First Session
Today was our first day on our advantage module and i was a bit sceptical on how it was going to go. Karen introduced us to the course explaining the outline of the module and how it was going to undertake.
We then had to refresh ourselves on the TV studio as we will be helping others with various task during their broadcast sessions. At first i thought that i wouldnt get any of the answers right as i havent been into the studio for a while and my mind felt blank. So once doing the test i tried to answer every question apart from one. but what it turns out i got all the ones i answered correct which surprised me, and this now made me feel more confidant, as i thought i would do much worse.
One of the questions was what characteristics does a director need to have? I answered that they needed good communication, confidence and good organization. i remembered this from when i did my broadcast module and our director struggled at times but once he became organized the production ran more smoothly. I always think that you will need good communication as you need to relate with you other peers and this way you will get along with each other creating a friendly enviroment this then links into confidence because if you have the other two characteristics you will gain confidence within your production you are creating.
After todays session i feel more excited to carry on this module as i feel it will be a great help and will gain me experience i never thought i would get.
Exercise 1 – What makes a good teacher?
To see what makes a good teacher we need to look at what characteristics a teach much have in becoming successful.
I found on the internet an example that what people look for:
1. Listen, talks, and acts in ways that communicates respect, both to himself and the student.
2. Is aware of the stages of frustration for a student.
3. Reduce tension in a classroom.
4. Understands the frustration and anxiety of the students.
5. Does not resort to threats and confrontations.
6. Respects a student’s dignity.
7. Has an awareness of individual student’s needs, interests, values, and talents.
8. Creates a positive classroom climate.
9. Has positive teacher-student relationships with adequate praise and systematic response to behaviour problems.
10. Demonstrates caring and effective communication skills.
11. Models good behaviour to his students.
12. Has open-ended dialogue with his students.
http://www.brianhwheeler.net/characteristics.pdf
After looking through the example above I have to agree with all of them. I think that as a teacher you will need all of these characteristics to succeed within teaching. One that stood out to me was number 1 and how it suggests that you should give respect to both yourself and the student. I agree with this strongly because it is important to make the student have trust in you, because if his/her doesn’t have trust than your class will fall apart and you won’t get through what you want to teach.
Looking at number 7 it says that you should be aware of students talents, and i feel that this is important with media teaching as it is all about productivity with the studio. But saying this you also want every student to have a go at everything as you can’t let one student just be a camera person. so this can be argued. a way to resolve this is using the student as an advantage getting him to demonstrate his skills to other students giving others more confidence on more equipment.
What teaching skills i plan to bring is what I had learnt from other teachers i have had. One teacher which stood out to me was my photo shop teacher Andy Shaw. Teaching at Leamington Spa his classes were a more relaxed atmosphere which was good to students as it was much better to work in. But it wasn’t a “Do what you want ” class he still had rules and authority of the class. What i liked about his class was that i felt comfortable asking him questions and like i have said before he asked other students who knew my problem to help, with this way the class would interact with each other and this was a good technique especially at the start of the year when everyone is new to each other.
So if i wanted to teach i would take this theory on as i think that it is important to relate to your students and know what they are good at, and it always help to make them interact with each other, as it gains them more confidence and also myself confidence as you feel more relaxed in your teaching environment.
EXERCISE 2 – TEACHER IDOL
For this task i have decided to talk about two different teachers which i feel describe the perfect teacher. the two teachers both worked in the field of media but took two very different approaches to teaching.
Ian killick was my first media teacher at college. after going straight to college from school it was such a difference when it came to my first lesson. as with most college classes they treat you more like adults than they do students, which i thinks works better as it makes you feel more important and you feel respected in terms of learning. Ian Killick’s style of teaching made me think of people such as a motivational speaker, Martin Luther King as at the start of each lesson he described what the lesson involved. it was straight telling the point, he described what we had to do and gave us a wider sense of how we could achieve this. This helped a lot as it wasn’t telling us what to do but giving us a push in the right direction to succeed. His style of teaching also reminded me of people as Jeremy Clarkson as with Jeremey Clarkson knows what he is on about but does it in a relaxed manner. The way Ian helped us with technical issues was to show us himself and also to the class instead of directing it to an individual, i thought this was good technique as sometimes people can be scared to ask for help, so it would be beneficial to others in the class.
