Arnedillo Sánchez, I., Tangney, B. (2006) Mobile Technology Towards Overcoming Technology & Time Constrains in Digital Video Production. In P. Isaias, P. Kommers & I. Arnedillo Sánchez (Eds.), Mobile Learning 2006. Dublin: International Association for Development of the Information Society Press (pp. 256259).
MOBILE TECHNOLOGY TOWARDS OVERCOMING TECHNOLOGY & TIME CONSTRAINS IN DIGITAL VIDEO PRODUCTION Inmaculada Arnedillo-Sánchez School of Computer Science & Statistics Trinity College Dublin
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Brendan Tangney School of Computer Science & Statistics Trinity College Dublin
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ABSTRACT The benefits of Digital Video Production (DVP) for teaching and learning are well documented and broad in scope. In particular, DVP provides opportunities for collaborative learning (Buckingham, 2003; Burn, et al., 2001), it encourages creativity and self-expression (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002), deeper thinking (Swain, et al., 2003) and draws on students’ out-of-school interest (Parker, 2002). Notwithstanding the many potential benefits of DVP, its use in formal education as a learning methodology is still minimal. Access to technology and time constraints (Burden & Kuechel, 2004; Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002) are reported as two of the main barriers to the widespread adoption of DVP as a teaching and learning tool. This paper presents an approach to DVP that attempts to overcome the previous disadvantages while still maintaining the learning benefits of the DVP process. In particular, we discuss a methodological approach designed by one of the authors. This utilises mobile telephones and other technology to bypass difficulties arising from access to technology and the traditional lengthy DVP process. The approach incorporates ‘unorthodox’ techniques borrowed from “improv” theatre as part of the creative process. Workshops run following our methodology aim to accomplish the production of a digital video (DV) from conception of idea to final production in approximately three hours. This is possible by taking advantage of the flexibility and portability of mobile phones that allow us to somehow parallelise the traditional sequential DVP process. This paper analyses elements of our approach through three case studies: Workshop A with adult learners on an MSc program in Technology and Learning; Workshop B with teenagers at an after school “Computer Clubhouse” activity run in the authors’ university; and Workshop 3 with groups of 10 teenagers from the shanty towns of Cape Town. KEYWORDS Mobile technology; Mobile telephones; Digital video production; Collaboration; Creativity
1. INTRODUCTION DVP has the potential to facilitate collaborative learning (Buckingham, 2003) communication, negotiation, decision making and problem solving skills (Burn, et al., 2001), deeper thinking (Swain, et al., 2003), encourage creativity and self-expression (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002) and draw on students’ out-ofschool interest (Parker, 2002). Research in the use of DVP in formal educational settings is still limited, but arguably in the increase, as the technology to enable DVP becomes financially more accessible (Becta,
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2003; Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002). In recent years, efforts have been made to supports digital video (DV) projects in schools (Burden & Kuechel, 2004; Nesta, 2005; Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002) however, access to technology and time investment in DVP remain two of the critical factors restricting its wide adoption as a learning tool (Burden & Kuechel, 2004). While limitations imposed by the availability of equipment may work to the advantage of group work, “Herculean classroom management efforts” are required to overcome these shortcomings (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002) and technology dependent activities such as filming and editing, offering the greatest learning benefits (Becta, 2003), become impractical as a whole group activity. Furthermore, the traditionally sequential and time consuming process of DVP encompassing planning, storyboarding, scripting, filming and editing finds a difficult habitat in rigid school timetabling. The increasing capabilities of mobile phones and their staggering growing penetration among youth and children, with a million children under the age of 10 owning a mobile phone (mobileYouth), clearly indicates the need to investigate their role as learning tools (Naismith, Lonsdale, Vavoula, & Sharples, 2005). In previous work (McGreen & Arnedillo Sánchez, 2005), we have argued for the use of mobile phones to support creative processes and enable the creation of Digital Narratives. Thus, proposing multimedia capable mobile phones as a viable alternative to digital cameras. Our trade off, quality for accessibility, is supported in the literature with examples of ‘limited’ easy-to-use digital video cameras (Digital Blue) being used with students with learning difficulties (Burden & Kuechel, 2004). Furthermore a creative pioneer programme, Pocket Shorts (Nesta, 2004), supports film directors to embrace a new film genre and methods of production for mobile phones.
