Editing Middlemarch
by Darren Coxon
Background
Secondary School in Cambridge. Year 10 pupils in 2 pairs, with film or media background, working on extra curricular project to edit 'rushes' from BBC Middlemarch series.
Focus on
Using editing software to mobilize or reinforce understanding of continuity editing picked-up from film analysis; looking at types of teacher intervention to see which work.
Summary
- Teachers too keen on intervening in student processes; it's almost a compulsion. Pupils said they preferred to be left alone till the end of the project, then asked about their work.
- New questions raised: does physically editing material mobilize learning picked up from film analysis? Or embed and reinforce it? Or extend it? Or does it take knowledge and transform it into understanding?
- Pupils engage with the task because it is both practical and intellectual.
- Without prompting, both pupils say they want their continuity sequence to 'look natural' ie they have internalised how continuity works.
- One pair swaps roles. The dominant boy, when not holding the mouse, becomes more bossy. When he holds the mouse, he listens to his partner's suggestions. Mouse control does not equal power/dominant position.
- Attention to the working environment - glare on screens, heat, ventilation - is important for learning
- Speed of the computer processor needs to approximate the speed of editing decisions
- Wireless mouse might 'liberate' groups from 'mouse-focused' power relations
Editing Myself: using Video Production and editing to help pupils reflect on their classroom behavior
by Carlo Roberts
Background
Year 8 pupils in a Learning Support Unit in a secondary school in Waltham Forest, east London.
Focus on
Specific intervention using DV in helping pupils reflect on their behavior. Video project involved clandestine filming of classroom behavior, with pupils involved in editing this footage of themselves later into short pieces of film.
Summary
- Using digital video enabled a group of challenging pupils to reflect on their behavior and the factors determining it.
- Pupils chose sequences and incidents for inclusion in the film, in some cases being confronted with their own behavior.
- Pupils' analysed the classroom behavior caught on film using psychological models.
- The 'affordance' of Digital Video lay in the speed of editing material together, the ability to review and revise edited sequences.
- Pupils were interviewed before and after the project about their perceptions of what 'causes' their disruptive behavior. After the project the 'locus of control' had shifted; they were more willing to take responsibility for themselves
- The impact of using video is in its role as objective mirror of pupil behavior.
