This ended up being a great experience for both me and the students. Knowledge was gained on both sides and the results were great. While the winning video had 120 views, they all were great videos. I decided to reward them all with gift cards for participating. I was thrilled with their effort and am so happy that they are still moving forward wanting to learn voluntarily.

There were several instances that I could find of the #oaktonvisual online, but for privacy reasons, I am hesitant to share that specific information. They did utilize both Twitter and Facebook to share their videos.

 I do encourage you however to check out their first completed news episode, Oakton Objective. The full episode includes the 6 individual news stories they shared in the competition. Click this video to watch.

I have hyperlinked the episode here > Oakton Objective. 

This exercise was great to incorporate into the larger learning process within the Oakton Visual Organization. It's amazing that the students are this motivated to spend all of their free time learning and creating. It's a blessing for the school, the students and myself.

The world of IDT is an always evolving element as I experienced first hand since my last post. What initially was supposed to be a short film competition evolved into a news piece competition. When this project first started, the students were already working on their own project of a news program. They had filmed all of the interviews and still needed to edit them. They felt as if trying to edit the news pieces and create a short film would be too overwhelming given finals for their classes were on the horizon, so we made a compromise. I developed a learning document helping them get through the editing process and publishing their news videos. The document also had instructions for sharing the link to their individual stories on social media and the contest that was to take place. They were still very eager to share their links on social media to compete for views, which was highly encouraging, and I was also able to help them learn more about post-production in the process. So a win/win for both parties. None-the-less, each story was uploaded individually and distributed back to the assigned editors of the pieces and the students have been sharing their individual videos.. The students will fill out a survey next Thursday explaining their experience and use of Web 2.0. I am eager to see who will win and happy that learning is happening all across the board.

I have discussed with my students the purpose of the project and they are majorly excited to be participating. They have opted to be in larger groups so they can delegate more responsibilities of the filmmaking process, however they have all agreed to take a large part in utilizing Web 2.0 to get views for their video as I have upped the view prize from $25 to $50. I will be meeting with the group leaders to hand out the concept, learning goal and the step by step activity and the process for utilizing Web 2.0. Assessment will occur immediately following their group submissions. If there are only two group submissions, the final deciding factor will be web views, which will make the Web 2.0 aspect that much more important. I anticipate 2 to 4 group submissions on time. Every student is excited to get started as they each love a friendly competition but more importanly have a yearning to learn as much as they possibly can.

As the Video Engineer at my full time workplace, Oakton Community College, and the recepient of a $27,000 grant for audio and video production, I have the privilege of being the staff advisor for the Oakton Visual Organization.

Oakton Visual Organization is a student media club that are the direct benefactors of the equipment I was able to purchase with grant. OVO members utilize video, audio, graphics and animation to produce content related to Oakton Community College. Their first project is the creation of their first news program entitled Oakton Objective. The program is modeled after documentary style news segments similar to what Vice News produces.

Since the club is only a couple months old, and the time commitment is all voluntary, the students have minimal experience. The learning model for the students involves students setting appointments with me where I provide them initial guidance with constructivist activities that allow them to learn specific elements of the video production. Some students come daily, some come once a week. None-the-less, they are all learning and I am very impressed with the progress they are making in learning of all three phases of video production: pre-production, production, post production. Yet, they have not performed all three phases in a project from start to finish without my guidance and supervision of shoots and editing sessions.

For my IDT 516 Final Project, I am proposing a short film competition for all participating students of the Oakton Visual Organization. Participants can form groups of up to 3 people and will have until December 4th to submit their video. The learning outcome will be that the students create a 2 to 5 minute short film utilizing all three phases of production without my assistance. They will be required to recall prior knowledge to create a storyboard, script, correctly record video and audio, edit video, upload video to YouTube, and deliver links to me. A step by step text guide will be created for students to follow that will guide them to utilizing the right tools and software along with the best practice for each step in the production process.

After all videos are submitted, videos will be posted on this blog with an embedded survey at the end that will require the students to vote. Only students in Oakton Visual will be allowed to vote and participating students are not allowed to vote for their own project. The winning film will receive $100 cash.

Students will also be required to share their video on social media with the hash tag #oaktonvisual. The video with the most views will receive $25 as another prize.

Web 2.0 that will be used in the project will include: Blogger, YouTube, Survey Monkey, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

I am looking forward to getting started next Monday!

- Jesse Wallace