Multilingual Movie Making in Language Magazine 2014

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story and less on the ar1 of film. Filmmakingrequires learners to become skilled commu-nicators, critical thinkers with abilities thatallow accessing, managing, integrating, andcreating information with a variety of media.ln this study, a filmmaking project focused onthe development of documentarjes that tell afactual story and convey compelling informa-tion in vivid and expressive ways for the pub-lic interest, much like an investigative journal-ist would do. Good filmmaking requires litera-cy skills, including reading, writing, andresearching informational texts, and techno-logical skills.

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Nile Stanley and John Ronghua Ouyang encourage teachers to use the new literaciesto inspire the next generation of multilingual filmmakers

pupils they will teach have been surroundedby constantly evolving information and com-munications technology (lCT) - computers,email, social networks, smarlphones, anddigital cameras - since preschool. The inter-net is this generation s defining context for lit-eracy and learning and requires new skills,strategies, and dispositions (Castek et al.,2007). P aradoxically, teacher candidateshave lived a digitally saturatecl life, but manyhave not had the preparation in the new lit-eracies of how to integrate lCTs in their mu ti-lingual classrooms. To support integration olthe ubiquitous technology that surrounds us,

filmmaking projects have to offer (Stanley andOuyang,2O13).

Much of the education literaiure (Figg andMcCarlney, 2010) has stressed thai a majorappeal of using filmmaking, also referred ioas digital storytelling, is that it promotes the21st-ceniury skills needed to be successfulir today's global economy. Filmmaking anddigital story.telling are similar processes andthe terms are often used synonymously, butthe former is more exclusive, requires moreexpedise, and uses more sophisticated cam-eras, Iighting, and acting techniques, whereoften the emphasis is on creating spectacularspecial effects. Dioital storvtejlincr is moro

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texts, Figg and McCarlney (2Ol O), in theirstudy of teacher candidates and their middleschool students, found each of the candidatesincreased understanding of teaching withtechnology through participation in a prolect.

The middle school students showed improve-ment in motivation, technical skills, vocabularyand writing development. Filmmaking provided

technologically enhanced field experiences forteacher candidates.

Hodge and Wright (2010) conducted twoprojects that investigated digital storytellingas a way to capture pre-service teachers'learning in a social studies and a math meth-ods course. The researchers gleaned a num-ber of informative points from the projects.Digital storytelling provided thoughtful,inquiry-based learning in which candidates

both candidates' and the underrepresentedcommunity's stories to be voiced as theylearned to send messages around the worldin English as well as in students' home lan-guages. Similady, Sadik (2008) conducted astudy to understand better and describe theimpact on student learning when teachersand students take acivantage of digital story-telling for their ieaching and learning tasks in

the subjects of English, math, social studies,and science.

Chen and Li (201 1) were university English

teachers in Taiwan who conducted an actionresearch study of a semester-long filmmakingproject to determine if it was an effectivemethod for b,oosting students' motivation forlearning content and engaging in classroomactivities. The survey results indicated that the

making. Students found filmmaking a morefun and efficient way to learn English over text-books. Siudents produced films with tiiles like

Why Study English, Sell Yourself , and Taiwan,

Formosa. They felt in control of their learning.Learning in the class spilled out of the class,

and students learned self-confidence andteamwork. Students learned to more broadlyview literacy, beyond reading and writing. Theycame to appreciate the value of including thevisual and audio as essential new literacies forsucceeding in the modern world. One of theshortcomings was that some of the studentswere shy and timid in per{orming their storiesin front of the camera.

We conducted an action research studyto determine the impact of a filmmaking proj,ect in one undergraduate class, Methods and

ticipants included 20 females and one male,with an average age of 20. The pre-service

teachers, also referred to as candidates,used Blackboard as an online learning plat-form, supplemented with face-to-face meet-ings. lnitial survey results indicated most can-didates had no or very limited filmmakingexperience and none had previously pro-

duced a digital storytelling prolect.

Two graduate assistants on the projectwere film-major exchange students fromChina and Japan respectively. They had sig-

nificant filmmaking experience and mediaskills including storyboard creation, filming,

editing, and final production. The graduate

students were unpaid volunteers for the proj-

ect and highly motivated to become filmmak-ers as a career. The protect afforded learners

the opportunity to parlicipate in cross-culturalliteracy exchanges in multiple languages.

"We have limited media resources and no

opportunities for lndependent filmmakingstudy with a professor in our countries. Thatwe can padicipate in a film festival, learn

skills to help us get jobs, and make real doc-umentary films for a university are tremen-dous opportunities for us." These remarks ofa graduate student captured the enthusiasmand drive of the international students.

