Dream Big: Always Shoot For The Moon

On Tuesday, 11th December 2012, months of preparation came to fruition. It was the very first time that iPads had been used in our school as part of a performance. Magic happened in our six hundred and four seat LLAC (Leo Lee Arts Centre) theatre that day. When I planted the seed months ago I had no idea how this would eventually turn out, or if it would even work at all.

I tried to think outside the box. I tried to imagine something that had never been done (at our school) before. 

My first step was to initiate an extra curricula activity called ‘iPad Music Makers‘. Eight grade five and six students met one lunchtime a week in my classroom to explore GarageBand on their iPads (brought from home). Right from the start (in September) I told them that I would like at least two of them to be on the stage in December. They looked at me as if I was a bit crazy, but then they started to think the idea was not so bad after all. But eight students quickly shrunk to four. I wondered if there was something I was doing wrong. 

I persevered. The four remaining students consistently showed up every Monday and explored GarageBand together. They taught each other, they taught me and they started to work on their own compositions. Two iPad duets. Two girls. Two boys. One of the girls was passionate about singing, so their duet was one iPad and a vocalist. They wrote the lyrics together and worked out how the accompaniment on the iPad would sound. The boys decided one would play the GarageBand drumkit, the other on strings. They practiced together, working (and playing) hard to get the piece to a standard that they were happy with.

Not content with them just being on the stage with their iPads, I had envisioned something a bit more…

My ‘dream’ was that while they were performing, there would be a live feed from a camera filming their fingers working the devices. I wanted the feed projected in real time onto a large screen behind them, so that the audience could actually see HOW they were making the music too. Of course I had absolutely NO idea if this would be possible.

Shoot for the moon and you might land among the stars!

Enter our fabulous LTT team – @makkyfung and @vvnfung! They are the most amazing problem solvers and I feel very privileged to work alongside them. We tried different cameras, different wires, different scenarios… No Apple TV in the theatre, so we would not be able to use an iPad as the camera. We would have to go through a laptop, which could be connected on the stage to the projector. We tried a couple of different cameras.

We hooked up the rather large camera we eventually used to a laptop, with the image coming through PhotoBooth. Photobooth enlarged to fullscreen. Laptop connected to projector in the theatre and hey presto! Of course the technicalities didn’t run quite that smoothly… but for me that is half the fun. Throw a spanner in the works and then figure out a way to remove it. We had to go back to the drawing board a fair few times and spent time in theatre experimenting. Even during the last rehearsal before the show there were still a few difficulties to overcome! I give all credit for overcoming these difficulties to @vvnfung and the LLAC crew. Calmness reigned!

We did two shows that day. One for students (our final dress rehearsal) and one for parents. The girls went first and everything worked. Lead into the iPad, microphone for the vocalist and the camera WORKED. The boys went on later. Two leads into two iPads. Check. Camera. A no go! It turned out it was probably my fault… I turned the camera off in between the two acts. When it was turned back on for the boys something was not working right. DAMN! 

For the final performance to parents EVERYTHING worked perfectly (I left the camera on!). Wow! What an amazing feeling. Everything turned out exactly as I had imagined it. Unreal. It reminded me to dream big and to keep shooting for the moon. And beyond. I know in the whole big scheme of things this was just a real small thing, but it was big for me and it was big for those students. We learnt a lot together along the way. And we had FUN learning.

Unfortunately the best video I have is of the boys during the first show – so it doesn’t show how it looked on the screen (and there was less clapping later!). I’m working on getting some footage of the final performance… will post later if I am successful! So for now… here they are. Their music. Their work. It’s ALL good.

And yep, that’s me crouching behind them, hoping the camera would come to life!

Winter Concert poster: Sarah Hodgson

Original auditorium image on CDNIS website: http://llac.cdnis.edu.hk/facilities/gallery/

#Learning #iPads #Thinking #Creativity #Reflecting #Innovation