The most challenging thing, and also the thing which
stimulated the most creativity about this project was the amount of freedom we
had. While there were parameters as to the different “tracks” we had to
include, the rest was up to us to figure out. Our biggest struggle in putting
this project together was simply figuring out what we wanted to include in our
performance. We had a subject early on, but it took us a long time to put the
project together as a whole. It was a great exercise in group collaboration. To
start out we had to figure out something that we all felt passionate about. We
talked about things we all had in common. The commonality that resonated with
us most was our current role as pre-service teachers. We decided to explore our
hopes and fears, as well as how the outside view of teachers measures up with
our personal experiences. From there we moved step by step forward until we had
something usable. Developing this project around this topic really ended up
helping me figure out my own insecurities about teaching, and increased my
confidence in myself as a future teacher. It was interesting to create
something like this out of nothing and have it turn out to be something that
was impactful for me. The technical aspects of this project were definitely a
challenge for us. Even though we had had some training with sound mixing and
things in this class, we were still very much tech newbies in our group. The
technical elements of this took a really long time for us to put together. So
much so that we got pretty frustrated with the whole thing. It turned out
pretty smooth in the end, which was nice, but the process was a struggle. But
really this was the best was the best way for my group and I to learn a lot of
the tech skills we needed. Figuring it out on our own helped us to be a lot
more confident in how to problem solve in the programs. I now feel that I could
do a similar project in the future without quite as much of a struggle.
I think that it could be very beneficial to do something
like this in a high school classroom. It is a great combination of teaching
creativity, performance, writing, and tech skills all in one project. It also
gives the students a great amount of ownership. However, I do think that it
would be good to provide more structure in the assignment. It needs to be
connected to something in the class with a purpose behind it. For example, you
could have a theatre class do something like this when devising a piece as a
class. You could have an English class do this when they are writing poetry.
Have the students write their own poems, and perform them while also
incorporating media tracks. I think that if you expect your students to be able
to do this kind of project that they will definitely need some tech training
before doing it. There would need to be scaffolding within this class before
giving this much of tech heavy assignment. I guess my reservation in doing this
kind of assignment would be whether there is enough time in a theatre class to
teach media skills as well. There are a lot of media skills that students are
already really good at just by living in this day and age. But there are also
things that are harder to do that take more time such as video and sound
editing. So while I love the idea of doing a project like this, I think that you
would need to be thoughtful with how it is incorporated in the classroom, and
what the payoff will be in the class.
