When the students think of Art Class, the first word which comes up in their mind must be “creativity”. This semester, the students in art class showed the creativity through their excellent performances in those interesting assignments like drama and making a stop motion movie. This term, the students in art class are trying a new assignment, making a podcast.
This podcast is made by 1 or 2 hosts and the hosts should talk about a specific topic which is close to the students’ lives in each episode. Up to now, the art class released three episodes which are about school memories, university applications and travelling. It is worth mentioning that the students in art class chose to do this podcast assignment in an unconventional way. Usually, different hosts in each episode work separately, but in this case, the students chose to work together. The students can chose to be responsible for the different sections in all three episodes. The advantage of this method is obvious; the students can focus on specific skills that they have an aptitude for or an interest in. For instance, music enthusiasts like Michelle can take the responsibility of selecting the music in all three episodes. “This innovative method increases the working efficiency” said Lindy, one of the hosts.
For the art teacher, Mr. Milne, the idea of letting students do the podcast assignment is derived from his personal experience as a radio host in Victoria University. Mr. Milne learned a lot and enjoyed being a radio host, so he really enjoyed introducing this kind of activity to the art students. It is the first time for the art students to do a project like this. They all felt excited about this brand new task. Most of the comments from the students toward the podcast assignment were positive. Lindy said that “this project helps [her] to improve [her] communication skills”. Although most of the students had a positive view of the podcast assignment, that does not means there are no problems. The biggest difficulty students met while making the podcast was editing. “The editing took a lot of time since I was not familiar with the computer system” Anny said.
In general, every member in the art class did great work on the podcast assignment. They showed their creativity and cooperative ability which are crucial for university studies. From another perspective, assignments like this represent the most important part of “quality-oriented education”, which lets individual do those things they are good at and enjoy. This kind of education method should be esteemed.