Educational Video Production at school to empower schools in Indonesia; is it possible?

I spent 31 days in Indonesia for my summer vacation. I had the chance to do little experiment on educational video. Here is my little report ( I guess I may call it 'report' :D)

(updated version)
48 hours Educational Video Project

Brief:
The name explains the activity. The whole production period must be equal or less than 48 hours. Since this is a new things to Indonesian schools, the brief introduction lessons are given and also included in the production period. The idea behind 48 hours is to make this educational video production as low as possible so that schools do not hesitate to adopt the idea. The time and efforts must be equal to doing occasional extra curricular activities. It is expected that there should be no budget constraint even if this activity is done once a month by the school.

The ideas was inspired by 48 hours movie festival here at Boston (http://www.48hourfilm.com/) which I heard from my pal Brad Kay-Goodman. There is no educational movie genre in this festival, may be it is about time to start one.

Tools:
Sony DCR-HC85 mini dv, Windows Movie Maker, Sony VAIO PCG-FRV28 laptop, tripod, and YAMAHA Jupiter for transportation :).

Target Audience:
Senior High School Student ( equals to grade 11-12)

Activities:
The students are given brief lessons in the handling the camera; instructional design; video design and story boarding; and video editing using Windows Movie Maker. Afterwards, students do the video production and present the result in front of their friends in a classroom setting as usability testing.

Report:
At first the experiment was planned to be conducted 48 hours all through weekends. However, the situation had changed the plan. It was rather difficult to arrange time for the whole students involved in this project in such a short notice. Therefore, we did it for 2-3 hours everyday except on the shooting days which took approximately 6-7 hours a day.

The schedule was not the only plan that was changed. The brief lessons were changed too. The lessons were planned to be given in classroom settings, due to the same reason with the scheduling, the settings were changed into hands-on lesson setting. There is an advantage about this change, the students got into understanding quickly.

During the shooting days, many problems arised due to the limitation from equipment and situation. Student enjoyed solving the problem and managed to come up with solutions themselves.

The usability testing was canceled because I had to fly back to Boston. I must lower my target due to this time constraint. The new target is to study what the production team learn from the activity and to study the feasibility of that activity.

Evaluation:
1. Cost wise, it is feasible to do this at school. Minimum equipments that is required to have this at school are a low end camcorder (USD300.-), Mediocre Desktop Computer with Windows Movie Maker (USD 400.-). Production cost was approximately USD25.- It was used for transport, meals during shooting, several blank cd and a mini dv cassette.

2. The time spent was approximately 23 hours. 2-3 hours a day in 5 days and 6-7 hours during weekends. The students felt that they didn't invest more effort and time in doing the project. It is especially because they had such a great time doing it.

3. Student must be given a brief hands-on lesson on educational movie script writing. The students need to know what information must be emphasized in the script so that the learner can understand that the information is important in the video. This is an input from Totok Soefijanto.

4. Students mentioned that they learned better about the subject by making the movie. Beside learning the subject or movie production, the students also learned about other things such as problem solving, information gathering, information filtering, and team work.

5. Further study on the usage of this video in classroom setting is needed to see how the learner benefit from the activity.

6. The study of the same activity with teacher being involved in the team is needed. This study must also include the integration of this activity into intra curriculum.

Some of the students participating in this project had the experience in doing video assignment from their teacher at school. However the teacher didn't give clear direction and they didn't get any grades. In that assignment, the objective of that activity was not communicated well. The integration to intra curriculum was loose. Those weaknesses made that assignment seemed to be a waste of students' resources. They still enjoyed it though. If this activity were designed and planned well, it could enhance the student's learning experience.

Is this activity comparable to making group paper and presentation? One thing for sure, the time and efforts spent were relatively equal amount. This group of students enjoyed doing the project. Others may enjoy it too.

The investment cost for the school to implement this activity is considerably less than building a full fledge internet lab that has been a hype in Indonesia for the past few years. Especially in Indonesia where internet is still expensive and resource consuming. This does not mean that I do not endorse internet implementation at school. It is just that we have to take one step at a time when the blind still leads the blind in internet usage at schools. Educational technology is not only about internet. It's in the process rather than in product.