Volunteer Teaching Video Editing in South African Wild Coast Schools

Young learners get the opportunity to work
with cameras and video cameras on the
Wild Coast Schools Project

With the end of the school year in sight, the kids at Bulugha Farm School have been pressing to wrap up their final projects. In this last term, the kids have had their technological horizons broadened with the introduction of a totally new kind of program. While the majority of the year has been focused on the essential Microsoft Office programs, the introduction of Wondershare Video Editor was a welcome change of pace.

The idea was to produce a “mini documentary” to tie in the year’s animal theme. Each student had written a few sentences about their chosen animal. After recording themselves reading their sentences, they were shown how to string together clips of themselves with clips of their animal. Next came the basic assembly, the intro/outro pages were placed, special effects were thrown in, and background music to top it off.


With Windows Movie Maker being lost due to technical difficulties, Ash and Victor had to search for a similar program. The resulting Wondershare, while not the “world standard” of video editing software, provided the kids an opportunity to experiment with the basics. Familiarity with terms such as import, export, cut, timeline, drag and drop, etc., is a skill that can easily be applied to the majority of other video editing softwares. The program itself did provide some challenges, such as leaving a watermark on the exported video, unsynchronized audio/video during editing, or the occasional crash. However, despite the sometimes major setbacks, the kids were able to use the program to create some pretty great videos.

With the concept of video editing being totally new, there was no shortage of work for the volunteer teachers. Despite our varying levels of experience with video editing software, Wondershare was not a program that any of us had heard of prior. While it was fairly simple to use, the combination of unfamiliarity with the program, on top of the varying degrees of language barrier, proved itself a challenge. Instructions such as “drag and drop the intro to the beginning of the video” often resulted in a video with several different introduction clips scattered throughout. Unfortunately, these instances often went unseen by the teachers (despite our best efforts), and the mistakes often weren’t noticed until the video had been finalized and exported. However, in the end, the majority of students were able to assemble, edit, finalize and export a finished video.

Challenges aside, the students picked up on the material at an impressive rate. While the pace at which everyone completed their tasks varied, by the end of class each student had usually done what was needed. Apart from the issue of absences, staying on track to complete the videos by the end of the school year was not a difficult thing to do. When kids who had been absent the previous class showed up, they were generally able to get caught back up after some one-on-one time with one of the volunteers. For the most part, the eagerness to learn the material and see the end result helped keep the kids interested and motivated to finish.

Now, in the last days of the 2014 school year, all that is left to do is to have a presentation day, and show off the best of the best videos. It’s been an enjoyment teaching a group of people so enthusiastic, and I’m very happy with the end result of the project. With new plans for the new year, I’ve no doubt that the kids at Bulugha will continue to learn and grow their knowledge of computer literacy with the help of volunteer like me.

Tyler
Wild Coast Schools Volunteer, 2014