The other teacher i want to talk about is Andy Shaw who i have mentioned before. I respect this teacher as he helped me achieve success with the program Adobe Photoshop. his style of teaching was different to Ian’s as he took a very relaxed approach but still gave a well informative lesson. He reminded me of people such as the comedian Russell Howard, as he was also entertaining in his classes but at the same time made you think about what you want to achieve. It was more like having another student in the class rather than a teacher, which i think is a good quality to have as it makes the other students around you relax.
After looking at the two different styles of these two teachers i think that the way i would like to teach would be more towards Andy Shaws Style but still with the motivational skills in which Ian Killick has. so to me the perfect teacher would have to include characteristics such as:
- Motivational - I feel its important that they need to be motivational as it will encourage to the students to create better things, especially in the media.
- Informative - you must always give a well informative lesson as after the lesson the student can feel like they have learnt something new, instead of not knowing anything, that way they will lose interest in your lesson.
- Relaxed – Not to be to laid back but enough to not make the class room to stressful making the students feel under pressure. a relaxed environment can make students interact more with each other encouraging them to share ideas and thoughts.
- Humor - It is always good to have a teacher that makes you laugh, you then feel like they are more a friend than a teacher, and you will feel comfortable asking questions
- Inspiring - having a teacher thats inspiring can make you think you can achieve more than you thought, and it is good to have a teacher you can look up to, who you can talk to and is understanding.
Exercise 3 – VARK TEST
After taking the VARK test my results were as follows:
Visual: 11
Aural: 9
Read/Write: 9
Kinesthetic: 9
As you can see from my results my top score was visual. I feel that this is a fair result on my half as I myself prefer lesson which show demonstrations in class as I feel it helps the student understand it more clearly.
Visual
Looking more into visua teaching the key elements which are shown are:
. Lecturers who use gestures and picturesque language.
I feel that this is a good way of teaching as using diagrams always help the student see the information more clearly. I think it is because the information comes to life before the student rather than the student struggling to find the answers in the text. These demonstrations will include
Pictures
Videos
Slides
Graphs
Symbols.
You want the whole picture so you are probably holistic rather than reductionist in your approach.. You are often swayed by the look of an object. You are interested in color and layout and design and you know where you are in your environment. You are probably going to draw something.
After reading the information provided i agree with the results. i feel that in my approach to teaching i am very visual as thats how i have always wanted to be taught and this is how i want to teach. i feel that students will learn better through visual demonstrations as it sticks in there mind when they leave the lesson rather than having a handout which they would probably leave behind or leave in the bottom of their bag. this is also ow i research as once getting notes i try to find visuals which represent the information to try and get a more in depth look into the information we get handed to us. i use resources such as You tube, magazines, and sometimes verbal communication with others.
Exercise 4 - What you didn’t know
I have decided to talk about a strange subject which i found out the other day. this is how when you drop a raisin in a glass of champagne in bounces up and down continuously, and i asked myself why does it do this? Below is a video showing what exactly happens.
i decided to then research the theory behind this and my results were as follows.
the reason a raisin dropped in a glass of fresh champagne will bounce up and down continually from the bottom of the glass to the top is because the carbonation in the drink gets pockets of air stuck in the wrinkles of the raisin, which is light enough to be raised by this air. When it reaches the surface of the champagne, the bubbles pop, and the raisin sinks back to the bottom, starting the cycle over.”
i hope you found this interesting and ill see you next week.
Exercise 5 – Giving good feedback
What is the point of feedback?
1. the point of good feedback is to help us progress and to understand if what you are doing is correct or wrong, either way you can learn from it and develop ways to improve.
Give 3 examples of feedback you’ve received that’s been useful to you
2.
. a good example is when we get critical feedback for our videos. we get feedback which tell us how to improve or anything that can be altered. this is helpful to me as it allows me to try new things and make me achieve something i can truly be proud of.
. “think about your lighting as with black and white the lighting helps bring out the life of your work.”
this was helpful as i created a black and white piece without considering the lighting. now with this feedback in mind when i create something in black and white i always look to see what lighting i need.
.” you shown some good points in your presentation, you need to learn to look more into your subject in order to make it more informative”.
with this feedback it made me learn that although i may think i have the information present a good piece there is always something more which will make the presentation more interesting to me and the viewer.
