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Affordances For Video ProductionThe material environments also mediated video production activity. At Suburban High, the classroom accommodated a news program, but for many non-news projects, it was too constraining. The grounds were useful when students wanted a relatively undistinguished setting, but many students left the school to find better settings and items such as cars that could not be used at school. Urban High had a similar problem. The studio was large and afforded the existence of sets, but the sets were incomplete and sound was a huge problem: Everyone else in the room had to be silent when someone was recording, and the buzzing of machines made the balcony unusable. The production of dramas in the Studio were nevertheless possible because of the size of the room and artifacts acquired for sets. The Media 1 room, on the other hand, had fewer affordances. Not only did the acoustics create a constant, chaotic noise, but it lacked space for movement. Partially because the teacher encouraged it and partially because the room afforded it, many students did cooking shows for their “How To” videos. There was even a table with a mirror on top, designed so that classes could observe what a cooking instructor was doing, which facilitated the recording of cooking videos. At Suburban High, one group did a cooking show and had to arrange to use the appropriate classroom and to get all the supplies on their own. The frequency of cooking videos at Urban High was clearly related to the facilities that were available. One technical problem that was common across schools is that it is very difficult to have four people around a computer for editing and have everyone participate. Group projects for this reason pose certain difficulties that were handled in one of two ways: Either one person took over the process or the person with the mouse became a tool of the group as various instructions were offered. Many students at all schools were cut out of the process in this way, though it often appeared that they had dropped out. None of the teachers addressed the problem. The Suburban teacher merely advised people in selecting partners or choosing to work alone to remember who and how people had contributed on the first project. The difficulty was partly resolved by the positions—director, talent, etc.—that students were to officially occupy, but tension was witnessed more than once regarding the ownership of the editing process. One intern at Boarding High worked intimately with her students and was able to maintain more equal participation, and another intern directed students sufficiently that all students participated but had less sense of project ownership. None of the interventions used by the interns fully had the desired effect, perhaps explaining why other teachers did not try to have an impact. Desktop computers, however, were more conducive to group work than laptops. The arrangement of the Boarding High art classroom became significant in the editing process. The project tables were ideal for students to gather around because they were taller and open on all sides, but they lacked electrical plugs, thus when the iBook batteries were not sufficiently charged, editing became more difficult. When only two students were in a group and interns acted in a more hands-off manner, the classroom tables were used quite effectively. Perhaps a different design of the editing arrangements would have further enabled group editing. |
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