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Showcase of Innovative Practice
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Lights, Camera, Active Learning!
Enhancing ESL Instruction Through Video Projects
by Eduardo Honold
As a woman absentmindedly wheels her cart around a supermarket aisle
she bumps into another woman's cart causing a bottle of oil to spill onto
the floor. A brief argument ensues as both women accuse each other of
causing the mishap. After the store manager is called to the scene, she
invites the women to discuss the situation in her office and the problem
is resolved amicably. Is this a scene for a made-for-TV movie? No. It's
one of the many video projects that adult ESL students at Socorro ISD
have been developing through their participation in an EL Civics pilot
program over the past three years. This program, which seeks to evaluate
best practices for ESL in this border community, uses student video projects
as an exciting new strategy to enhance English language acquisition and
to develop transferable technological and workplace skills. As a teacher
with no previous experience with video production, I was surprised how
quickly students learned to storyboard, write, shoot, and edit a wide
range of video projects. More importantly, the process of making a video
provided my students with great opportunities to engage in active learning
and to develop valuable skills such as problem solving, working cooperatively,
and communicating effectively with others. I am convinced that any adult
ESL teacher can, with only a little training and the proper equipment
(A DV format video camera, a firewire cable, video editing software, and
a computer) reach similar results in his or her classroom. Here is a brief
sampling of these projects (a more detailed explanation of these projects
and some samples of these videos can be found at http://www.bordercivics.org.
Multimedia Poems: students wrote poems about their experiences
living on the border, illustrated them with appropriate pictures or clip
art for a PowerPoint that also included a video of each student reading
his or her poem.
Self-interviews: Students taped interviews of each other concerning their
lives on the border. They wrote their own questions and answers, and edited
the interviews.
Field Trips: Students prepared questions about the place they
are going to visit (art museum, library, etc.) and tried to answer them
on camera.
Community Service: Students taped their own efforts to help
in the community by singing Christmas carols in an elder care facility.
How-to Videos: Students demonstrated a special skill such as
changing the coolant in a car or writing checks in front of the camera.
Problem-Solving Videos: After discussing a variety of every
day problems (e.g. breaking a bottle of oil at the store) students storyboard
and shot a video that illustrated the problem.
Newscast: Students simulated a complete local newscast including
news stories about their community, weather, sports, commercials and public
service announcements.
The length and complexity of these projects ranged from a few class sessions
to 3 weeks in the case of the newscast. In my class we began with simple
projects such as adding a video box to PowerPoint poems. Once the students
became more comfortable with the equipment, we allowed them to shoot more
complex videos outside the classroom without supervision. Although this
required a leap of faith on our part, none of the equipment was ever damaged
or lost. The more complex projects such as the problem-solving videos
and the newscast benefited from the use of storyboarding techniques that
encouraged students to plan out the narrative of their video from scene
to scene using hand drawn pictures and some of the dialogue.
Teacher training was an essential component to the success of these video
projects. As part of the ESL Civics pilot program, teachers received ongoing
support from consultants, Heide Wrigley and Jim Powrie, on ways to incorporate
technology into the ESL classroom. From a curriculum standpoint, teachers
learned to encourage students to take risks in using their language skills
and to bring the outside world into the classroom with a variety of print
and Internet resources. Although teachers in Socorro participated in hands-on
training on the basics of making and editing videos, most of us learned
these skills by trial and error in a "just in time" basis, meaning that
a particular skill was mastered by the students and the teachers only
when it was required to complete a project. Because the teachers often
did not feel like video "experts," they worked collaboratively with the
students.
The benefits of these projects have been particularly evident for intermediate
and advanced ESL students who have found a safe and exciting way to display
their talents to a larger public. They have shared their work with lower
level students in the class and participated in a large student showcase
attended by various adult programs in our district. My students' self-confidence
in their ability to use English effectively was significantly enhanced
after their work was presented in a cable public access channel program
and in various local, regional, and national adult education conferences.
Ultimately, video projects work because they allow students to develop
an exciting product they can share with others while engaging in basic
reading, writing, speaking, and effective language acquisition. I hope
teachers and administrators will be convinced that a rather modest investment
in equipment and training can yield visible results in terms of student
motivation, attendance, and assessment.
References
Essex, C. and Hallett, K. (Nov/Dec 2002). Supporting instructors in the
creation of digital video projects: Lessons learned. Educational Technology,
42(6), pgs. 58-59.
Gold, R. and Serim, F. (Apr 2002). MultiMedia comes of age: The future
Is now in Lawrenceville, New Jersey. MultiMedia Schools, 9(2),
pgs. 14-16, and 18-20.
Limpus, B. (1994). Lights, camera, action! A guide to using video production
and instruction in the classroom. Teacher Guide, 89 pages, ERIC Access
number ED398160.
Pickel, R. and Simon, C. (Win 2000), Class produces daily newscast. Broadcast
Journalism Course Outline. Communi-cation: Journalism Education Today,
34(2), pgs. 9, 16, and 18-19.
Wrigley, H. (1993). Innovative programs and promising practices in adult
ESL literacy. Adjunct ERIC Clearinghouse on Literacy Education, ERIC
Access number ED358748.
About the Author
Eduardo Honold has been an Even Start instructor at the Escontrias Early
Childhood Center in Socorro, Texas for the past four years.
 
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