My years as a media studies teacher gave me my best laughs, my most embarrassing moments and the biggest highs I’ve ever had in teaching. It taught me the value of students constructing their own media products and seeing real projects through from beginning to end. It taught me how enlightening it is to shape meaning through a camera and how dangerous it can be to take things you see at face value. I write this having just watched UK Channel 4 television’s programme about difficult teenagers - and different efforts to teach them – the Unteachables. I’m not sure they have been taught anything successfully as yet and I’m not sure who, if anyone, will benefit from the programme. I do admire teacher Philip Beadle’s heroic efforts. As they say, watch this space.

I’ve spent many days over this last year working with a production team to bring the Primary Close Up video to completion. It’s been a great excuse for me to marry two professional joys – watching great teachers teach and trying to weave a compelling visual narrative around it. The result is 163 minutes of video, 4 minutes less than the average 11-15 year old watches daily!

Amongst the many enjoyable moments on the video is the learning walk I took with Year Six pupils from Highfields Primary, Sandwell. I asked them, What does good learning looks like?” They took me around their school and showed me. At one point we stopped at a large wall display of teacher’s learning and they explained why staff shared their personal learning goals. I was taken with Miss Parsons who was learning to fly an aeroplane.

Year Two classrooms at Wicor Primary, Portchester have the aspirations wall where children map out their hopes for the future. The wall is the first thing their parents get dragged to on open evening. When we recorded the class doing a geography lesson I was delighted to see just how useful the display for learning idea had become. The thinking tools were there for all to see and select from. Sammy the squirrel’s dilemma about moving to the Scottish Island of Coll was helped by the children being able to select a thinking tool – PMI – from their learning wall.

Six very different Headteachers shared with me their views on the dos and don’ts of the learning journey. Distilled wisdom which I feel could save many colleagues hours of time.

A simple formula is used. Two cameras record the lesson unrehearsed. We take the sound ‘live’ using a boom microphone. The teacher is interviewed afterwards, sometimes pupils within the lesson. The Headteacher is then interviewed for a leadership perspective. We usually do two lessons for each day’s filming. We edit down experiences which can be an hour or more into less than 15 minutes!

There are strengths and weaknesses in using video for staff development:

On balance I would say that video production is a very powerful development tool for adults and children alike. If 2004 Teacher of the Year Philip Beadle wished to engage the ‘Unteachables’ from Channel 4, kung fu punctuation is good, but after the high ropes, the best tools for the job might be the video camera and the edit suite.

Fifteen years ago I was given my own groups of ‘Unteachables’ when I worked across the Blackpool schools. Off we would go together packed into the back of my Volkswagen Polo. We would spend long days planning and filming short documentaries. I hope that the videos of arcade addiction, a week in the life of Blackpool Football Club, transport facilities for the disabled in Blackpool, the work of the children’s unit at Preston Hospital and all the others are still dusted carefully on their shelves and that when the time comes they are transferred onto a new format!

Back to top

Name a song with moon in the title - Blue Suede Moon
Name a bird with a long neck - Naomi Campbell
Name something that floats in the bath - Water
Name a famous royal - Mail
Name a number you have to memorize - 7
Name something in the garden that's green - Shed
Name something that flies and doesn't have an engine - A bicycle with wings
Name a kind of food that can be brown or white - Potato

Back to top

According to the UK Time Use Survey from the Office for National Statistics, adults in the UK typically watch 168 minutes of television daily. The highest viewing rate is in the North east of England at 197 minutes. The lowest is in Northern Ireland at 152 minutes. Children watch nearly as much television as their parents at 167 minutes.

Children's tastes change as they grow, partly as a response to growing up and becoming more sophisticated, but also as they put their younger self behind them, and assume habits and attitudes that fit their maturing image of themselves.

The key long term changes for 5-16 year olds since 1994 include:

• Children's TV viewing has fallen back though it remains the most widespread single activity. Boys watch more than girls with 11-16 year olds averaging 167 minutes daily.
• 97% of 5-16 year olds are multi-channel viewers with 64% having satellite or cable TV
• 80% of 5-16 year olds have a TV in their bedroom, and 25% their own DVD player
• 90% of 5–16 year olds have a PC at home, with the level unchanged now for two years; the proportion with Internet access is 75%, and Broadband connection has increased to a quarter of 7-16 year olds'
• Favourite TV programmes are Eastenders, The Simpsons and Friends
• 77% of 5– 6 year olds have a games console at home
• 24% of 5– 6 year olds visit the cinema fortnightly or more often
• 92% of 11-16’s now have their own mobile phone and penetration has risen among younger children at around a third of all 5-10 year olds '

Source: Childwise Trends Report 2004/5

Back to top

Dr Aric Sigman of the British Psychological Society proposes limiting children’s viewing. He says children under three should be banned from watching any TV, and older children restricted to viewing an hour a day of good quality programmes. Teenagers should be limited to one and a half hours, and adults two hours a day.

"Food adverts make up half of all commercials in children's programmes, of this, 75% was for fast or convenience food"
Source: Food Commission

Dr Sigman says most of the adverse health affects documented as linked with TV viewing - ranging from "telly belly" obesity to Alzheimer's disease - occur irrespective of the type of programme people watch and are related to duration of viewing. By the age of 75, the average British person will have spent more than twelve years of full 24-hour days watching television. The average six-year-old will have already watched more than one full year of their life, he says.

"It is important to encourage children to distinguish between different forms of moving image media such as documentary, news, propaganda, advertisements and corporate promotion, and to recognise that the sources and motivation of a text can make a difference to the truth or accuracy of what it says."
BFI guidance on media literacy for 3–11 year olds

In the longest-running study, Bob Hancox's team at the University of Otago in New Zealand monitored the television-viewing habits of 1000 children at two-year intervals from the ages of 5 to 15, and compared them with their academic achievements at age 26. Children who watched the least TV between ages 5 and 11 were the most likely to graduate from university, while those who watched the most TV at ages 13 to 15 were most likely to drop out of school

Dr Kevin Browne, from the University of Birmingham, has studied the impact of
watching violence on TV on child behaviour. He said the critical thing for parents to be aware of was the circumstances in which their children watch TV. He said it was bad if a child watched TV on their own, unsupervised, for hours on end.

Children need help to "get the most" from their screen hours and "be protected
from... some of the worst excesses of the screen"
Culture Secretary Tessa Jowell arguing for media literacy, January 2004

However, some argue that TV viewing can aid learning and improve health. For example, research has suggested that it can aid speech and language development in children.

Back to top

A very good recent review of research literature by Dr Robin Close on television and language development can be found at www.literacytrust.org.uk . Some of the key messages include:

• Given the right conditions, children between the ages of two and five may experience benefits from good-quality educational television. Attention and comprehension, vocabulary, expressive language, letter-sound knowledge, and understanding of stories benefit from high-quality and age-appropriate educational programming.
• Children who are heavy television viewers have lower expressive language scores. Viewing by children of programming aimed at a general or adult audience is correlated with poor language development
• Children at 18 months will be attentive to the visual stimuli of such programmes and respond verbally to them, particularly if the content is of high quality
• Children under 22 months acquire information, or learn first words, less effectively from television than from interactions with adults.
• The optimal television viewing experience offers possibilities for interaction and adult co-viewing and teaching
• Factors associated with a negative viewing experience include excessive visual and auditory stimuli (for under-twos), complex narratives, the presence of older siblings during viewing, language-poor content and extensive co-viewing with adults of adult programming.

Television and language development in the early years: a review of the literature
Dr Robin Close, March 2004

Back to top