King's Cross Education Action Zone

Executive Summary

The Genesis Project piloted at the seven schools of the Kings Cross Education Action Zone is an exciting example of how Education Action Zones can, within a challenging ICT project effectively and creatively raise expectations, with potential impact across the wider KS2 curriculum.

Peter Barrett at the Kings Cross EAZ worked in liaison with Derek Smith, Director of the EAZ to create a solid technical infrastructure to support the project. The agreement with Ulead, the provider of the editing software, to supply a hundred free software licenses for the duration of the project allowed for c. 200 children over the academic year 2001-2002 to understand through experience the role of editing in the creation of moving image texts. For a number of the children this was a recursive experience, as they participated on different projects  - in ICT lessons, After School Clubs and a Film Summer School.

In observations carried out by members of bfi Education, children were seen to be attentive and focused during 20-minute introductions on interactive whiteboards. When the time came for them to work in pairs or groups on their own editing or filming work they were motivated and excited by what they could do. They had strong senses of having authored their edited sequences, whether containing images from the editing programmes own gallery or footage taken of or by themselves, and were able to discuss their choices using appropriate technical language.

The positive impacts of the project for the children were clear from interviews, in which all expressed their enjoyment of the filming and editing processes and a strong interest in doing similar work in the future. Teachers were similarly impressed with the quality of the work and levels of motivation in the class, mentioning several children who were low achievers in key areas of literacy or numeracy but had responded tremendously well to the Genesis Project, working more confidently and faster than their contemporaries. Teachers were aware that, beyond its intrinsic value as a component of the Year 6 ICT scheme of work, it could be extended across the curriculum to other subjects as a means of recording experiments for Maths or Science or for developing narratives for History or English. In all cases, the teachers felt confident that this was a project that they would want to replicate, and looked forward to doing so.

Kings Cross Education Action Zone is in the process of developing 'Genesis Xtended', a Teacher's Resource containing teaching notes, clips and a temporary Ulead license. Based on the strengths of the current project, bfi Education looks forward to working with the KXEAZ on future initiatives, and is particularly keen to enhance the effectiveness of this exemplary work by exploring the possibilities of extending the use of media texts to situating this explicitly 'moving image making project' with more implicit media literacy skills. This would not be with the aim of turning it into a media project per se, rather to bring to it a deeper level of social and cultural significance beyond its present technical focus.

Among our recommendations for the future of this project are:

• Technical considerations: Schools must be aware of the specifications required for their hardware to support the project and of the teacher hours which may be required in preparation.
• Staffing: Teacher training needs to be addressed explicitly regarding ICT and moving image literacy as well as in class management for the nature of this project based work.
• The children's learning experience in ICT: Children need time to 'play' with the software to enable them to focus on set tasks. In addition to the positive results of shared working, they should also be allowed the opportunity to work individually at filming and editing tasks. A systemic sequence of ICT learning over a period of time is necessary to extend and challenge children further at each stage.
• Moving image literacy: Within the current ICT framework, the incorporation of a media context, from the deconstruction of media texts to the creation of the children's own work.
• Defining 'creativity': A model of creativity using ICT to make media products is needed to map children's work by agreed criteria, especially when across the curriculum subjects already have their own accepted structures for assessment, and their own definitions of creativity,
• Cross-curricular work: Class teachers and heads of subject to plan role of project to ensure clarity of purpose and meaningful links across the curriculum.

For more details about this project contact:

Teacher Development Officer

bfi Education

BFI

21 Stephen Street

London W1T 1LN

Tel: 020 7957 4792

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