Imagine This - Ideas & Stories for Creative, Meaningful Teaching

What changes when students stop going on field trips as visitors and start showing up with a job to do?

In this episode of Imagine This, Dylan sits down with fellow Classmate teammate and Educational Technology Coach, Jen, to explore a project that transformed a traditional visit to the Vancouver Aquarium into a full-scale documentary filmmaking experience.

Instead of simply observing exhibits, Grade 6 students arrived as filmmakers, researchers, and storytellers. Armed with iPads, shot lists, and documentary techniques inspired by professional filmmakers, students captured footage, interviewed experts, studied animal behaviour, and created advocacy documentaries from the perspective of the animals themselves.

Jen shares how the project evolved across multiple years and classrooms, what they learned from their first attempt, and why pre-production, scaffolding, and authentic purpose completely changed the way students approached both the aquarium and their learning.

This conversation dives into documentary storytelling, field trip design, media literacy, inquiry learning, and the power of giving students meaningful roles in real-world learning experiences.

If you’ve ever wondered how to make field trips feel more purposeful, immersive, and memorable, this episode is full of practical ideas and inspiration.
 
About Jen

Jen is an educational technology coach with Classmate who collaborates with teachers to design engaging, creative, and inquiry-driven learning experiences. With a background in science education and experiential learning, she is passionate about helping students move beyond passive consumption and into authentic, hands-on learning roles.
 
Through projects that blend storytelling, technology, media creation, and curriculum integration, Jen helps classrooms rethink what learning can look like both inside and outside of school.
 
In this episode, you’ll hear:
  • [00:00:29] Turning field trips into field work
  • [00:07:23] How the Vancouver Aquarium project began
  • [00:11:21] Recon day and planning the experience
  • [00:17:51] Students filming documentaries at the aquarium
  • [00:24:16] Teaching documentary and filmmaking skills
  • [00:30:57] Pre-production meetings and shot planning
  • [00:36:24] The Caiman footage moment
  • [00:40:15] Students naturally using filmmaking language
  • [00:41:48] Editing and reflection back at school

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Classroom Chronicles articles mentioned:
 
Resources discussed in this episode:
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Creators and Guests

Host
Dylan Ismail
Dylan Ismail is the host of Imagine This and an Educational Technology Coach with Classmate, a Vancouver based team that helps people in schools succeed with technology through fun, collaborative learning experiences.
Guest
Jen Chen
Jen is an educational technology coach with Classmate who collaborates with teachers to design engaging, creative, and inquiry-driven learning experiences.

What is Imagine This - Ideas & Stories for Creative, Meaningful Teaching?

Imagine This is a podcast about what’s possible in classrooms.

Each episode features conversations with teachers who are building meaningful, creative (and sometimes boldly real-world) projects — the kind that help students create work that matters beyond school. From documentary field trips and immersive role-playing games to student-made podcasts and more, we explore ideas that make learning feel alive.

Hosted by Dylan from Classmate — a team that partners with educators to co-create fun, collaborative learning experiences — the show blends reflection and storytelling. Some stories come from classrooms we collaborate in; others come from schools and educators we meet along the way. Each episode includes a teacher interview alongside reflection from the Classmate team on what worked, what surprised us, and what we’re still learning.

This show is for K–12 educators (and really anyone who cares about learning) who want school to feel more meaningful, more imaginative, and more real.

Jen: [00:00:00] Because I told I was like, pre-production is a very real thing, especially for one like this, where they're going in on location to film something.

Dylan: [00:00:08] During lunchtime, they had some downtime where they were reviewing footage.

Jen: [00:00:12] I didn't ask them to do that. I didn't expect them to do that.

Dylan: [00:00:15] And they were using some of the language.

Jen: [00:00:17] I was hearing the language, you know, as soon as we walked in there, I was already hearing that language of make sure you get a close up of its teeth, make sure you get this wide angle shot.

Dylan: [00:00:29] Welcome to Imagine This, a podcast about what's possible in classrooms. My name is Dylan and I'm an educational technology coach at Classmate, a team that helps people in schools succeed with technology. On this episode, I will be talking with my colleague and fellow educational technology coach, Jen about what it means to turn field trips into field work. So here's the premise. Generally, when you take students on a field trip, they're often just sort of visitors. They're sometimes consuming the experience. They're walking through set up galleries. They are having a great time, but often just taking in what they are experiencing. So the question is, what happens if you flip that? What if they went with a role? What if they went as a documentarian, as a researcher, as a filmmaker? What changes when a field trip becomes field work? That's the question that Jen's been working on and has answered through a couple of field trips that she's run with a few grade six classes to the Vancouver Aquarium.

