Manaiakalani Film Festival Films

As previously mentioned, I enjoyed making films while I worked in the Manaiakalani cluster. In my time there I made and contributed to at least one film every year (except 2016). The record of them is below.

Contrasting my films to most of the other Manakalani films, you may notice that mine are more short film style rather than "learning videos", or what I call 'home video' style. In 2015, I had success in having students actually contribute to the development of the film, which was a learning experience for them. I thought this was a much more valuable experience for them compared to the teacher filming a PE session, or some other showcase of learning. You can see that style in my 2014 films, especially Along the Shore.

Later on, there was some feedback or a crackdown on certain types of film (films with violence?). Honestly, I can't remember what happened, but it made Ogilvie and me annoyed. That's when I started to put satire into my work.

Lastly, the 2021 book trailers were an idea from our principal. The idea was to have an easy idea that could be created anywhere in case of another lockdown. The LotR trailer was created by me alone due to the fact that we had run out of time and students due to Covid.

Film List

Tāmaki Primary School 

• 2014 
• Epic Rap Battle - Tagata o le Moana. Worked in tandem with Petra Lawrence.
• Along The Shore. Created this one in a very short time due to my work on the rap battle video not being recognised.

Panmure Bridge School

The playlist link for the PBS films is here.

• 2015
• Lost in Time
• 2016
• No movie. My fellow LS1 teacher Grant Ogilvie made the film this year. 
• 2017
• Bad Feeling
• 2018
• It's a Bit Dicey
• 2019
• How to Hold a Netbook
• How to Learn
• How to Cybersmart
• You're not you when you're hungry. Idea by Robyn Anderson. Filming, directing, and editing by me.
• 2020
• COVID
• 2021
• LotR Book trailer
• Fantastic Mr Fox Book trailer. The idea for this was a student's. I provided guidance and did the editing.
• 2022
• PokeBlade

While most of the movies were fun to make, I obviously have my favourites. My favourites are:

• PokeBlade. This wasn't submitted as the representative film for Panmure Bridge School at the Evening Showcase. However I had reports that during the day screenings, it was an audience (and adult supervisor) favourite.
• COVID. I really needed to satirise the situation.
• How to Hold a Netbook. Doing a "How to" series in the style of How to Dad was an inspiration by Ogilvie.
• It's a Bit Dicey. Can you tell that this is where my effort to satirise everything started? This movie combined kung fu movies integrated into our class's Inquiry topic and used blue screening and animation. This was all before I started using HitFilm as a film editor, so it was not easy.

The End of an Era and New Beginnings

I worked in the Manaiakalani Cluster for eight years, starting as a beginning teacher (BT) in the Manaiakalani Digital Teacher Academy (MDTA). Seven years of that, I worked at Panmure Bridge School (PBS), as can be seen by my class site links. As of December 2022, that came to an end, and from January 2023, I started at a different school.

Panmure Bridge School and the various staff taught me a lot, helping me mature from a BT to a slightly experienced teacher. I learned various methods of teaching, how to work with a range of people, and a little of how to manage groups of people. I learned how to use assessment to inform my teaching, how to use data to continually improve my practice (admittedly, I haven't shown my data on my blog), and I developed a habit of keeping my lessons and teaching transparent.

In my time at PBS, I hope I have contributed to them as much as I think I have. I became their "digital guy", managing the accounts, taking care of equipment and minor hardware and software issues, and the film festival management. Making films was probably the most fun I had, especially trying to push the limits of what was considered for educational purposes. More on that in another post maybe. I also recreated their website in 2020, and created streamlined documentation formats which reduced digital clutter and helped keep information centralised.

The school (School) where I work now will remain unnamed until I understand their digital policies much better. School is quite different from PBS, having a different demographic of children and families, slightly different teaching philosophy, and different systems. So far it's been a huge learning curve and I haven't even started teaching yet. We'll see what happens. We've already had some professional development training. More on that later.