Video Production in Education

I've been thinking a lot lately about the use of video production in education. For the past two years, I have been teaching a Video Production class to the 7th graders at my school. Students create movies on topics ranging from Public Service Announcements and Documentaries, to Drug Awareness and Bullying. Though most of the movies will never win any awards, my students have learned a very important new technology. As a matter of fact, many of my former students now create videos for other classes. Students in 8th grade are creating a movie based on the concepts they learned while reading The Secret Life of Bees. Another group produced a cooking show for their French class, with the entire show filmed in French.

I created a website for a presentation I am giving at the NJECC Conference at Montclair University in March. For anyone interested in using videography in education, there are some good samples as well as resources and documents that can be downloaded for use.

Please visit: http://sites.google.com/site/videographyineducation/

Celebrating Black History

I have the privilege of running my school’s Black History month assembly every year. It is a labor of love because I think it is so important for students today to understand the contributions of the many African American leaders who have formed the backbone of our nation. For the second year, we were honored to have the Newark Boys Chorus perform for us. They sang Circle of Life from Lion King and several other selections. Our keynote speaker was truly inspiring: Mr. Joe Rogers from the Dream Alive organization. He gave a compassionate and enthralling performance our students, staff and community will never forget.

In order to truly become one nation where all people are treated equally, we must never stop teaching our students about the past. We as teachers have a responsibility to help our students to move forward as the next generation, but also to ensure that they never forget the struggles of so many civil rights leaders who worked so hard to create a better world for us all.

I created a Black History video montage that we showed at the end of the assembly. Please click on the link below to watch this video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ndf1S_tYiGs