The Most Important Door in Georgia Video Production Education
That door is the portal to the best professional development in the state of Georgia if not the entire country. The first week of June is “Camp T&I week” for video production educators in Georgia. Since 2013, teachers have walked through the back door of room 350 at the Golden Isles Career Academy in Brunswick for days of interactive, hands-on training. The sessions are presented by teachers, administrators, professionals, and industry reps and there is a debate on how to best describe the event. Attendees have to decide if Camp T&I is a professional development with family or a family reunion where we learn to be the best teacher possible.
Now retired, Kevin Pullen hosted the event until 2021. He opened his classroom and studio for teachers from around the state. Pullen’s charisma and care for educators were the base for the event. He shared in 2018 that Camp T&I is important to him because “colleges don’t produce video teachers and this is the only way to get more of us.” Camp T&I is a great way for teachers to recharge their “batteries” because they get an opportunity to share stories and know that others are going through the same struggle they are. This event has more than likely kept more teachers in education than anything else because they feel supported.
At its core, the event is simple… teachers presenting sessions about things they have been successful with. That’s it. Several months before the event, the facilitator will send a message to the state's video teacher facebook group asking people to submit ideas for what they would like to present. The facilitator then builds the schedule based on those submissions. This year’s sessions ranged from transitioning to the classroom, presented by a representative from the Georgia Department of Education to the process for daily news show production to how to plan a live production from a professor.The most impressive part of this process is that all of the sessions can reach the newest teacher to the most experienced because there are elements of each session that serve as an affirmation or reminder for each teacher in the room.
The topics range from the complexities of live production to a walk through of Blackmagic Design’s Davinici Resolve to daily news production workflow. The relevance of the topics is ever present because the presenters have been in the classroom in the last several weeks. The sessions aren’t recorded but the presentations are shared for everyone in attendance so they can access the content as they face the next school year.
The relationships built during T&I are tantamount to any other professional development. The teachers not only get to know other teachers because they present and sit at a table together but lunch and often dinner is spent together (often with their families). It’s not uncommon to walk around St. Simons and look into Barbara Jean’s (home of the best crab cakes ever) and see a table filled with teachers and their families all dining together. Walking the pier means seeing more teachers and their families.
Teachers also build better relationships because they work together on a project during their time. The time spent working on these projects is what really solidifies the relationship due to the “time in the trenches.” A teacher with limited experience in film production may get paired with someone who is the “expert” in the field. The conversations, tips, and techniques shared are invaluable and often the only lifeline some newer teachers have to those with more experience than they have on many topics.
The projects produced during Camp T&I vary each year. This year the projects are short films, commercials, and newspackages. Attendees get half of a day to completely prepare the product. Ideation to presentation happens within 24 hours. The products are shown to the entire group as a wrap up at the end of the event. The projects range from simple, clean examples of the assigned product to comical features that leave a memory that causes you to randomly giggle throughout the year.
The video below is the best example of the giggle factor that was created at the event. This package was produced by teachers in less than 24 hours. They were given the product type but nothing else… ideation, script, production, and post all created in less than a day!
The recipe for Camp T&I is simple but hard to replicate. The mix of teacher created presentations with content from industry and administrators is the foundation. Add opportunities for teachers to work together and build relationships with a side of free time and let it marinate with years of sharing and caring and people and you have a successful professional development event that actually matters and people actually want to attend.
If you are interested in assistance for an event like this for your area, feel free to contact us at Contact@streamsemester.com
Meet the Author, Tom White
Tom White is the Broadcast Engineer at Grady College of Journalism and Communication at the University of Georgia. Prior to that role, Tom taught at Morgan County High School and Rockdale Career Academy where he and his student produced thousands of live streams for sports, news, and community events. Tom’s program at the Rockdale Career Academy received the NFHS Network Program Of The Year in 2016 and his program at Morgan County High School received the New Program of the Year title in 2018. Tom has been a long time contributor to many publications and is the host of Teaching to The Test Pattern Podcast.
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