Give 3 examples of feedback you’ve received that you considered unconstructive
3.
BICEPS?
FASHION SENSE?
Think about your examples above and consider what makes good and bad feedback.
4.
good feedback is something that remain constructive to the student. if they learn from it and it helps them develop more to improve than the feedback is always considered good. feedback is not always saying your wrong but just a thought/ push in the right direction.
bad feedback would be if it didnt help the student as this is what feedback is meant to do, its not just to make the student feel that what they have done is pointless or wrong.
How can you ensure that the feedback you give is “good” to your fellow students.
5.
as being a student i know what feedback helps me and what feedback doesn’t. So taking this experience i feel that i will be able to give clear and helpful feedback. i would prefer a verbal feedback rather than a piece of paper.
First Teaching session – 26/11/09
Today was our first day teaching the chinese students. with the obvious language barrier i found it difficult to communicate with them when instructing them on the sound desk. i had never used the sound desk previously but after doing some research and using it myself, i found that i gave as much detail as i could to help the chinese students. However like any teacher i asked if anyone had any questions, and i got no response, and i found that this was because they were scared to talk most of the time, which i did find frustrating as it doesn’t help me know that if they have any problems, i cant help unless they tell me. throughout the session i became more confident in talking to the chinese students and at the end of the lesson i found that they seemed happy with what they had learnt. The chinese students then had a go on the equipment in which they did well which shows that my teaching of the equipment was clear to them, which, i was very pleased with.
Second teaching Session – 3/12/09
Today was our second time teaching with the chinese students, again the language barrier was found difficult, so taking notes from the previous session, i decided to keep my instructions simple and less detailed to make sure that the chinese students would understand what i would be describing about various equipment. i found this frustrating as i felt like i wasn’t getting anywhere. however it gave me a good idea of how teaching would be in the real world as you are always faced with obstacles so i am taking everything on as a plus.
Mentor groups – 15/12/09
we got an email today which told us the groups we will be working with during the term. our group is as follows,
Myself
Andrew Reeve
Sid Albanis
Luke Ryder
i feel that this is a good group to work with as we all have different knowledge about the studio so we will be able to bring it together to help out the second year students.
Third teaching session – 22/1/10 – Camera Movement
Taking advice from karen in the previous session we decided to be more involved with the students in this session. The session included using camera movement within the studio and finding out best ways to work with the presenters and to make it easy for the gallery. i had one discussion with the director of the red tv group who was trying some moving shots in the studio. he had the idea of using all three of the cameras in the studio, all moving at once. in his head it worked but once trying it out he found it difficult to switch the cameras fats enough within the studio. So being a mentor i spoke to him and told him that, to achieve the effect he wanted you can do it using one camera with the other two still being involved. The movement he wanted, was to introduce the first presenter using a moving camera allowing a walking shot to the next presenter. we achieved this by:
using camera 3 as the moving camera
as the presenter walked away from camera 3
the gallery then cut to camera two , revealing the second presenter and the first presenter walking into shot.
After achieving this i asked the director if he was happy with this and he seemed fine with it and thanked me for my help. So todays session went well and i was more involved with the students which was a big help as they seem to gain our trust a bit more and not seeing us as other students.
Fourth Teaching session – 28/1/10 – Lighting
After coming back from the christmas holidays, this was our first session back. and during that time the group had just finished a draft script, which to me is not good, as they should be more prepared with this module as it requires a lot of work to achieve what they want. Todays session focused on lighting, something in which they haven’t done we explained to them that lighting is going to play an important part in their show as it will help give a more professional look as well help with camera focus and using chroma key. we explained to them the basics of the lighting and set it up appropriately in order to show them what it looked like on screen, and talked to them about white balance. after this they went through a mock up rehearsal and to be honest nothing seemed to go right. the presenters do not seem enthusiastic within each piece and the director needs to be more vigilant. so todays session did not go as planned and did not run well. So after the session we were able to give the whole group feedback and we mentioned to the presenters that they need to liven up a bit more in order to make the show interesting, and to make sure they have a full script in which to practise with for next session using chroma key. they took all the feedback positive and understood what we were saying, so this was the plus of the session as they knew that they weren’t performing as well as they should be, so hopefully by next session we will see more of an improvement
Fifth Teaching session – 4/2/10 – Chroma key
Todays session was about chroma key and this was new to most of the students in today’s session. we explained to them again from previous, that lighting is going to be important if you want to use chroma key. so first of we set up the studio to get in position their presenters. We then got them to set up the lights in the way they thought would worked best after explained to them that the background as well as the presenters need to be lit. after making sure it was set up correctly after a few adjustments, we imported the image from the graphics computer. when the image came up we saw that the presenters slightly blended in within the back ground so, from this we showed the vision mixer that they need to adjust the levels on the mixing desk allowing the presenters to look sharp on the programme monitor. This session went well as chroma key ran smoothly and even the rehearsal of the show ran well. so this was a good day for us as it felt that we are actually teaching them something.