Dylan: [00:01:45] Welcome to the podcast, Jen.

Jen: [00:01:46] Hello. Hi.

Dylan: [00:01:47] When we talk about turning field trips into field work, what do we actually mean?

Jen: [00:01:52] Yeah. So Dylan, like you mentioned, on a field trip, oftentimes students are going to the place to consume the experience. So they're there to see the art. If it's an art gallery, they're at Science World or the aquarium to look at different exhibits, and they're there to soak it in, learn. And oftentimes it comes at the end of a learning experience. So in class, very typically a field trip happens at the end of a unit. If we're learning about the rock cycle and natural resources and mining, we go to Britannia Mines, at least here in B.C. as a way to wrap up your unit.

Dylan: [00:02:29] Yeah. So we learned about it and now we're going to go see what it looked like in real time.

Jen: [00:02:34] Exactly. And there's nothing wrong with that. But when we turn a field trip into field work and we use the same location as just one of the many stops in the learning experience, it unlocks a different way the students see that location, right? Because they are now going to this place to do work that they care deeply about because they know they're going to come back and at least in our case, they're creating something.

Dylan: [00:03:04] Right. So the students are going to the location with a role or with a job. Exactly. In this case, at the Vancouver Aquarium, they went as filmmakers.

Jen: [00:03:14] Or documentarians. They were there to make a documentary. And they knew that.

Dylan: [00:03:17] Marine biologist researchers, some sort of job where they were going to this location to gather information, to bring back to school, to then create something.

Jen: [00:03:25] Exactly. And you can imagine, like even for yourself, if you went to a location somewhere that you go all the time with a different role in mind, you see it very differently.

Dylan: [00:03:34] So they're being asked to basically go there with a job to fulfill.

Jen: [00:03:37] Oh, yeah.

Dylan: [00:03:38] Okay. So why is this type of work important to you? Why is this something that you care about?

Jen: [00:03:42] Yeah. I mean, in the last few years of working with teachers and schools in general, I was seeing field trips happen. But I don't think we've ever really had a big role in planning and helping with those, even though they're really good learning experiences. And that's kind of what we do. That's exactly what we do. But I think for me, the reason I care so deeply about it is before Classmate, well before Classmate, this is over ten years ago at one of my first jobs that involved teaching and just teaching, not in schools, but teaching kids, I think the same age range. Honestly, it was for a nonprofit science educational organization, and we ran field trips as part of the programming that we did. And as you can imagine, it is a weekend program. Parents pay a little bit of money, whatever they can to come to this program. Or field trips could not ever be big. Generally, we never went anywhere big like the aquarium or science world. And instead in those times we went to places that people wouldn't even think of as a field trip location, or they generally wouldn't host a school because the place itself, the location itself wouldn't even have an educational program. And we still brought students there because field trips were important as part of the programing, but instead it was just our jobs to make sure the learning happened beforehand, afterwards, so that they knew what they were getting out of it when they were there. One of the examples we went to was Charlie and the Chocolate Factory. Like the actual chocolate shop.

Dylan: [00:05:18] Okay. Yeah, yeah, like a store.

Jen: [00:05:21] But the reason that place worked was because they could host a group of kids, but they told us like, hey, we don't, we don't have a program.

Dylan: [00:05:28] We're not teaching anybody anything.

Jen: [00:05:30] Yeah. But instead it was fine because we front loaded the kids. And we talked about the process of manufacturing chocolate and like where chocolate comes from and like the cacao beans and things like that. One time I cold called the Marina, it was part of the aquarium, actually, it's a research facility for the sea lions. And they again, I don't think they really host school groups, it didn't sound like, but we're a small enough group and we were able to go and meet the sea lions and a lot of things about the way that they work with these animals to be able to test their health and make sure they're healthy, and they bring those practices back to the aquarium. All of that to say, I think early on in my career, I realized the learning potential in a field trip and that it does not matter if the place has this established educational program that someone else is running. That's always nice and a bonus. But actually, in this type of work recently, it's better when there isn't because it gives us more freedom and creative control over the product, right? Like we don't have to work around what's there already. And so the aquarium was a great example of this because they used to have some really great educational programs after Covid. It hasn't continued. Field trips have continued. So schools are free to bring their students in and they still go in and they paid the admission. And there's one there, the wet lab program. I think you're only in there for 15 minutes, but there is no guided session anymore.

Dylan: [00:07:01] They still have their shows.

