2008: Making Progress
My students have enjoyed
producing and viewing several documentaries in the past two years.
Giving the students a
mandatory audience for their work on screening day is motivational and
exciting.
Meek and Illyasova note
that
.
. . digital video adds an active dimension to an assignment. The
portability of the digital video product creates a social dimension to
production that you do not have, in the same way, with a written
product. The ability to "show" the product to others, to display it is
different than having someone read a written text. (7)
Students
look forward to the day when they can showcase their hard work. It is a
fun experience for the producers and the audience of classmates.
Furthermore, the ease of posting digital video to the web through
various websites (Current TV, You Tube, and MySpace as examples),
allows students to broadcast their productions to the world.
Most
of the videos address a topic that is relevant and important to the
diverse students in the class, and most succeed in offering a clear
thesis that is supported by various resources, images, sounds, and
traditional text. Each video proposes socially conscious, feasible
solutions to relevant, complex problems.
The
benefits of offering the proposal documentary assignment as the
culmination of the rhetorical strategies learned in a first-year
composition course are evident. Likewise, difficulties that arise are
worth the challenge they pose.
Another problem is the issue of assessment. >>
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