2. THE WORKSHOP AND CASE STUDIES We have developed a methodological approach which uses mobile phones and other computing devices to scaffold learners in the process of DVP. The scaffolding encompasses the entire process from conception of the idea, through elaboration of the story to be told, to filming and final editing. The method borrows ideas from a variety of sources ranging from standard work on media production (Buckingham, et al., 1995; Sefton-Green & Sinker, 2000) to “improv” theatre techniques. Our aim is to complete two to four minute DV in approximately three hours from the group initially getting together to final screening of the finished piece. After a series of ice-breaking exercises the participants are guided through a simple story generation ‘template’. By doing so they are prompted to identify the setting, the key characters, their main characteristics, as well as the events in the story to be told. This first phase of the workshop borrows from improv theatre techniques to bring the voices of the participants into the DV and facilitate self-expression (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002). Film-maker Ron Peck (Nesta, 2002) argues for improvisation techniques when working with non-professionals and states that the quality achieved is substantially different to that obtained with a written script. Bypassing the script writing, through capturing the main ideas of the story on a concept-map, allows us to create, negotiate and share an understanding of the storyline in a very short period of time. The concept-map becomes in fact the ‘script’ that participants take away on location while filming. Still images or video clips of the actors playing out the story are ‘filmed’ and dialogues, narrations, and sound effects recorded using mobile phones. The ‘footage’ and ‘sound’ can be transferred to a PC in a number of different ways: distant permitting, by simply walking back to the editing station and docking the phone with the PC; through sending the media to a foneblog in the internet from which the editor access it; through Infrared, Bluetooth; and MMS. The latter is by far the most interesting alternative as it exploits the “phone-ness” (Owen, 2005) of the device thus, its intrinsic communication function. The flexibility, mobility and communication capabilities of the mobile phone allow us to start editing shortly after filming has started, with multiple capturing devices further contributing to ‘parallelising’ filming and editing. Consequently, the media arrives to the editing station much faster than with a traditional approach and technology which requires a lengthy process of data transfer from the digital camera to the PC. In our approach it is important to designate editors that stay behind at the editing station to start editing as soon as the ‘footage’ arrives. By the time cast and crew return to the editing station, the editors have a first version of the DV that is then viewed, discussed, re-edited and fine tuned to the pleasing of the entire group. This final group editing process is facilitated by a portable data projector which enables whole group participation and further facilitates collaboration.
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The analysis of the role of mobile technology in facilitating this methodological approach, given in section three, is based upon three different instances of this workshop: Workshop A with 26 adult learners on an M.Sc. program in Technology and Learning; Workshop B with 10 teenagers at an after school “Computer Clubhouse” activity run in the authors’ university; and Workshop C repetitively run with five groups, of 10 teenagers each, from the shanty towns of Cape Town under the auspices of the Sithengi Film Festival. One of the authors was involved in each of the workshops in the role of facilitator and participatory researchers. The technology used included a notebook computer for editing; the editing software utilised was the freely available MovieMaker2 from Microsoft; a portable data projector to project the collaborative editing process and final movies. All filming was done with a variety of mobile telephones among which were a standard Ericson camera mobile phone and three XDAs. In workshop B the participants also had access to an interactive whiteboard and a concept-mapping tool was used to scaffold the story creation.
