A Website Not To Be Missed Out!

Outside of school, students are harnessing the power of technology to enrich their day-to-day lives. In the classroom, using technology resources is essential to prepare them for their real lives of higher education, internships, and the 21st century workforce. Students need technology-based, digital learning environments so that education is engaging, relevant, and reflects 21st century skills. For this digital learning need, there is one fantastic website that can provide teachers and students with a wide range of digital learning resources. The website of the day is an Australian site called National Film and Sound Archive (NFSA) Digital Learning.

Link:  http://nfsa.gov.au/learning/digital-learning/

General Description

NFSA is the national audiovisual archive, collecting, preserving and sharing the nation’s moving image and recorded sound heritage. NFSA Digital Learning provides resources that feature thousands of video and audio clips available for streaming and downloading. The available content on the site includes 23 websites that are a combination from the former Screen Australia Digital Learning websites and NFSA’s online education resources. The following screenshot shows some of the websites available on the NFSA Digital Learning.

 

Nevertheless, I’m just going to further elaborate on one of the websites which is called DIY-DOCO.

What is DIY-DOCO?

DIY-DOCO refers to Do It Yourself Documentary filmmaking. This website engages students in the world of documentary storytelling by providing them with the practical knowledge and skills they need in order to do a good documentary. The practical knowledge and skills presented to students are based on three key ideas:

• Documentary styles and genres. Students will look at forms such as personal journey, observational, advocacy and essay style.

• Elements of documentary storytelling. Students will look at elements including camera, sound, lighting and editing.

• Story to Screen: Students look at subjects such finding ideas, writing pitches, finding platforms and marketing.

DIY-DOCO has a collection of 24 clips that will appeal to a wide range of students. These clips focus on significant key topics and issues that are addressed nationally through various curricula and showcase the different styles, genre, and techniques used in documentary filmmaking.

Furthermore, DIY-DOCO also has features such as:

• Visual library: includes additional information

• Site index: provides users with an overview of the website and a list of film clips

• Interactive quiz: tests students’ knowledge of information provided on the website.

Level and Age

DIY-DOCO is applicable to secondary school students at the age of 13-17 years old. It is suitable to be utilized by learners at intermediate level and above. However, this tool can also be beneficial for adult learners and any people who are interested in making documentary. This tool may not be suitable to be applied for primary school students as it requires users to fully understand and apply the knowledge and skills in documentary filmmaking.

How To Use DIY-DOCO For Teaching English?

In my opinion, this tool can be used as follows:

1. Listening activity:
• Pre-listening: Teacher leads a discussion about the criteria of a good documentary. This is done for the purpose of activating students’ schemata about documentary and kind of giving them an overview of what they are going to listen to.
• Listening: Teacher instructs students to listen to the listening input provided by DIY-DOCO which discusses on the knowledge and skills around the three general ideas discussed above. During the listening, students need to jot down any key ideas that they can grasp.
• Post listening: Students do the interactive quiz in order to test their understanding on the knowledge provided by the listening input. After that, in pairs, students need to reconstruct the ideas that they have listened to. Then, Teacher will get some feedback from them and conclude the ideas.
2.  School project: In pairs, students are instructed to make a documentary based on their topic interest and teacher reminds them to apply the knowledge and skills that they have learned from the listening input. Teacher will have to give enough time for students to finish the documentary at their best, for example 2 to 3 weeks. Teacher reminds students to explore the additional resources provided on the website in order to get in-depth information about things needed for a good documentary. In the process, teacher will have to regularly ask students on their progress and difficulties, and provide them helps if necessary.

Evaluation

Advantages:

1. It widens students’ knowledge and skills on documentary filmmaking. For example, they can experiment and see the effects of lighting scenarios, camera shots, soundtracks, and create their own mise en scene. 
2. This website provides students with authentic and interesting listening text. Hence, the students feel engaged and focus during the process of learning.
3. The website encourages students to be creative and becomes an active learner. 
4. The use of website involves lots of discussion and thus creating a collaborative and communicative learning among students.
5. By using the website, it helps students to develop their multiple skills in language – creativity, listening, speaking, reading (through PDF resources), and presentation skill. 
6. The website is free to use without having to register for an account.
7. Resources provided are allowed for downloading, and thus they can later be printed out as handouts or notes.

Disadvantages:

1. It can be time consuming for students to complete the documentary task. This makes it not suitable to be used as a classroom activity but rather used as a school project that can be finished at home and in a practical length time.