Movie-Making as a Model for Learning

What do movies communicate? They entertain us by telling a story, motivate us by moving us to action, or puzzle us by posing a question for consideration. Aren't these some of the ways we like to learn best? Yet, here we are talking about the final product. I'm wondering, what do we learn from making movies, and from making them in collaboration with others?

Movie-making, by its very nature is a collaborative process. I have just completed a workshop with master media-teaching mentor Marco Torres as part of Alan November's Building Learning Communities 10, something I have wanted to do for several years. And I have learned from Marco one of his key precepts: "The product is part of the process." The learning comes from the whole enchilada.

What do we learn from making movies together? First, there's the brainstorming, articulating, planning part of the process. During these discussions, we learn how to animate our curiosity and inspiration. We learn how to figure out ways to push out an idea so that others will take a second look at it.

We learn to translate an idea in to words (script) or sketches (storyboards). We learn how to communicate in careful and precise detail to a crew.We learn how to make purposeful choices -- and determine those choices in conversations with others. ("Make the camera movements purposeful," Marco says.) We learn how to project ideas from multiple perspectives (using camera angles, different types of shots).

During production, we learn how to see (borrowing the "rule of thirds" and other commandments from photography). We learn how to listen. We learn how to ask permission. We learn how to work under tight time constraints. We learn how to plan and implement a project based on that plan.

When we edit, we learn how to focus on our purpose and cut whatever doesn't add to that purpose.  We learn to look for ways to tie everything together.  We learn how to present our work to others in rough form, reflect on our challenges and our learning. We learn how others see what we do. We learn how to go back and make it better.

Oh, yeah. We learned how to do this in two days. Here's the movie my husband, Larry Kahn, and I finished this afternoon.  (I've revised this blog to include the YouTube version for you iFolks. Unfortunately, this version cuts off the side.  You can't win, I guess.)




(Thank you, Marco, Rosa, Elizabeth, and Miguel.)

Julie and Julia

You know blogging has become mainstream when...Hollywood makes a movie about it.

But Julie and Julia makes me think about those who have not yet embraced blogging. And about those who don't understand the way it empowers and gives voice to...well...just about anyone.

In the movie Julie's blog serves as a kind of therapy along with her cooking. But the important thing is that she finds a way to celebrate learning (via Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking) by sharing the learning process with an unknown audience. That audience grows from her husband and friends and mother to hosts of others who share her interest in food and who make an intellectual or emotional investment in her project.

And we empathize with Julie's evolution as a blogger -- her typing into the void, her excitement when she is discovered by her first readers, her quandary about what to publish and what not to publish about her personal life. We want her to succeed in blogging (teaching, reflecting, sharing) about cooking each of the several hundred recipes in Child's influential book. We celebrate how she is an interactive reader who digests the book (in more ways than one) and produces something all her own.

Blogs may very well be one of the key tools for teaching and learning we have at our disposal today. So why are we still assigning the five-paragraph theme?

-- Susan

Thoroughly Modern Media

We are exploring ways to create meaningful content, learn for life and work, and grow as thoughtful users of media. We are teachers by day, Internet trapeze artists by night, and learners always.

-- Susan and Renee