minor quibble. (No teenager can resist cheesy music. Neither can Ken Burns.)
When I talked with my students after we watched the video, they complained that we did not have enough time to do this video, even though we had a full 70 days. As I noted in my previous reflection, I felt that a research brief was necessary in order to ensure that kids had some idea as to what they were talking about before they began the interview process. I stand by this, mostly because you can’t conduct a good interview unless you actually understand the topic. The counterargument -- get as much “tape” as you can and learn from that -- just doesn’t hold water for me. How will you even know what you have if you don’t really understand the contours of the topic? I also don’t want the kids or our school to be embarrassed when they sit down with a public official to discuss a topic they have only passing knowledge of, regardless of how passionate they might be about it.
Definitely lots to chew on for next year.