Video adaptations of Māori myths and legends
Level: Year 8
School: Northcross Intermediate School
Teacher: Kim Henry and Toni Godfrey
Duration: 9-week project with two lessons per week
In this school-wide Technology unit, students illustrate the conceapt of 'transformation' by creating their own short video adaptations of Māori myths and legends. Involving over 180 students, this unit illustrates ideas within the Nature and Knowledge strands while enhancing skills in soft materials, electronics, and video and sound editing.
Technology HOD Kim Henry explains that Northcross Intermediate's goal is for all students at the school to achieve an 'enduring understanding' based on a single concept from the curriculum for each term. The Technology department then adapts this concept to ideas within the framework of the Technology Curriculum to continue that understanding.
"The concept for this term was 'transformation' and within that there are enduring understandings. The one we focussed on for that term was 'transformation means change, and change leads to a new state', so the ideas within the Technology curriculum we chose to fit this understanding were 'Technology is intervention by design' and 'Technology affects us, and we affect technology'," says Kim.
The unit itself consists of 18 lessons, two lessons per week, comprising Soft Materials, Electronics, and Digital Media. To ensure that students can move to different aspects of the project as time and resources became available, the Technology team encourages a non-linear approach, which also puts added responsibility into the hands of the students.
"We have a unit plan that the students can see and we make them record the key stages, but really it's up to them to work their own way and morph their way through it rather than getting to a certain point by a certain time," explains Kim.
Kim starts her larger units with immersion lessons to get the key concepts across to the students. She wanted the students to fully understand the transformation concept through storytelling, particularly "the transformation from an oral to a visual language". Kim arranged for a teacher to act as a storyteller for this lesson, first speaking, then reading, a Māori myth, before a short video adaptation of the same myth was shown to the students.
Once the students have a good grasp of the transformation concept, it is time to take on that process themselves. Students are first placed into groups of three or four by their teachers, something Kim places importance on in all her units.
"After working with industry, I know that people don't work on their own but as part of a team, so we were very pushy about students working together and learning to cooperate and work with others they wouldn't usually work with."
These groups were asked to choose a Māori myth or legend from a selection of books and journals and "transform it to life on the big screen". Kim explains that providing enough appropriate reading resources for this section of the unit provided the biggest challenge in terms of pre-planning.
The students then break up into the separate areas of learning that constitutes the unit. Each area has a similar structure, with revision, practice and student reflection all incorporated within the unit plan and often linked to the enduring understandings within the overall school curriculum.
Soft Materials
Within Soft Materials, the students are first taught some of the basics of sewing machines and their history and cultural impacts. Students complete a sewing sample to make sure their skills are up to standard before moving onto planning, where their chosen puppet character is confirmed and aspects such as the size, shape, colour, and how the electronic circuit would be integrated are determined before construction on the final puppet begins.
Electronics
For Electronics, the initial lesson briefly revises component recognition and circuit construction using the Electroflash kits that will be used for a component of the puppets. The following lessons revise safe soldering techniques and encourage the students to consider the implications of inserting the circuit into the hand puppet, taking into account battery access, switch placement, aesthetics, and safety concerns.
Digital Media
Digital Media gives the students the opportunity to first practice storyboarding, correct camera usage, and shot composition with a 15-minute filming activity, using the human foot as a story focus,. This is then downloaded to the computer to practice editing the footage. The students then practice sound composition by creating a soundtrack for this film with audio software program GarageBand.
Once the puppets are sewn and the 'electronic component' put into place, the individual members of the teams get together to do the storyboarding and then film their final videos.
While Kim felt that the unit ran fairly smoothly throughout, she explains that problems arose when the students began the editing process towards the end of the project. "One of our biggest challenges was pressure on the digital media room because we always end up with many groups finishing and needing it at the same time."
The final videos produced show each group's unique spin on their chosen myths and, most importantly, showcase the range of new skills that the students picked up over the course of the unit as well as their fundamental understanding of the transformation concept.
"I couldn't even count the number of skills students gain and, from this, they really understand transforming and changing things and that technology changes over time – you know, all the concepts we are trying really hard to get them to understand."
Kim reports that the response to the students' videos and the skills they take away from the unit has been extremely positive, reflecting a trust that has developed over time between parents and the school with the integration of new curriculum ideas into student work.
"It used to be that parents thought that every child had to take something home, but now they're quite happy if the outcome is digital or simply new skills learned."
Videos from the unit
| T82-group-13.mov (8Mb download) |
W83-GROUP-11.mov (10.6Mb download) |
Unit Plan – Year 8 2009 – Transformation (.doc file, 241kb)
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