Production 4 AI

Doerr-Steven challenges ‘students to step out of their comfort zones both in terms of…how they research and represent their work’. What modes of inquiry are modeled? What roles do students take during the process?

The students were asked to be fully captivated with their minds and bodies when doing research and representing their ideas. Their ideas were represented through images, videos, words and music (Doerr-Steven, 2017). In this representation students are fully engaged mind and body in a sensory process of inquiry. Students were asked (by Mr.Hansen) to create a documentary that investigated a subculture of their choice and encouraged them to break the social norms and expectations(Doerr-Steven, 2017). He encouraged students to engage in a recursive process that often had them searching for deeper meaning and reentering the production phase to gather more information(Doerr-Steven, 2017). Mr Hansens deep encouragement for full bodied research and inquiry allowed students to deeply engage in their projects while determining important what worked well and what needed to be revisited (Doerr-Steven, 2017). In doing this students are able to do their own physical research and with that comes deep personal connections. It is easy to disconnect from something you read or watch but as you experience it, it becomes your memories, your experience and your research. This is produced in Mr. Hansen's class with Erin when she acknowledges that her previous perceptions were overwhelmingly influenced by what she had heard but as she experienced (riding the bus) her perceptions shifted (Doerr-Steven, 2017). This is the deep fully captivating inquiry that comes from full mind and body research. Chandra is another example of this, she started her project with a perspective on riding the bus as a young woman. After this project she was able to take interviews and connect them showing that the bus had become a magical space with shared stories and experiences. With researching and becoming part of the project Chandra was able to connect to her piece and see another perspective (Doerr-Steven, 2017). These experiences creating this documentary provide more than the written or spoken research could. It allowed the students to immerse themselves and experience the research. This experience allows students to challenge stereotypes, biases, and deep rooted opinions by using multimodal research to dig deeper into human experiences. In turn that allows students to contribute to the world around them in a meaningful way. During this process students take on the role of the producers but they also embody the main characters. Although they may be interviewing or researching others many of the students endured similar experiences in getting to know their topics. They take on the entire experience at full speed and absorb everything along the way. Instead of building off an opinion students were encouraged to go beyond their comfort level and break the status quo. In doing this their opinions turn into experiences and these experiences fuel their inquiry.