This video from Ira Glass, radio host of USA’s This American Life on National Public Radio, provides pertinent advice for those of us, teachers and students, who are trying (and failing) to create quality media products.
Glass’ advice is that it takes years before you can produce work that is where you want it to be in terms of quality. One of the big issues with the whole “digital native” idea is the associated misconception that if we give students a computer, camera and an editing suite and they will intuitively be able to produce sophisticated videos, podcasts, article, websites etc. Experience tells me that students do not intuitively know this stuff. The danger is that when students’ work is, in Glass’ words “kinda crappy”, it all seems too hard and we subsequently avoid including media production in our classrooms. We revert to analysing other people’s work rather than providing students with opportunities to create their own.
Glass says that it is “totally normal” for people to become disheartened by the lack of quality in their work and that “a lot of people never get past that phase – a lot of people at that point quit and the thing that I would like to say to you with all my heart is that most everybody I know who does interesting, creative work they went through a phrase of years that it didn’t have that special thing we wanted it to have.”
His advice is that “the most important thing is to produce a lot of work”, to “put yourself on a deadline so that every week, every month you create one story… It’s only by going through a volume of work that you catch up and close that gap and the work you’re making will be as good as your ambitions.”
As Clay Burrell writes, the message for teachers from this video is that we shouldn’t “grade blogging, podcasting, and other things too harshly.” For students, the message is that being creative is hard work and that it takes time and practice to produce quality material. The message for me is that students can only get better if I provide them with the opportunity and time to do so.
That’s a great clip.
Perhaps our goal in assessing student work is to take into account the reasoning behind choices that are made more so than their execution. We can talk about how to improve the final product, however, we do want students to be making sensible choices about what they choose to put in their projects.
Mathew, thanks for your comment. You’re right that we need to encourage students to consciously think about the choices that they make, what works, what doesn’t work etc. At the end of the day, making mistakes and learning from them is where it’s at, so to speak.