Collaborative learning community supports high school students with film festival

Students, parents and administrators gathered at the Allegany–Limestone High School on May 9 for the Third Southern Tier Annual Film Festival. The festival highlighted grades 9–12 student work completed in academic coursework during the 2018–19 school year. The festival submission categories were video poems, video themes and narratives.

The teachers who submitted student work for festival consideration are participants in the writing with video (WWV) learning community. WWV has provided professional development around digital literacies — especially digital video — for teachers in the Cattaraugus–Allegany (CA) BOCES region.

WWV teachers attend a weeklong summer institute and follow-up meetings throughout the school year, engaging in creating their own digital projects, as well as curricular planning for integrating digital literacies into their lessons. In creating a collaborative community of learners, teachers have used digital video with vocabulary, research papers, interpretations of literary passages, book reviews and political speech remixes.

“The festival is a chance for teachers and students to celebrate the outstanding work being done throughout the region during the school year,” said David Bruce, associate professor from the Department of Learning and Instruction. “By being able to use digital literacies as part of their academic work, students are able to use tools such as digital video as a complement to their traditional reading and writing assignments.”

Bruce added, “Students are motivated and engaged to create their videos, often working in collaborative groups. It is an added bonus knowing that there is an expanded audience for their work.”

WWV is a grant-funded collaboration between the University at Buffalo, Houghton College and CA-BOCES. Co-principal investigators of the grant David Bruce and LAI alumna Sunshine Sullivan, associate professor from Houghton College, have been working with the WWV learning community since 2015. During that time, they have conducted three summer institutes and presented with WWV teachers at state and national conferences, as well as published a themed academic journal on the use of digital video in the classroom.