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Observation I Attending a seminar for professionals in the video production business was an astounding preview for what I was to learn in Video Production. These are people whose breakfast conversations can be about video taping a young child preparing for an operation and in the next breath they might be relating the difficulties of filming in a war zone, or of a raid on a South American drug lord's house. But the point of the seminar was to instruct other professionals and mold real experiences for newcomers. The introductory teachers included more real-life applications of film methods than one might encounter in many hours of readings. Concepts were more often illustrated by the speakers than lecturing about them. Definitions and explanations were left to the last as an obvious conclusion to what the student had just experienced or seen. Illustrations of concepts were demonstrated by methods which included moving about the room to indicate the problems with panning and zooming, and, of course, by many reels of video. In the video examples, all the concepts were demonstrated by showing the correct method and the incorrect method. Students were often challenged to find the element that was an incorrect method before discussion. The seminar was summarized in two simple rules to live by: 1) Did you tell a story? and 2) Did you make me feel? These became my guides as I began the class in Video Production, and certainly deserve the lead role when any video is shot. Back to top |
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Observation II I visited a high school classroom in the Birdville Independent School District to observe instruction in an introductory class in multimedia. Meeting one of the district's requirements for graduation, the class was open to all levels, but the majority of students being in upper-level classes. The students were focused and worked independently. Perhaps this was more the case because this was in the final weeks of the class and most introductory instruction had already taken place. Students are introduced to the primary elements of multimedia with applications in sound, web page construction, graphics, animation, and presentation. The software used include Sound Forge, DreamWeaver, Flash, Adobe PhotoShop, and Adobe Illustrator. The hardware, however, I found to be somewhat limited. These were older Dell Optiplex 110 computers without CD burners. The teacher also had only two scanners in a classroom of 25 computers. Digital cameras were shared within the department. Instruction takes place by both the teacher's demonstration of techniques on a TV screen, and by giving the students handouts of tutorial instructions. On the day of the observation, the teacher met several TEKS in multimedia and web mastering including the appropriate use of hardware components and software programs; data input skills used appropriately for a given task; the use of appropriate computer-based productivity tools to create and modify; the use of technology applications to facilitate evaluation of work, both process and product; and the formatting of digital information for appropriate and effective communication. The realistic application of
this class focuses on business-related issues.
Although this is not the only significance of
multimedia capabilities, it has a direct
relationship to the new world environment of
international communication exigencies. Any
student headed in that direction must have a
familiarity with these media. |
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