Jen: [00:07:04] There's still a lot of education, don't get me wrong, but it's more like whatever the general public has access to the schools also have access to. And so that might not necessarily be aligned with the curriculum goals and things that are happening in the classroom. And that's where I come in. That's where these conversations are, that's what we do with our teachers anyways, field trip or not.

Dylan: [00:07:23] Yeah. So this is great. So the Vancouver Aquarium becomes the place that the first class that you worked with already had a plan to go there.

Jen: [00:07:35] Funny enough, it was. So the teacher, Reggie, when we were talking, the conversation was more or less, man, I really want to bring my students to the aquarium, but can I justify that? Can we justify a trip out there? We got to get a bus or at least enough volunteers to drive. We have to pay for admission, but what are the kids going to learn?

Dylan: [00:07:53] There's no program.

Jen: [00:07:54] There's no program. I worry like, not I, but like the teacher, right? Reggie was saying, I worry my students will just run around and I'm just hoping they learn. I'm hoping they get something out of it. And so unfortunately, that's why maybe it's not in the cards. Maybe we won't be able to go. And that was the moment where I was like, hold on, stop. Let's talk about this. Let's think about this.

Dylan: [00:08:16] Spidey senses are tingling.

Jen: [00:08:19] Yeah, it was in that moment, I was like, field trips don't. You don't need a program. We can make the program. We can learn.

Dylan: [00:08:27] Part of the unit that we're in right now, it's like a project.

Jen: [00:08:30] You're about to kick off something in science. What is it? Oh, like extreme environments. In social studies, there was a big focus on climate change. The big focus in the UN's goals for 2030, which has now been pushed, I think, to some later year, because they realized fixing the oceans will take longer than 2030. But at the time, that's what we were talking about. So it was a very cross-curricular opportunity too. And both of us just sat there like, I think we can do something with this. Yeah, I think we can. We should do something about this. And that's where that idea was born.

Dylan: [00:09:01] Okay. So you were sitting with Reggie. She has this opportunity for you to sort of help her and collaborate on this project that you're going to then use the Vancouver Aquarium to inform. So what was the first step in getting this planned out?

Jen: [00:09:17] Yeah, for this one, I don't even think, I never met with the kids. So I didn't work with the students for any sort of pre-work. Like at least me personally, she obviously did about it and front loaded them, but her and I, we sat down and thought out what is the product goal? And there were a couple of things, and we landed on wanting the students to understand different extreme environments and how they correlate to the animals that thrive in these environments. And what happens when those environments are threatened, and that ties in to climate change and the advocacy part of it. It turned into, let's create animal advocacy videos from the perspective of the animals. And they could only do that if they're going in and filming these animals themselves, or they're talking in front of the animals as if they're interviewing the animals. We gave them a lot of creative freedom when it came to the project itself for that one.

Dylan: [00:10:11] The brief was basically, you need to create some sort of advertisement that is going to advocate for the environment that these animals live in and speak out against the threats that might threaten their existence.

Jen: [00:10:26] ELA was a big part of it too. Okay. So perspective writing.

Dylan: [00:10:29] From the perspective of the animal.

Jen: [00:10:30] They had to write from the perspective of the sea lion, of the sea otter, of the tortoise.

Dylan: [00:10:34] Of the axolotl.

Jen: [00:10:35] Exactly.

Dylan: [00:10:37] Okay. So that was the sort of framing for this project was they're going to go to the aquarium. They're going to use the aquarium as a place to capture media of some sort about these animals. What did you have to do before the field trip to make sure that it was going to work?

Jen: [00:10:54] It was a couple of quick conversations with our team to make sure, hey, we can take these iPads off site, right? And they'll still work?

Dylan: [00:11:01] So Reggie's class has access to a cart of iPads. The iPads were going to be brought to the aquarium so that they could document whatever they were doing there. And okay, so there's one part, the technical part of.

Jen: [00:11:13] It, the technical side of it. Yeah.

Dylan: [00:11:14] What about actually making sure that the aquarium is the right place for this? Did you go and did you do some recon?

Jen: [00:11:21] I did do some recon.

Dylan: [00:11:24] Yeah.

Jen: [00:11:25] In order to make sure this could actually work. Because at this point, I'm just sitting in a classroom bouncing ideas, dreaming. Reggie and I are both getting more and more excited.

Dylan: [00:11:34] Did you start any of your questions with Reggie as, imagine this.

