International Digifilms for Education and Awareness

On March 15th, 2004, classrooms in 16 different countries and five US states began work as pioneers of MovingVoices, a new iEARN program to explore and establish the cultural and educational benefits of making and sharing original student-made films via the World Wide Web.(See the press release in .pdf format.)

The vision for MovingVoices is simple. Students around the world will use the power of digital films to move and inform far-flung audiences. The films will be rich, authentic resources for learning. They will contribute to increased understanding of our neighbors in our evermore interdependent world.

With the increasing availability of powerful, low cost technologies for digital filmmaking — digital camcorders, computer-based editing systems — and the promise of increased worldwide access to broadband Internet distribution networks, 2004 seemed like the right time to test the practicality of the vision.

• Support the charter group of MovingVoices teachers and studentsas innovators and trailblazers who will show the way for others who follow.

• Establish the role collaborative online discussions can play in realizing the project's opportunities for teaching, learning, and increasing cultural understanding.

• Explore ways to make finished student films available to be shared and used by schools and other audiences.

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What the Students Are Doing

During the nine week pilot phases, each of the 20 teachers will be helping their students develop their unique films in response to a simple thematic statement: "What We Want the World to Know About Our School".

Roughly half of the course is being spent developing the story the students want to tell through a progression of evermore detailed planning documents — from the basic idea in a sentence to a film "treatment", then script, with accompanying story boards and production notes. In the second half of the course, teachers will organize their classes into production teams. Students will use mini DV camcorders to record the sights, sounds, scenes, and characters they have envisioned. They will use computer-based editing software to sequence and pace the unfolding of their story. Each week, students from all 20 pilot classrooms will be able to share their ideas and the challenges they face via the course's interactive online forum.

What Teachers Are Doing

Teachers will be using their own forum to reflect upon the teaching and learning challenges that go along with student-filmmaking, such as how the process advances learning goals in specific curriculum areas, how to organize and manage their classes, how regular online collaborations helps students — and the teachers themselves — reflect upon their own cultural identify and gain a clearer understanding of their peers around the world.

At the end of the project, teacher and student participants will be asked to submit journals or reports that details how they benefited from the project, the practical hurdles they had to overcome, and their recommendations for how MovingVoices can be improved and expanded.

iEARN Facilitation

Throughout the course, teachers have real time access to iEARN facilitators who are in place to help solve the wide range of problems that may naturally arise in such an ambitious undertaking. Whether the issues are technical or pedagogical, the facilitators are available to make it all add up to a richly rewarding educational experience for all involved.

Sharing the Results

Duplicates of the finished films will be stored on a public Internet server. They will be the debut offerings of what is believed to be the first-of-its-kind online educational repository of original student films about their lives and local communities. Teachers and students around the world will be invited to download and use the films to enrich their coursework in social studies, second language acquisition, and language and visual arts.

Equally important, the charter participants of MovingVoices will help to establish a methodology that will encourage other students and teachers to avail themselves of today's digital filmmaking and distribution technologies. Current plans call for successful MovingVoices approaches to be applied to the any of the wide range of iEARN projects. New student films will be produced and shared, further enriching teaching and learning through both the making and viewing of student films.

The first steps in setting these synergies in motion will come with the production of a MovingVoices Resources CD Kit and presentation of the findings of the pilot at major international education and technology conferences, including the 2004 iEARN International Conference in Slovakia.

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