It sees elements of the curriculum being tailored to the needs of students, who are engaged as ‘partners’ in learning with their teachers, rather than maintaining a traditional hierarchical approach. Personalised learning is in no way a new initiative; many schools are already successfully adapting the curriculum for their classes.
Developments in technology have paved the way to help schools incorporate more ICT into the classroom. Useful resources, materials and programmes are now much more accessible to schools, and the structured approach of personalised learning is a great way to bring out their potential. Not all students thrive in traditionally academic classes of essay writing and book learning, so the introduction of more creative technology offers them another avenue for achievement. Simple video technology, for example, allows students to engage with rich media content more than ever before. As well as being fun, personalised learning through video making teaches the invaluable skills of analysis, synthesis and evaluation.
Setting students the challenge of making a short movie, even something as simple as an individual piece to camera or a text based film, encourages interpretation. Students need to evaluate the given subject and come up with innovative ways of using images, sound and words to reveal their findings. It offers creativity, but also the chance to develop planning, organisation and communication skills as students are given direct responsibility for their project. Above all, they still learn the academic elements of the subject, simply in a different way.
The Shakespeare unit of a Key stage 3 English class is a prime example of a topic that can be combined with technology and personalised learning. The level of literary understanding needed to create a 3 minute trailer for a film adaptation of Macbeth from digitalised clips is pretty substantial. Students would need to read (or watch) and understand the story to pick out the most important stages of the narrative. A simple edit suite, such as iMovie , allows students to cut together their own unique trailer. As well as learning to be creative, analytical and decisive, learners gain an in-depth understanding of the subject. Students can also critique their own work, so that they learn to evaluate their progress, whilst wider group discussions give them the chance to give and receive constructive criticism.
At BETT earlier this year, James Duran and St. John Starkie delivered a seminar on ‘Personalising learning through moving image production’, which gave a few great examples of video being used to personalise learning in London schools. In Key Stage 3 Geography, students were instructed to make an ITN style news report about earthquakes in Japan. They were given complete control over the project: they researched all of the information on news websites, decided which clips and images to use, wrote the script and presented the bulletin. The students took ownership of the task and the level of research they carried out meant that they all had a very solid understanding of the subject by the time the news report was completed.
Key stage 4 Dance students were given the task of producing a video of a choreographed dance routine. This was a multi-modal project, so they had to consider and organise all elements of the production, including costume, music and location. It incorporated several curricular topics, with the students choreographing, performing, shooting and editing the entire assignment themselves. Some of these elements would often be associated with a Media course, rather than Dance. The great thing about this project was that students had the chance to show personal expression through the production of the video as well as the performance itself. Looking at the students’ final write ups of their projects, it was clear that they had gained a proper grasp of numerous subjects and their associated terms and techniques, particularly in Dance (‘expression’, ‘fluency’ and ‘beat’) and Media (‘cross-dissolve’, ‘rhythm’ and ‘sequence’).
The equipment required to make simple movie projects like these is now readily available to schools and learning these types of skills in an education environment can be a great advantage when looking to enter any workplace.
Kit List
Apple iMac (Includes iLife 09, consisting of iMovie, Garageband and iPhoto)
Final Cut Express
Canon MD205 Camcorder
Adobe Creative Suite 4