English and ICT

Moving Image – Making knowledge explicit

Activity summary – Using a music video

We have found that investigating music videos with students is highly successful in helping them to think about the complexity of moving image texts (and make their own implicit knowledge explicit). For the past two years, we have used the Black Eyed Peas’ ‘Where is the Love?’. (We considered updating this in 2004, but the video still played so often on MTV, that we knew most of our students would have seen the video or at least heard the song. This familiarity is important.)
We begin by simply playing the CD (with no introduction and no objectives for once!). Next we ask the students to briefly chat about the song in groups and share the kinds of images that went through their minds as they listened. Interestingly, the students often group themselves by age – with mature students sticking together. This is interesting when students share their initial thoughts on images. For some, these are connected with good nights out whilst others describe a generalised impression of the band singing. Occasionally students have seen the video so many times that they can describe it in detail.

Next we ask students to listen to the music again and identify key words and phrases they hear – again, some students are at home here and can recite most of the lyrics. Others hear things they haven’t heard before or listen carefully to the lyrics for the first time. Having collected key phrases, we discuss what the song is about; themes such as religion, capitalism and hypocrisy all feature. Next we hand out a printout of the complete lyrics (available at www.lyricsondemand.com) and ask them to predict the kinds of images that might accompany the song.

After this, we show them the video. We watch the whole video once through and ask for their initial impressions. Next we split the students into three groups and watch for specific features. So, for example, one group may focus on the choice of images, another on the use of colour, another on the framing of images (including use of camera angles) or the editing and juxtaposition of sound and image. (NB We introduce a variety of technical vocabulary at this point: click for a useful glossary of terms for primary pupils and for secondary pupils)

Following the viewing, sub-groups of 3 within each group discuss what they have seen and then identify 1 or 2 particularly interesting features to share with the whole group. (These may be features they found noteworthy or ones they found confusing.) Feedback from this exercise leads into a more general discussion about the meaning of the film – we consider whether our detailed analysis has challenged or deepened their initial understanding.

Finally, we ask students to plan a shooting script for their own video. We play them a short album track (one for which no video has been made). We’ve found the very corny ‘’ (Beyonce) useful here. We give students a framework for this planning:

Finally, we reflect on the whole activity, discussing the possible gains of conducting similar activities with pupils. This generates consideration of the following areas:

• using popular culture to empower children in classrooms;
• encouraging children to revisit familiar texts from a new perspective and possibly gain a deeper (and even critical) understanding;
• the complexity and sophistication of many popular texts;
• developing a vocabulary to critique moving image texts;
• heightening children’s awareness of how moving image texts are composed.

We’ve found that this sequence of activities is particularly effective in raising students’ awareness of the role of popular culture in classrooms. Following a heated discussion about the ‘Where is the Love?’ video, one student commented that this had been one of the most significant sessions of her whole course. She had noticed that students who rarely spoke during whole group discussions had been empowered to contribute during this session, and that those students who were usually most vocal were uncharacteristically silent. She commented that at last this was ‘something she knew about and could talk about all day’. This was in contrast to many university-based discussions in which she felt ‘out of her depth’ and ‘stupid’. She welcomed the fact that her own expertise had been valuable to her in the seminar. For her, this was highly significant in reminding her of the different discourses that children have to negotiate: much of their extensive knowledge of popular culture is left at the door of the classroom and they are expected to use language and grapple with concepts that are of little relevance to them outside the classroom. For this student, it was a useful reminder of the need to find ways to acknowledge the strengths children bring with them to the classroom and empower them to use these strengths in school.

Further reading in this area:

Marsh, J. (2005) (ed.) Popular Culture, New Media and Digital Literacy in Early Childhood. London: Routledge. A series of chapters demonstrating the skill, creativity and autonomy with which very young children engage with digital texts.

There is a very useful bibliography of texts exploring popular culture on this site:

ESRC Research Series: Children's Literature and Popular Culture.

Other films for analysis

One of the additional advantages of using music videos is they are short. This means they can be replayed and viewed in their entirety several times during a workshop. A number of other collections of short films (aimed at different key stages) are available from The British Film Institute at www.bfi.org.uk . These all come with suggestions for classroom activities.