Dear Readers,
Today’s topic is about filmmaking and its usage and influence in TEFL classrooms.
In my opinion one of the most creative and exciting tasks to carry out in your language learning classrooms is to ask your students to make a short film about a topic. It may sound strange and you may think that the process is too difficult and time-consuming to ask for. But if you experience making a short film/video once, you will surely understand the high motivation and creative thinking in the process. As Stanley Kubrick says “If it can be written or thought, it can be filmed!”
You will be successful in using new technologies in your classrooms if you give clear, step by step instructions to your students. For example, before giving the filmmaking assignment to your students you should ask them to fill in the storyboarding forms in class. It would be an effective warm up activity for them to brainstorm and decide about the topic and sequence of events in their film.
Since all films have crew members, you will divide your students into groups. I advise you to choose the members wisely. For example, there would be some students who are good at using technologies and some who have good imaginations and can create innovative stories. As a result, each member will receive an equal amount of work.
In addition, a video I watched on YouTube emphasized the idea of craft funding in order to advertise your film and receive money. This can be used as a fund to buy more materials in your school. I think that if the internet and computers were easily accessible in villages, then it could be an effective way to raise money in Armenia for educational purposes. Moreover, the goal of filmmaking can be towards raising awareness. As I am designing a course about women’s empowerment, I can make short videos according to the challenges women face in Armenia. Or I could ask my learners to choose a topic and support their idea with making a short film about it.
The editing tools which are available to edit, cut and make your video more complete are ‘wevideo’ and ‘YouTube editor’. You may want to have some training sessions with your students on YouTube to teach them about the video composition, basic camera angles and moves, basic lighting tips etc.
As practice my friend and I created a short video about a craft project. We demonstrated how to make a Valentine’s Day card, we had a really good time at editing the video and recording our voice. We hope that the audience will enjoy it!
Teaching is fun! 