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The Top 10 Reasons Why Filmmaking is 21st Century Learning

“Education in the 21st century is a high stakes enterprise. Our students compete on a global stage and they need new skills to prepare them for further study and jobs – many of which have not yet been created. They need skills we call the 4Cs: creativity, communication, collaboration and critical thinking. The rate of change in technology and in society is so rapid that to prepare young people to live, work and be successful in the 21st century, they will need the ability to think both creatively and critically, problem-solve and work collaboratively.”[/blockquote]

– Dr Michele Bruniges AM, Director-General of Education and Communities

As teachers juggle the ever-increasing demands of their profession, they are being asked to prepare their students for jobs that have not yet been created.
What an overwhelming concept!

How can teachers equip their students for this Brave New World?

Film-making is a perfect vehicle for students to develop the skills necessary to live, work and be successful in the 21st Century.
Here are the top 10 reasons why film-making caters for 21st Century Learning.

1. Film-making encourages creative-thinking

Have you seen Ken Robinson’s legendary TED Talk on “How schools kill creativity?”

The new National Curriculum explicitly outlines the need to teach and embed creative thinking across learning areas.

Film-making requires participants to use their imaginations and to take creative risks. It “involves students in learning to generate and apply new ideas in specific contexts, seeing existing situations in a new way, identifying alternative explanations, and seeing or making new links that generate a positive outcome. This includes combining parts to form something original, sifting and refining ideas to discover possibilities, constructing theories and objects, and acting on intuition” which is the very definition of creative thinking as per the National Curriculum.

2. Film-making encourages critical-thinking

Critical and creative thinking are strongly linked. Critical thinking involves interpreting, analysing, evaluating, explaining, sequencing, reasoning, questioning and inferring. All of which are skills used and developed through the film-making process.

3. Film-making encourages collaboration

Film-making involves working in a group, negotiating with peers and combining to create a shared product. The process of film-making encourages teamwork and collaboration, no matter the Key Learning Area. To hear what teachers have to say about the collaborative nature of film-making, click here.

4. Film-making encourages communication

Film-making requires students to articulate themselves creatively, share and review ideas and communicate their ideas and information to a variety of audiences for a number of purposes.

5. Film-making encourages transformative learning

Film-making enables students to take their understanding of content and to deliver this understanding in a new form. To hear a teacher discuss how the film-making process built on the foundations of her Literacy program, click here. Film-making has the potential to create transformative learning experiences across all Key Learning Areas.

6. Film-making encourages student-centred learning

Film-making gives students ownership over their learning. For testimonials on how film-making maximises student engagement and motivation, watch here and read here.

7. Film-making encourages authentic, meaningful learning experiences

In this discussion of The Studio School, an innovative schooling approach established in the U.K that is achieving excellent outcomes, Geoff Mulgan discusses how working on real-life, practical projects heightened student engagement and improved learning outcomes. Film-making provides students with a real-life context within which to engage with syllabus content.

8. Film-making encourages students to adapt to change and be flexible

Film-making requires students to be problem-solvers. They need to be able to make necessary compromises to reach a common goal. As a result, students learn the skills necessary to collaborate in a flexible and fluid way.

9. Film-making encourages students to be creative and productive users of technology

The Melbourne Declaration on the Educational Goals for Young Australians (MCEETYA 2008) states that “successful learners have the essential skills in literacy and numeracy and are creative and productive users of technology, especially ICT, as a foundation for success in all learning areas.”

Click here for examples of how film-making empowers students to be creative and productive users of technology.

10. Film-making encourages students to make sense of the world

Film-making provides students with a platform upon which to feel connected with and contribute to the world, thus allowing them to assume the role of active and informed citizens.

To learn more about how we can assist you in using film-making to engage the 21st Century learner, click here.

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