Creative Production

What impressed you most about young people's engagement with creative production?

2. What concerns do you have about young people posting content  online? 

3. Do you think most school policy toward student use of the Internet is reactionary or a necessary evil?

4. How might teachers' capitalize on student's interest in creative production with digital media?

Students use creative media as a form of expression, just as young people in the 70's & 80's used grafetti or the girls of the 50's expressed themseles with their crinolines.  (I'm told that my mother was only allowed to wear 2 and that she often took extras and changed at school.)  Young people are surprisingly adaptable to using the media that is available to them for self-expressions.  On page 252, paragraph 1 the text states, "The vast majority of photographs and videos are produced not from a creative impulse but to capture personally meaningful events and relationships."  They want to memorialize their life and experiences in a way that is easy and fun.  The creative part comes into play with those who have the inclination and the willingness to learn the skills to "step up" the creative process.

From a historical perspective when I look at a scrapbook compiled by a teenage girl in the 1930s (my grandmother) I see a mish mash of items of interest.  She expresses herself through the clippings of houses, flowers, news articles and other items of interest to her.  Her sister's scrapbook is similar, but Aunt Reva took the time to draw, annotate, and otherwise embellish her scrapbook.  Everyone was doing them, some just did them differently than others.  So too does the modern use of creative media production vary from student to student.

Young people tend to see life through rose colored glasses and do not consider the consequences of their actions.  The ability to analyze a situation and assess the various risks and consequences is a skill that is learned, oer time.  Unfortunately many young people embark upon a life online without any thought of where that connection may take them.  This is supported on page 260, paragraph 3, "What people ended up puttin on their profiles was usually not the result of planning and careful consideration, but of whatever they happened to see while making or revisiting their profiles."  Many postings made by teens are reactionary and are not planned.

Initially schools were reactive to virtual issues.  It was not comprehensible 5 years ago that the lives of young people would be so impacted by their access to technology.    When my daughter graduated from high school in 2007 she, like many of her classmates, did not own a cell phone.  Today cellphones are found in virutally every backpack in a high school.  The same can be said for laptops, IPods, IPads, and other technological devices.  So when an issue came up, such as using phones to text during tests teachers had to be reactionary.  There were no rules or guidelines to define the correct course of action.  Yet today, because of a variety of scenerios that have played out across the countryside, schoolboards are taking the preemptive route and establishing policies that are often restrictive.

Recently the Harrison County (WV) schoolboard had lengthy discussion on establishing policy for acceptable use of Facebook by students, when they were OUTSIDE the school environment.  While this particular situation was reactionary based upon a posting by a student the subsequent discussion and creation of policy was preemptive as they board attempted to created scenerios and potential risks and solutions by creating restrictive policies now.

I recently attended the Mountain State Art & Craft Show in Ripley,WV.  A young women had photos for sale that were all taken on her Android Phone.  All editing and labeling was done on her phone.  She told me that she will sometimes take as many as 2,000 photos a day - on her phone.  She converts all her images to black and white and then emails them to herself for printing.  From her selected shots she creates 5x7, & 8x10 matted prints, notecards, and postcards.  She sells her goods at craft shows across the state.  What an incredible opportunity for teachers to incorporate a similar process into the classroom.  By expanding the adaptive use of what has become an everyday item, students can develop videos and photo montages as creative outlets and forms of expression.

In 2008 my son, who was a senior in high school, was given the assignment to "collect a ghost story" in any manner he deemed appropriate.  He chose to use his video camera and videotaped the telling of a tale and then visited the site where the haunting took place.  Today, the same teacher requires that students produce either a Powerpoint or a video for the same assignment.  She no longer accepts posters on non-digital submissions.  She has made arrangements so that students with limited access to technology can obtain and use the appropriate resources.

I found this wonderful opening for a film, all the way from Great Britain......

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oCGI5R70z7o
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This is supposed to be the opening for a film called Slash, a practical project in GCSE Media Studies with Mr Milton. Tom Gardiner, Kieran Rea, Zac Webb and Harrison Cooper were the group behind this, and we thought we'd upload it for you to watch :)"