Borderland

Is self-directed professional development possible? This is the story of how I got pulled into Borderland. Maybe Graham can use some of this as validation of his plan.

In January of 2003, I saw a flyer for a course, “Multimedia for Teachers.” I was nervous about signing up for it because I didn’t know anything about computers. Only 5 people enrolled in the course. The instructor had us look at the syllabus, and then he told us to tear it up. Then I knew this was going to be interesting.

We talked about what we wanted to learn. We agreed that making digital video would be a good starting point. We made slideshows with music and voice to create a mood. We walked around the building where the class met and shot video that we learned to edit. We messed around with these things for a couple of weeks and then our instructor introduced us to the idea of creating a vehicle that we could use to publish a multimedia project. He asked us to begin thinking about a larger project that would be multidimensional, and that would integrate audio, graphics, and text. I had no clear ideas for what I might do since I didn’t know what alternatives were available. During the first few weeks the instructor introduced us to different software applications, but in the end we were free to choose which we wanted and how to use them.

I made a movie about a field trip my class made to the central kitchen where all of the school lunches are prepared. The kids were invited to work on the conveyor belt where the lunches are packaged. They loved seeing themselves in the movie. I edited it in class during their lunch period and projected it on the LCD projector while I worked, and the kids began to watch the film very closely. They noticed several inconsistencies. Notably, they saw that the lunches they were eating in the classroom were not the lunches we helped to make. I explained that I filmed the last half of the film before the first half.

“Editing the film makes it easy to lie about what really happened,” I told them. “We aren’t showing what actually happened. We’re telling a new story.”

I began to think about this. Our film was not a reconstruction of our trip. It was an entirely new text. I was impressed by that because I learned how easy it is to lie with a video camera. Sequences of events can be manipulated. Audio tracks can be edited so that words can literally be put into people’s mouths. Because people are so willing to accept what they see and hear, a person with a video camera can create a reality that never actually existed. I had no idea how easy it is to do that before making that video. After I finished making the video I began to explore ways of distributing video projects. The Hot Lunch story was off-limits for public distribution. The project began as a learning exercise for me, so I didn’t take the time to plan what I might ultimately do with it. I didn’t consider the copyright issues involved in using a commercial CD soundtrack, and I didn’t get permissions from all of the students’ parents to put them in a video.

I knew then, though, that video is a powerful medium for storytelling. I wanted to make movies with students that more people could see. The part of my multimedia class that required me to package multimedia projects led me to begin thinking about the internet as a vehicle. One of our class meetings introduced us to Macromedia’s Dreamweaver and Fireworks. The programs were more complicated than iMovie. I found it difficult to simply open them up and begin creating things. So I went down to the University of Alaska’s technology store and bought the Macromedia Studio MX software package. It came with Dreamweaver and Fireworks, and it also had Flash. My idea was that I would begin to work at home with these programs so that I could develop a web based project that would include short videos. [Still working on that!]

Each person in the class had a different idea. One woman made an iMovie of her wedding. Someone else made a website for her neighborhood. An art teacher built an art history presentation using Power Point. The remarkable thing about the class was that we became a mutual support group. I’ve never been in a class where there was more cheering! It was the most fun course I’ve ever attended. I worked hard at home. I learned to solve problems on my own. I came to class with questions about things I couldn’t figure out. I began reading computer manuals! The instructor moved around the room answering questions and helping to solve problems.

Graham, it sounds a lot like what you proposed. It worked for me, and for the other people in the group. I know that a more directed syllabus, the one we tore up and lost, would have been a drag.

From that class I developed interests in learning more about tools that I saw might be valuable to me. One thing led to another: Flash, Dreamweaver, PHP, Blogs and Wikis. Each thing came to seem important as I became more aware of a bigger range of possibilities. A lot of what I attempted was because I slowly began to see myself as capable of doing more. Now I’m just messin’ with the ultimate educational technology – curriculum – using a bigger toolbox than I used to have.