Bringing online video into the classroom

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First published in 2014

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ISBN: 978 0 19 442156 0

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The publishers would like to thank Oxford Design and Illustrators for resupplying the artwork on pp.16, 17, 20, 23, 28, 29, 67; Getty Images for supplying the image on p.102; and the following sources for permission to reproduce screenshots: pp.16, 39 Sneezing Baby Panda, Wild Candy Pty. Ltd.; p.86 29 ways to stay creative, Copyright © 2011 by Motion Graphics Studio TO-FU; p.93 Baby Armadillo, David Werst; pp.103, 105 Home Sweet Home, CZAR.BE (director: Joe Vanhoutteghem, DOP: Lieven Van Baelen) for Tiense Suiker (agency: EuroFSCG Belgium); p.106 Fresh Guacamole, © PES.

The author would like to thank the Oxford University Press team: Nick Bullard, Ann Hunter, Julia Bell, Sophie Rogers, Robert McLarty, and Keith Layfield; his talented video subjects: Jack Keddie, James Copeland, Jessica Lewis, Rollo Reeder, Jamie Zhang, Andrew Foster, Julietta Schoenmann, Jodie Zhang, Ranin Qarada, Rubén Febrero Quintairos, Kelly Jiang, Marianna Wysocki, and Josep Casulleras; his colleagues: Derek, Gavin, Susi, Claudia, Sean, and Kevin; Michèle Besch for her culinary art; James Thomas and Thom Kiddle for technical help; teacher Magdalena Nogal; writer Derek Sivers and animator Roy Prol.

For Anne (my mum)

It’s Monday morning. A group of seven-year-old boys are sitting at their desks in an exclusive public school in London. They are singing Waltzing Matilda, a song sometimes referred to as the unofficial national anthem of Australia. Dressed in shorts, shirts, stripy ties, and V-neck sweaters, the boys don’t seem to be completely at ease with the task in hand. Perhaps this has something to do with the fact that they are singing the song in Latin. Or perhaps they are apprehensive about the cameraman at the front of the classroom who is filming their performance.

This comical moment was an opening scene from a well-known 1964 British TV documentary series called Seven Up!, which followed the lives of 14 British children, who were chosen to represent a range of social and economic backgrounds from across the country. As well as footage from the classroom, the filmmakers included playground fights, ballet classes, and a trip to the zoo.

Seven Up! was a product of its time. It was one small part of a storytelling revolution that took place five decades before the publication of the book you are now reading. Most notably in Canada, France, and the USA, groups of filmmakers paved the way for others to capture the intimacy and immediacy of everyday life – the candid and spontaneous. They were concerned with real people and real voices; capturing stories as they unfolded; going directly to the action rather than recreating it in a studio.

The driving force behind this change was, of course, technology. And the most important overall effect of this technological change was a new generation of lightweight video cameras and recording equipment. Cameras could now go off the tripod and onto the shoulder – out of the studio and into the world. Filmmakers and producers were able follow the action, take audiences to previously inaccessible places and give them the feeling of being there. They changed the way people saw the world then. And they created the world that we look back on today.