Sixth Teaching Session – 11/2/10 – Chroma Key – AGAIN
For this session we went through chroma key again but this time we used their own image in which they wanted to use in their final programme. With this we went through a whole run through as they were getting better at setting up so we had just under one hour to practise the run through. Again the presenters did not seem interested in today and we could tell that the others were getting frustrated. We then stepped in to help out with organization, we then got them back on track and once again told the presenters to be more enthusiastic in order to help out the director, producer and everyone else. we offered to step in as guests to help with their practise and understand what guests might be like on the day. After the session we gave them positive feedback and explained to them that they are working better than previous and stressed that it is important to make sure everything is prepared in order to give you enough time to practise as well as making sure everything is correct, so i was happy with the overall day.
18/2/10 – no session due to activity weekEighth Teaching session – 25/2/10 – Rehearsal script
todays session, the group came back with a full script ready to run through. after watching them go through it we noticed a mass improvement from the draft and we can see that the group work well as a team. the rehearsal ran smoothly with only minor mistakes, and we can see that they have progressed from the first session. the presenters seem to be more enthusiastic but still need to keep motivation as during the run through as time goes by they begin to become bored and lose track. however i was happy with their run through and we asked the director and producer what their thoughts were on the program in which they said, that they were pleased and thought that its progressing in the right direction with only a few things to change. the set up of the studio is a lot quicker now and everything seems to be comfortable with the equipment they are working on. The next session will be looking at the set so this will be interesting in how this will turn out.
Ninth Teaching Session – 4/3/10 – Set Rehearsal
Todays session we looked at they set they wanted to produce. in charge of this group was Suzi. As she was set designer we asked her what the set consisted of. she replied saying that it was mainly material and they wish to black out the blue screen using black material. She had made a cardboard model of the set which was impressive which showed us exactly her vision of what it was going to look like, but she said they it still wasn’t completed. so we got set up with the set we had, which wasn’t much but again we had to work with the lights as the materials she used had glitter which reflected light at the camera so we had to find a way to get around this. after setting up the lights they went through a run through of an advert they wished to record to introduce the show. using the backdrop material as a background the image on screen was appealing and grabbed my attention. the camera men worked well in framing the shot but again the director seem to over complicate things by asking for too many shots when really an advert will only need on static shot. we mentioned this too him and the rest of the group agreed so this was good as we felt we were being listened properly as mentors. This was a short session today as we filmed the advert and they were happy. so we managed to finish early allowing them to have more time for a group meeting.
Tenth teaching session – 11/3/10 – Final Run Through
todays session was red groups final run through before their final assessment. When we first got there, we saw them setting up the last part of their set. To me their set looked cheap and didn’t really stand out to me as an audience. I asked Suzi who was in charge of the set design of what she thought of their set and she replied saying that she was not happy with the final outcome. So this didn’t really feel me with confidence at the start of the session. As they progressed the session became to become more and more disorganized as director , Dan, tends to make everything complicated which leads to his crew becoming confused and irritated as shoots seem to take a lot longer then they should. As mentors we watched on and told Dan that he needs to act quicker as he had guests waiting to be a part of their production and had been waiting a long time due to the 1 hour set up time and the delays leading them to be bored and lose enthusiasm. Eventually everything was ready and filming was happening but at the same time the cast and crew all seemed confused to what was going on, mainly because Dan was changing the script constantly. at the end of the session we asked the producer what she thought and she agreed that it was all unorganized. So after todays session i had no confidence in their final piece and i am not looking forward to seeing the final production.
What makes a good mentor presentation
1.
