Double Entry Journal 12

Chapter 4: Dreams and Nightmares

1. How can documentary video production help prevent the underdevelopment of urban youth minds and spirits?

 Documentary video production allows the student to develop critical thinking skills by exploring a subject in that has a personal or community relevance to it.

2. What school-based literacies does documentary video production help to develop?

Documentary video production can help develop reading & writing literacies, as well as research-based literacies. Reading and research are developed through learning more about a subject, which is needed in order to guide a project and write interview questions and narration that is informed. Writing literacies are also developed through the brainstorming and project development (pr-production) phase of a video documentary process. It is also developed in the interviewing phase (developing questions). In the logging phase of a video documentary, the students must also engage their critical thinking skills to differentiate useful information from non-useful information, and must start developing a mental outline for there final pieces.

3. What 21st century skills does documentary video production help to develop? Provide concrete examples from the chapter. Use this Wikipedia article  to help you answer this questions.  

Critical thinking: when logging the footage of the Dreams project, the students had to decide what was relevant to write down in their logs and what wasn't relevant. Another example - When interviewing subjects, students must decide what is relevant to ask, and makes sense in order to guide their final video.

Creativity and Innovation: Majandra pulling out the video camera and interviewing her father - innovative. The editing process is a creative example. The brainstorming process - the students journaling what to include in their video - an example of the creative process.

Communication & Collaboration: Majandra & Jonathan's talk in the principal's office. Majandra communicated with Jonathan, in order to get him to understand why the topic of Teen Suicide was important. This resulted in Jonathan's collaboration on the project.

Information Literacy: research into the issue of Teen Suicide - evidenced by Julius' question to the boy whose friend committed suicide, asking what his take on more boys committing suicide instead of girls.

Media Literacy: the students had to learn that the media often looks like they are interviewing "on the fly," but in actuality, the questions the media asks are usually preplanned and only made to look spontaneous.

Career & Life skills: Majandra learned interviewing skills and specialized in that area because she wanted to go into Journalism. Jonathan learned flexibility in working on a topic that wasn't his initial choice. Julius learned how to talk to people and listen to them without inserting his own viewpoint.

4. Would you support a documentary video production in school or after-school program in your community? Why or Why not?

Yes, absolutely - and I'd love to be part of it! I have seen documentary video production work by making students think deeper about the issues that influence themselves and their communities. I have also seen them come out of a workshop with a better sense of collaboration and communication, and a deeper respect for hard work and research based inquiry.