I have dedicated a blog to this previously, which I will link at the end, but when talking about a memorable classroom experience there is no other than my MIE (Moving Image Education) lessons in primary seven that stick with me so prominently, so apologies if you have read that previously as I may repeat myself but it was one of the best, if not THE best thing I did during my time at school.
Our teacher was one of the only tech savvy teachers in the school at the time, and was always the teacher to be testing out the latest gadgets. Part of our learning in primary 7 was MIE and we spent a few weeks learning the basics of it all, exploring various videos and stories. I think our teacher could see how into it we were, and so proposed his idea that we made a music video to raise money for charity. Typing these words out genuinely excites me still, 9 years later! It kind of felt a bit like we were in the film School of Rock, because it was to be a secret for the rest of the school so we couldn’t tell anybody. I cannot explain how hard it was not to talk about something that we were THAT excited about because I remember it being all we thought about and we longed for the part of the day when we only focussed on our video, not maths or language!
The make shift green screen that matched our school jumpers was hung in the classroom and we each took our turn at miming the lyrics along with the song, which was played over and over again until we got it right! When the time finally came around, the staff and pupils could donate and every class took their turn to come up to our makeshift cinema and experience our pride and joy! I still have a copy of this music video and I’m not going to lie, it makes me cringe, but 11 year old me, and my classmates, were proud as punch and our teacher had let us experience that genuine love and excitement to learn. It is a lot easier to create projects like this nowadays, we didn’t have phones with amazing cameras when we were younger so I feel that added to the excitement.
I am still in touch with my primary seven teacher. He provides a lot of support for me, and he has told me how strange it is for him to see me walking down the school corridor as a teacher or helper rather than in a green jumper as a pupil. I’m not sure that he is fully aware of how much of an impact his teaching had on me, but whenever I see him, I always think of those amazing MIE lessons and how happy and excited it made me. I really hope that at some point, I can make the pupils in my class excited to come to school like I was 9 years ago.
We are getting to make a music video? Blog post 2016. https://blogs.glowscotland.org.uk/glowblogs/uodedueportfolioejm/2016/01/22/mie-was-the-best-lesson-i-ever-had/