Their primary roles were to assist theinstructor in producing promotional docu-mentary films for the department's recruit-

ment campaign, assist with data collection in

the project, and screen films at the WorldArts Film festival (worldartsfi I mfestival. org.)The festival's stated purpose was "to supporlartists and filmmakers of all ages and of all

abilities, lncluding those with special needs,

to create, inspire, and share their work witheach other and the world," The festival washeld at the Modern Museum ofContemporary Ad (MOCA) in downtownJacksonville, Florida, near the campus.

The filmmaking project duration was overa l4-week semester. ln week three, the prol-

ect was begun; in week ten, first drafts offilms were due; final revised cuts were dueweek twelve; and final screening of the films

was at the festival in week 13. The under-graduate candidates' training in filmmakingwas minimal. They received a one hourdemonstration of how to use a Flip Videocamera from an instructor of technology.

The instructors and graduate assistantsprovided two 15-minute demonstrations ofproducing two two-minute class productions"shout outs" where candidates did brief skitsto introduce themselves, One artifact by

undergraduates demonstrates a basic digital

storytelling technique filmed with one cameraand little ediling (youtube.com/w atc h ? v =c n E S i OY6 P aM &f eat u r e =c 4 -

overv i ew &l i st=U U g Qw M g NNZchGYl eDU)XTTPO).

The graduate students' artifact demon-strates advanced filmmaking techniquesusing two camera angles with more sophisti-cated editing (youtube.com/watch?v=

rgXcj U h P Kog fifss\u ys=yout u. be).

The complete filmmaking process wasmodeled by the instructors, from storyboardcreating to filming, editing, and posting on

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: Strongly agree,

'.: Agree,

No opinion,i: Disagree,1 Strongly disagree, orr,' Does not apply, Feel free to make additional comments.

; I have had significant experiences in the movie-making process in my K-12 education.,,' I have significant experiences in the movie-making process in my teacher education program,'.i. I know how to use video effectively in the classroom for literacy learning.:,. I know how to use video to effectively address the learning needs of special populations.,. l feel confident I could effectively teach the filmmaking process to my students,

i.'. Creating a story board,' Hardware: camera, computer, and microphone

':. Software: Movie Maker, iMovie, or Final Cut.:,: Filming

: r.. Editingi ' Managing student group worki.,. Communicating the value of filmmaking to parents

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YouTube, The purpose was to launch partici-pation in the upcoming film festival. The stu-dents were given a digital storytelling rubricas a guide to evaluating the quality of theirfilms. They were instructed to make a five- toseven-minute documentary about someinspiring aspect of education, The studentssigned out one Flip Camera per group, notripods; but they were encouraged to seekhelp from the lnstructional Technology Lab ifthey needed assistance or had questions.Most of the assistance the students soughtoccurred at the end of the project, near thedeadline for uploading the film to a digitaldropbox. The majority of challenges theundergraduates faced were on how to editvideo and upload the finished product usingMovie Maker software. The films were evalu-ated by the two instructors and a film festival

ludge using the rubric. After a screening ofthe films at the festival, the candidates paftic-ipated in a focus group with open-ended dis-cussion to detail through flexible dialoguetheir perceptions and experiences regarding

digital storytelling. lt was filmed, with the par-ticipants' perrnission, and analyzed by theinstructors and graduate assistants.

Four undergraduate-student documentaryfilms, which averaged in length from four tosix minutes, were produced. The film titleswere The lmporlance of Recess,Homelessness in Jacksonville, ChangingLives through Mentoring Refugee Families,ESOL Empowers lnternatianal CollegeStudents, and The Jock Mentality. ln TheJock Mentality, the undergraduates' adifactdemonstrates a basic digital storytelling tech-nique " Qo utu b e. c o m/watc h ?v =TS6Qz3McVBE). This movie is based on thelives of college student athletes, who juggle amillion things in one day, giving young stu-dents the message that anything is possibleif they really try,

One film, made by a graduate assistant in

collaboration with the instructor, was pro-duced. ln Hope at Hand, lnc.,Ihe graduatestudents' arlifact demonstrates advancedfilmmaklng techniques (www. youtu be. com/

watch?v=VoPTgtcLuKLr. The film is aboutHope At Hand, Inc., a nonprofit organizationthat provides ar1 and poetry therapy tounderserved children and adults in need.

