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Granite School District Uses Studio and Edition to Enhance
Project-Based Learning Curriculum
Granite School District, the second largest district in Utah, is using Studio software in most of their schools. They also have 30 licenses of Edition in Secondary schools. They use Pinnacle across the curriculum, from third grade through high school.
"It’s everybody from high school PE teachers to elementary language arts teachers. Some teachers are using digital video in Special Ed classes," said Terry Nielson, one of the district's six instructional technology specialists.
"We’re trying to make technology an integral part of what students do in class. We want teachers to look at things a little differently. Our goal is to move them from lecture mode into project-based learning," said Nielson. "We realize that we can no longer focus solely on presenting content, since content changes daily. We must give students tools to deal with change and to be lifelong learners. We feel digital video is an exciting tool for them to access, manage, and communicate information."
One of the programs Nielson helped start was to hand out laptop minilabs to teachers who applied for them. After receiving 16 hours of training about how to integrate technology into the curriculum, teachers were given five wireless laptops to use as a "minilab," along with a wireless access point, a DV camera, and Studio installed on all five machines.
Some schools and school districts might balk at the idea of incorporating something involving cameras, computers and special hardware and software into the curriculum, anticipating a huge price tag. Nielson believes that it’s possible to do what his district is doing on a much more scaled down level if necessary.
"I don’t think cost is really that prohibitive because there are so many different formulas and configurations you can use in the classroom," he said. "If you only have one computer and one camera, you can still do some very involving things with them."
Nielson believes that part of the reason his program has been so successful is that students can try out all of the different jobs in the process of putting a video project together. This allows each student to find his or her own strength and make a valuable contribution to the group or class.
"We really stress co-op learning and assigning roles to the kids. If the whole class is making a video, we’ll have one group in charge of storyboarding, one group in charge of the actual filming, one group working on the set, and so on. We involve all of the kids in it," he said.
Among hundreds of projects in the works this year, he's seen a production of "Taming of the Shrew" filmed by a 5th grade literature class, a claymation film project based on an original "Canterbury Tale" written by high school students, and some exceptional math and science videos.
"The kids just take it and run with it like crazy," Nielson said. "We have teachers come to the training shaking their heads, saying ‘I’ll never learn this. I don’t dare take it to my kids until I do learn it,’ and we try to change that mindset because the kids aren’t scared of it, and they can actually help the teachers learn it. The students can learn it by themselves, which is another thing I like about Studio. It has a very friendly and logical interface. It’s intuitive - students can explore and experiment to find what they need. It’s a simple enough editor that the tool doesn’t get in the way of the learning."
Nielson added, "I'm a foreign language and humanities teacher, and I've seen some amazingly original and creative video ideas come from language and art classes. Advanced language students are creating short videos explaining grammar concepts for beginning students, and a middle school Spanish class has used Pinnacle to edit an orientation video in Spanish introducing their school to new students from Spanish-speaking countries. Our students are really taking this technology in new and unforeseen directions, and it's exciting to watch."
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