My expectations for this module was to learn more about what it is I like to teach students and to provide my knowledge of my time at university to others. I expected the module to be a fun experience and a helpful insight into a career I might want to go into.
2.
Term one helped me prepare for this module as it allowed me to know what was needed to achieve a good grade. Term one allowed me to gain knowledge of the equipment, which allowed me to help others if needed, also it allowed me to understand the process of the production so I was able to keep on top of the students to make sure that they were heading in the right direction and not going of course, so this allowed me to be a part of the production itself as each week I ask the members of the group how each process was coming together, including set, script, extras etc.
3.
To prepare for real mentoring more I could of research into mentoring and got advice from past teachers I have had, if I had done this, I would of found myself in a more comfortable position once starting the module as it would of allowed me to be more involved from the start, instead of hanging in the background waiting for others to approach me for help, however during the course I found myself being more involved and giving advice to the students in order to make their production progress.
4.
I think mentoring has made a difference to the level 2 students as I feel that we helped them the best we could and that they got good advice from all of us during our time as mentors, and example of this would be with the director of the red group Dan, a lot of the time Dan found himself, constructing difficult shots when not needed and ended up confusing a lot of the other members of the group, so seeing this we managed to step in and find an alternative way of getting the same shot but taking a much simpler route, which the rest of the group seemed happy with, so this is what I feel is why mentoring is good for the level 2 students as sometimes they can get carried away, and although the ideas are good, they are sometimes not feasible, so with mentoring we are able to help and construct and better production for them.
5.
The hardest part of mentoring, was at first getting the students to listen, we found this hard on many occasions as they did just see us as other students instead of mentors, so trying to gain a little bit of authority seemed difficult, an example of this was in one of the sessions, where once the students came into the studio, they began just walking around looking lost, so we instructed them to set up the studio in order to do some test for their final production, and most of the time we received the answer “ NO ”. So this was difficult for us to gain some respect from the students and we found this during the whole module.
6.
The best part of mentoring is just that we have gained experience, and we have come out of this module having learnt something that I feel will benefit me in the future, during the course I have learnt more skills on how to become a good student mentor and knowing that sometimes it will be difficult, and I will have to find ways of getting around it to make it easier for myself and the students, and example of this was during the module we found ourselves in the middle of arguments between the director and the presenters. The argument was mainly about the confusion of which camera is being used at a certain time, and again this is because the director seems to over complicate things. So this was an obstacle we had to overcome and with this we managed to resolve the argument after finding a more simple way to get the effect the director wanted.
7.
The things I would do differently as a mentor would be to be more involved with the students as a lot of the time I found myself sitting watching time go by, so I would try do this better if I was to be a mentor again, also another thing that I would do different, is to make sure that I gain respect as a mentor, this way I wouldn’t feel that I am not being listened to or taken seriously when I am trying to give advice to the students.
8.
A good student mentor should need to listen to the students in order to understand any problems they might have and have a clear understanding of how they are involved within the production, this will help if they get into trouble as you will know how they work and you can apply yourself in a different approach to help, and make them understand better. Another thing that a good mentor that a good mentor should have, is to be able to resolve tense situations fast as times in the studio can become very frustrating especially nearer the deadline, so with my experience I have found that this is an important part of being a mentor. The last thing I think makes a good student mentor, is that they have to respect the other students at all time, and what I found during this module is that sometimes you wont get on with some students but at the same time you have to be professional with them and if they need help you have to be there and offer it.
9.
I found the words that describe my mentoring style are:
Guide, as I found myself most of time advising the students how to get the best out of their production, and offer them tips on what to do and not do, for example, advising them that sometimes a simple production can look a lot better than another production which has a show jam packed with props, music, guests, camera movements.
Supporter, as I found that during my time mentoring I was encouraging the level two students along with their production as sometimes they lost faith and told themselves that it wasn’t going to work, so being a mentor I was able to try and give them some enthusiasm in order to progress with their production.
10.
After the module, I feel that I have gain a more professional experience into the world of teaching, it has gave me a look into what challenges face including, I found the whole module to be helpful towards myself at gaining confidence, and to work within a team of strangers. I found the whole module to be rewarding as I gain a lot from it, however my expectations of the module being fun did not commit as I found the course to sometimes be frustrating and hard work to get the group motivated, but I would enjoy doing this again.
