For+Teachers


 * FOR TEACHERS**

Recently at the 10th Asia-Pacific Conference on Giftedness held at Nanyang Technological University Laura and I presented a paper on media pedagogy and critical media literacy. A number of teachers were interested in the short video clips and photomontages made by the students for Student-Film-Space, the task sheet for the learning activity, and the pedagogical framework for teaching media production and analysis.

In relation to the first request, I hope you enjoy viewing the short videos or photomontages that the students have produced. You may notice some blind spots and empty spaces among the coordinates; these are still to be filled by the students. This is one of the pitfuls with creating a collaborative wikispace like this - the space is always under perpetual construction! However, this is also one of the advantages. It makes students realise that when constructing texts it is the process that counts and that the final draft, the final video edit or the final wiki design layout, is never final. Because as one empty space is filled others open up: this is what lifelong learning is all about.

I hope that this Student-Film-Space will inspire more wikispaces or blogs that will showcase videos, photomontages, short films, documentaries, animations, and other visual media produced by students from schools around Singapore. I would love to feature the work of students from other schools on Student-Film-Space or for media produced by the students at Hwa Chong to be shown on other sites. This wikispace is still in its infancy, and began as just a learning activity, but I think it could grow into something bigger given enough support.

Below I have attached the task sheet for the Student-Film-Space project below along with the PowerPoint slides from my conference presentation 'Literature and Media Pedagogy: Developing Creative Learning Environments that Integrate Visual Media with Language Arts'. In regard to the pedagogical framework for teaching critical media literacy I will point you to the outcomes elucidated by Douglas Kellner and Jeff Share (see the PowerPoint slides). For an easy-to-understand version of these outcomes, the [|Centre for Media Literacy] has developed [|Five Key Questions and Five Key Concepts] as a starting point for designing any course on critical media literacy.

I have many suggestions on how to 'scaffold' key themes and concepts of media studies, particularly in relation to film, but I could not possibly go into them here. I recommend Brian Moon's //Viewing Terms: a practical glossary for film and TV study (//Chalkface Press, 2004) as a starting point, but have a look through [|Media Production and Analysis - Course of Study] prepared for the Western Australian Curriculum Council by the CMIS, it is obviously specific to Australia but it gives you an idea of the kind of resources needed for teaching media production and analysis in schools.


 * Task Sheet: Student-Film-Space**


 * 'Literature and Media Pedagogy' PowerPoint Slides**