VCE Drama and Theatre Studies Student Forum 2010

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Jul 292010

Educators teaching Unit 4 VCE Drama and/or Theatre Studies this year are reminded a web forum for your students exists.

Some years ago I established a forum just for students of Units 3 & 4 Drama and Theatre Studies. Each year, a small but dedicated number of students post messages on the forum about their developing performance exams.

Unit 4 Drama students find the forum particularly useful, because it is the only place they can discuss with students from other schools choices people are making with the performance examination characters. A great way to help others out and share ideas.

Unit 4 Theatre Studies students also use the forum to discuss decisions being made with their monologue performance exams.

Each year, I wipe the forum board clean. Currently there are “threads” (topics) set up on the message board for each of the performance exam characters in both Drama and Theatre Studies. While a number of students have registered for the forum in recent months, no one as yet has posted anything!

If you think any of your current Unit 4 students may be interested, please get them to follow the link below for free board registration and to post messages on the board.

If I don’t see any activity on the board in the next few weeks, sadly, I’ll just delete the board.

Please note, this forum is just for students. It is moderated by myself to ensure everything is nice and happy in forum-land…

VCE Drama and Theatre Studies Student Forum

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Posted by Justin Cash at 1:55 pm Senior Drama, Technology

iPad In The Drama Classroom?

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Jul 132010

Yesterday I went to an interesting professional learning seminar at the head office of Apple Inc, Melbourne. As my workplace has recently changed from being a Windows school to a Mac school in the past couple of years, I was eager to hear advice and case studies on how Macs are being used in the classroom with teachers and students.

I listened to how iPods and iPhones are being used in schools for projects, how Macbooks and various Apple applications are integrated into teaching programs for a wide variety of learning tasks in everything from Maths to Art, how iTunes U has added academic depth to video and audio resources for teachers and students and there was lots of talk about the growing number of schools in Australia going 1:1 (1 laptop per student).

But after I left the seminar it hit me.

With every Apple education officer in the room proudly displaying their new iPads, no one ever mentioned how new these devices are being used in classroom settings, if at all?

Has anyone got any stories they’d like to share about how they have used the iPad in the classroom with students? Better still, has anyone used an iPad in a drama/theatre classroom with students?

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Posted by Justin Cash at 9:29 pm Technology

Celtx Scripwriting Software

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Oct 222009

I firmly believe, as educators, we never (and I mean never) stop learning and I just love it when a student teaches me something new about my discipline area. A few weeks ago, a Year 8 student arrived to class with her group’s Soap Opera script looking just way too professional, in my opinion, for the ability of the average 13 year-old. So, I proceeded to immediately investigate the cause of this event.

The culprit? Celtx scriptwriting software developed by a team of Canadian software developers and film people. Had I been living under a rock? Why had I never heard of this amazing software before now? Her script looked like a professionally typed industry standard stage play manuscript! This was a Year 8 Soap Opera script for Drama assessment, not a script for a new Broadway play. What was going on?

Celtx scriptwriting software is absolutely free. This is incredible and hard to fathom, because when one realises what an amazing, fully featured, advanced product they have in Celtx, you’ll be scratching your head as to how and why this product is free? In case at this point you’re suspicious of my motives here, no, I’m not being paid to plug this product. Celtx doesn’t need me to promote it, as this software is so good word of mouth should be marketing it all by itself.

Screenplay Example

Screenplay Example

With the ability to write screenplays, stage plays, A/V scripts, audio plays and comic books, Celtx has built-in templates for all of these formats. Focusing simply on writing for stage plays, the templates meet both US and International (default) standards. The text editor is rich and intuitive, with all the bells and whistles. Best of all, the template realises you’re about to move, for example, from a stage direction to character dialogue and the cursor hits the right spot on the template, accordingly. It is so easy to place either existing content or write from scratch in this editor.

There are also places in the stage play editor to put additional notes about scenes in the script, scene breakdown reports, notations and more. You can even dump images into a sidebar from your computer or the web, such as a costume note in a particular scene with an image of a costume item or prop. The advanced features really are fabulous.

I’m so excited about this product, I’ll be using it for all Drama scriptwriting activities at school from now on. The software is easy enough for students at most levels to understand and yet advanced enough to accommodate professional demands as well.

Celtx is a wonderful product for scriptwriting in Drama/Theatre classes in education and a great way to get students to enjoy using technology with a meaningful purpose. Celtx is a free download catering for Windows, Mac and Linux in more than 30 languages and just in case you need support, there’s online video tutorials, FAQs, a wiki manual and community support forum as well.

Celtx Website

Celtx Download

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Posted by Justin Cash at 1:55 pm Classroom Activities, Technology
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