The Connected Classroom

Coming up in April, two St. Louis metro area school districts are holding film festivals; both the Ladue School District and Parkway School District will be showing student work at their respective events.

The third annual Ladue High School FilmFest takes place April 13th at the school’s Performing Arts Center. According to teacher Don Goble, “Ladue film students enrolled in my Broadcast Technology II class, partner each year with Theater teacher Janine Burmeister’s Acting III classes at the high school, to work on fully scripted short films, using a Hollywood web-based film curriculum.  The students’ process began last August, when they created a concept, wrote a script, auditioned the theater students, recorded their scenes, and have feverishly been editing. Over 20 Ladue students took part in this program and their hard work comes to the big screen.”

Two weeks later, the April 26th Parkway Digital Film Festival highlights & showcases digital projects created by 700 Parkway students in grades K-12. Using the knowledge and skills acquired in school, students have made connections to the curriculum and applied their learning to the art and science of digital storytelling enabling them to be practitioners in the real world. This event  takes place at  the Purser Center at Logan College of Chiropractic. Organizer Bill Bass shares, “the Parkway Digital Film Festival is a celebration of student work highlighting the stories from students in all grade levels and content areas. We founded the festival four years ago as a way to give students an authentic audience and to showcase the digital stories that they were creating in their classrooms. Additionally, it gave teachers the opportunity to have their students become creators of digital content rather than the more traditional role of consumer.”

Both events are open to the public, (for all ages), and include a red carpet walk for the participating students. The Parkway event is free, the Ladue event requires a ticket for entry at a cost of $5 each. All proceeds help fund the continuation of  web-based film curriculum for future students. They can be purchased at the door the night of the FilmFest, or in advance by contacting Don Goble.

photo credit: by vancouverfilmschool

Tags: Creative Commons, digital storytelling, film festival, Flickr, Ladue School District, media literacy, Parkway School District, student films