Meril taught our group some of the essentials in film-making, that ironically linked well to the course text, Bransford et al.'s (2000), How people learn, and ultimately this portfolio.  

 

The most important takeaways?

​

First, framing the film in a metaphor, and being sure to connect your audience back to it throughout (e.g. teacher bees). Bransford et al. (2000) stress the importance of making connections to the abstract in order to promote effective transfer of learning. Being able to bridge one aspect of knowledge to another solidifies neural connections in the brain. It's a big reason behind the metaphorical framing of this portfolio to an abstract passion area of my personal life; it promotes effective transfer. To critique the video we made above, we could have done a better job weaving the "teacher bee" metaphor throughout the video, rather than just the beginning and end.

​

The second was filming in, what Meril referred to as, "beats" (i.e. ideally two to five minutes sub-segments that blend together with the overarching vision/story you wish to tell. You can see this was evident in the design of our video above. I also explored this concept further during our initial staff meetings this year. We were asked to work collaboratively with our cohorts (some old, some new) to film a small piece on our school's cultural anchors - our group had "Personal Rigour". As the chosen tech expert in this group (each group had one), I sold my group on the lessons learned from Meril. As you may see in our artifact below, we filmed our piece in beats and even made some metaphor attempts. It was hard to sell the group on one metaphor framed throughout; however, compromise is always an important attitude to possess in order to be successful when collaborating in large groups.