3. ANALYSIS From our preliminary analysis of the workshops to we make a number of observations in relation to the role mobile technology can play in facilitating the DVP process. Detailed discussion of the issues arising is beyond the scope of this short paper but is the subject of ongoing in-depth research. In relation to the Learning Experience in all cases the participants’ feedback was very positive and some of the comments made reflect this. “It was practical, hands-on learning that everyone felt could be adapted for whatever they were doing in the future”, “It was great to see the sheer enjoyment and fun that people seemed to be having particularly as the movie came together and the story unfolded”, “we have done a great job!”. Participants experienced the benefits attributed to more sophisticated and lengthier DVP, including the enactment of communication, negotiation, decision making and problem solving skills (Burn et al., 2001), deeper thinking (Swain et al, 2003), and creativity and self-expression (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002). However, the sense of satisfaction, achievement and stroke to self-esteem gained from producing a complete DV that was publicly displayed to an audience (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002; Ryan, 2002) is a highlight. Our approach is fully cognisant of the benefits of having an audience and our DVs are always ‘screened’. In Workshop A the participants were divided into two groups and each group provided an audience for the other; in Workshop B the teenagers are part of a wider project that involves at least four parallel workshops including ours. At the end of the nine-week period there is an Award Ceremony for all the participants in the ‘Computer Clubhouse’ to which parents, friends, teachers and others are invited; in Workshop C our DVs were screened to the participants of the Children’s Festival. Our approach does impose constraints and limitations, some inherent to the technology itself - as a student commented: Unfortunately the technology let us down in some places but in the end we produced what we were looking for; others as the ‘story generation template’ and role allocation, editor and so on, out of pedagogical choice. In this regard, we agree with others (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002; Sharples, 1999) who argue for setting constraints in order to draw out creativity from students. Our technological approach is what we describe as a lab in a knapsack. All the equipment needed to run the workshop, laptop, projector, mobile devices and power adapters, fits into a single knapsack providing great flexibility in relation to where the workshops can take place. This was of particular benefit in the case of workshop C which was held in the bar of a theatre. Such flexibility is of crucial importance when working in informal learning settings enabling the technology to truly act as a facilitator rather than becoming a barrier. The ‘cheap’ and ready-at-hand filming equipment ensures greater accessibility to DVP even in ad hoc learning environments as the ones mentioned. The image and sound quality obtained from the mobile phones used is adequate – our approach trades off quality of the final product for the quality of the DVP process and more importantly for the possibility of offering this learning experiences to more participants. Mobile phones are significantly cheaper than digital video cameras and are devices which participants are already well familiar with which further contributes to drawing from the students’ out-of-school interest (Parker, 2002) and to bridge between their different worlds such as private and public, school and home, solitary and communal (Reid, Burn, & Parker, 2002). The mobile devices are what the German philosopher Martin Heidegger describes as “ready-at-hand” tools: available, within one’s reach and utilised as opposed to wide-spread “present-at-hand” technology: present but not available for work.
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In relation to technical concerns, when working under tight time constraints and relying on mobile phone service provides either to SMS, MMS or send media to the foneblog, the time it takes to transfer the media from the mobile devices to the laptop can be a slight cause of concern. We attempt to partially overcome this problem by utilising multiple capturing devices so that filming can still go on while the footage and sound are being transferred to the laptop for editing. As often occurs when implementing technology facilitated learning experiences, and mobile technology in particular, the workshops were not free of technical problems. The transfer time for images from the mobile devices to the laptop has already been mentioned but other technical problems which arose include the incompatibility of media capture with different devices and the editing software, the limitations imposed by mobile phone operators in MMS data transfer, the lost of edited DV and other hitches.
4. CONCLUSION The space limitations of this short paper do not allow for in-depth discussion of the finding of our ongoing research however, we argue that the approach presented here is one worthy of further research and one that puts forward a feasible and pedagogical sound solution to the wider adoption of DVP for learning. Much of the research to date in DVP seems to be particularly focused on the final product, the actual DV and its quality from an aesthetic view point. For those with that objective in mind, our proposition may sound as a blasphemy. For us and many others who wear the teacher hat and are concerned with the learning processes afforded by DVP as opposed to the end product, the beeping and ring of mobile phones is music to our ears. We urge researchers to exploit the phone-ness (Owen, 2005) of mobile phones and the potential of other mobile devices to provide and facilitate learning experiences that could simply not be dreamt of without the affordances provided by mobile technology.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Our deepest gratitude goes to David Keating of ‘Have More Fun Ltd’ for believing in the concept and participating in numerous workshops. His practitioner insights as a film director and writer have greatly inspired our methodological approach. This research was partly supported by the Trinity Trust.
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