Filmmaking self-repoft pre- and post-sur-veys were used to assess parlicipants' skillsby rating their experlise on a Likerl scale withvarious media components. See Figure #1

for an example of the questionare that wasused. Pre-seryice teacher candidates self-reporled learner confidence scores on thepre- and post-surveys in Figure #2 werecompared by using group means on a scaleof 0 to 5. Scores above 3.5 were designatedhaving acceptable confidence in one's mediaability" The results indicate that the digital sto-

rytelling approach exposed the candidates tonew media literacies, which increased theirconfidence io infuse technology into theirteaching in the media skill areas. At thebeginning of the project, candidates reportedhaving scant prior knowledge and experiencewith digital storytelling/filmmaking in their ownpublic school (M=l .1 9) or college education

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(M=1.28). Candidates rated their ability to

use media literacy effectively in the class-

room, initially (Pre-M=1 .78) and at the end of

the project (Post-M=4.0). Candidates

improved their own media literacy, as evi-

denced by increased confidence with the

skills of filmmaking: storyboard creating,

operating a camera, using editing software,

and integrating sound, music, and pictures to

tell a story. Partlcipants overall gained

lnsights about diversity accommodation and

developed a connection to their community,with increased skill to communicate to par-

ents about the value of technology"

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The participants' perceptions and experi-

ences are summarized here. What they liked

most about participating in the digital story-

telling/filmmaking prolect was learning about

the inspiring stories of diverse people within

their community."l was really touched to learn about how

volunteers are making positive impact formarginal zed groups iike the homeless and

refugees within our community" was one

comment by a participant.

The second-most-popular aspect of theproject was the opportunity to increase ICT

skills for teaching. According to one student,"l really feel confident now that I will be able

to teach my students, the children, in how tomake a film documentary. This is importantthat today's youth understand how to use

technology for learning. Definitely, I liked

learning filmmaking by actually doing it,

rather than just being lectured about it."ln responding to the question "What did

you like the least about the prolect?" themajority of comments centered on the timeand demands of the prolect. "We spent hours

and hours editing our film. We had to go tothe tech lab several times for help." "We had

a hard time setting up interviews with thesubjects of our documentary because theykept cancelling and rescheduling."

ln regards to the question "How wouldyou improve the project?" most of the partici-pants expressed that they wanted more

planning time for the prolect during class

time. Meeting outside of class was difficult.

They wanted more guidance in managing thegroup work that the project required. Some

candidates were reluctant to embark on a

literacy skills. They did not see much film-

making teaching taking place in the local

public schools. The emphasis of instruction is

teaching to the high-stakes test. They were

concerned that filmmaking would take away

tco much time from the mandated curricu-

lum. They were concerned that when they

began teaching, the school would not have

ihe necessary media resources for filmmak-

ing, such as enough cameras and editing

software. They were concerned parents

would object to their children making films.

Future filmmaking projects should focus on

"buy-in" - that is, why learning technological

skills is important for teaching.

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Filmmaking offered a way for educators tointegrate lCTs the new literacies, build cross-

cultural collaboration, and help students blendpersonal empowerment with communityresponsibility. The digital stofielling approachwith a service learning component of parlici-pating in a film festival exposed the candi-dates to new media literacies, whichincreased their confidence to infuse technolo-gy into their teaching in the media skill areas.

Parlicipants improved their own media litera-

cy, as evidenced by increased confidencewith the skills of filmmaking. The padicipation

of international exchange students was mutu-ally beneficial to the learners themselves and

the institution. l[

Cuo"n J , l;, D. 1., Coiro, J., Gor1, M.,

Henty, L.A., Lima, C.O. (2OO7). "Developing

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Tech n o logy - med iated I ear n i n g e nv i ro n m entsfor young English learners: Connections in

and out of school. (1 1 1-153). Mahwah, NJ:

Lawrence Erbaum Associates. Retrieved on

September 4, 2O13 fromwww. new I iteraci es. u co n n. ed u/ p u b s. htm l.

Cheti, C, & Li, K. (2011). "Action! - Booststudents' English learning motivation withfilmmaking project." Journal of EducationalTechnology Development and Exchange,

4(1),71-80.Figg, C., & McCarlney, R. (2010). "lmpacting

academic achievement with student learners* Teaching digital stor"y.telling to others: The

ATTCSE digital video project." Contemporary

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digital storytelling in teacher learning:

Weaving together common threads." Journal

of Technology lntegration, 2 (1), 25-37.

Sadik, A. (2008). "Digital storytelling: A mean-

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engaged student learning." Education

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Stanley, N., & Ouyang, R. (2013). "Using digi-

tal storytelling, filmmaking and cross-cultural

collaboration to improve online distancelearning." Paper presented at the 25th

Conference of the lnternational Council for

Open and Distance Education (ICDE). Tianjin

Open University, China.

Stanley, N., & Dillingham, B. (2011,

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29, Retrieved on September 4,2O13 fromhtt p : // it es I j. o rg/Tec h n i q u e s / H azza rd -

MakingMovies.html.

, [email protected]. is an

associate professor of elementary education,

?nd i.-!r: .l':r!i: ii i":':;r!{i : i:;i: i-ii:\i; rr.:i:j,

[email protected], is a professor of

educational technology, childhood educationliteracy, and TESOL at the University of North

Florida, Jacksonville.