Technology, No Child Left Behind,
21st Century Skills & Screen Ed
The principles underlying No Child Left Behind harken back to the very ideology that grounds the nation's public school system. No Child Left Behind seeks to re-connect schools to real-life, 21st Century Skills and standards that are explicit and measurable and that insure that every child in America will be able to achieve educational proficiency.
The goals and objectives of AFI Screen Education reverberate with these same ideals. AFI Screen Education is meeting the goals of No Child Left Behind. Students are learning as part of a creative process.
Oversold and Underused ... not only the title of a best seller, it is a rallying cry of critics, and a legitimate circumstance in many of the nation's classrooms. Despite millions and millions of dollars of expenditures for computers and internet wiring, many computers remain unused. Many more, if accessible at all for students and teachers, are simply used as word processing tools. This is not the case with the technologies in the Screen Education classrooms.
The Screen Education program does not provide technology, rather helps schools leverage and utilize technologies of all types in the most resourceful ways. Like the other 21st Century Skills, every phase of the Screen Education process uses some type of technology, depending on the school's resources and access, and/or the students' inventiveness. Computers are used to write script interpretations and screenplays, organize resources, research on the web, edit films, communicate with peers and mentors, import and export sounds and images, and ultimately exhibit final film products worldwide.
The students are not just using the technologies-they are teaching each other the things they are learning; in some cases, they are teaching their teachers. When this happens, students are learning more than editing techniques, or filmmaking basics, or even Shakespeare. When students begin teaching each other, and teachers become eager and willing learners, classrooms turn into places of genuine transformation. As one veteran Screen Ed teacher told her room full of high school students following their AFI Screen Education project, "You taught me more than I learned in eight years of teaching in all my other classes. I will never teach the same way again."
 "Today's society, more than ever before, needs citizens who are capable of accessing, analyzing and presenting information as part of their daily lives. Projects like AFI Screen Education are important because they equip students with the skills needed to navigate this complex environment. By empowering teachers and students with the filmmaker's tools of story and character development, design, production, analysis and critique, students are becoming better information consumers while also learning how to express themselves using different media."
- Dr. Eugene W. Hickok,
Former Deputy Secretary of the US Department of Education
|