Jen: [00:11:41] All we do is imagine. And sometimes they come to life. Sometimes they stay in our imagination. So I found some time along with Nick on our team. We did some field trip recon. Nick and I spent the day at the aquarium, just the two of us, and we walked around and we literally walked around imagining. I remember this because at this point, I actually don't think we had a solidified project plan yet, right?

Dylan: [00:12:04] We went with ideas.

Jen: [00:12:06] Yeah. We had some loose ideas that were like, what if we did this? What if we did that? Okay, let's just see. And when Nick and I went, we really tried to step into the shoes of, well, we were putting on different hats, right? We were like, okay, as a teacher. Okay. As Classmate and then as the student. Realistically, it was on the recon day that we realized there's a lot going on here. The students will have a goal. They'll need to stick to the goal, but they'll realistically also want to just explore. At the end of the day, a field trip is fun for so many reasons, and the students will want some free time to just roam and take things in as well. And so recon day was really good because we spent most of our day at the aquarium going to all the shows. So we went to the sea lion talk like the feeding talk. We went to the Sea Otter Show and the talk, and we did the wet lab ourselves and really listened to what they were sharing with us as general public and knowing that that's the same as what they give to the field trips as well, the students. And I think that's when we solidified, okay. Like animal advocacy, perspective of animals. I brought an iPad with me. I made sure the lighting and things like that worked.

Dylan: [00:13:12] Looks good.

Jen: [00:13:15] A few tips for making sure you're recording up against the glass. Never turn on the flash, obviously. Yeah. And just made sure that they would have enough time to actually capture some things.

Dylan: [00:13:25] So what I'm hearing is that during recon, you decided that when the students are there, there is value in being able to go to different places and maybe watch a show, do that kind of thing. So you wanted to cut the experience maybe up into like, here's when you're going to be there for field work and here's when you're going to be there for maybe watching a show or learning something from one of the exhibits that is outside of the, the field work that you're there for.

Jen: [00:13:53] Yeah. And I'd say we were probably pretty ambitious, right?

Dylan: [00:13:57] To get that all into one day.

Jen: [00:13:58] Yeah. Well, I'm not even done yet because we had two other ideas that we told the students to do. We hoped that they would. And I don't think any of them did it. Obviously, Nick and I, we had the whole day there. We weren't doing anything else. And we found that sitting and just watching the animals was a really good learning experience. Nick was the one who was staring at one of the jellyfish and started wondering, hey, how come? How come this jellyfish has four spots and this one has two and this one has three? And not gonna lie, to this day, I still don't know because we have not.

Dylan: [00:14:34] You came up with the questions, but not the answers.

Jen: [00:14:35] Yeah, yeah. Have not looked into it. I should ask, I should find out.

Dylan: [00:14:39] An inquiry project.

Jen: [00:14:40] Yeah. There we go. I got to do it later.

Dylan: [00:14:43] Okay. So those are I think you were calling them sit spots, right? Yeah. And it's a real thing.

Jen: [00:14:47] Yeah, yeah. That's a thing that scientists do when.

Dylan: [00:14:50] They're observing.

Jen: [00:14:51] Nature observation. That's the thing that a lot of people do, whether they are a scientist or an artist in those moments when you come up with questions because you're looking at something and for a while.

Dylan: [00:15:02] So the other observation method that I think you stumbled upon, or at least practiced was vocal sampling.

Jen: [00:15:08] Yeah. Vocal sampling. And this is similar to observing and sitting there to observe one thing. But in the case of the aquarium, otters are cute. I love otters, sea otters. There's like four of them in the area. And I don't blame you if your eyes are trying to capture and look at all four at the same time because they are so cute, but instead try to focus on just one one of the otters and follow that otter because you'll notice. Huh? What is that otter specifically doing? Why is it swimming this way instead of that way? Oh, this otter isn't playing with the toy that the other ones are. You just start to notice these things and those generate questions, inquiry based questions. We really wanted the students to come up with just genuine questions that they were curious about, to somehow come back and ask each other, do the research, incorporate it into their projects maybe. But like I said, there was a lot happening that day.

Dylan: [00:16:10] So what I'm hearing is that those observation techniques were something that you wanted the students to experience, but maybe it was one too many things. Yeah. So what were the things then that you did pull from the recon that helped your design of the fieldwork when the students actually got there?

Jen: [00:16:32] Coming up with the schedule.

Dylan: [00:16:34] So that included like what they were doing when they were there, as well as like the times of the shows that were there.

Jen: [00:16:40] Yeah, we broke it up so that they knew at least what time we're meeting for lunch and when we're leaving, and then we put in options for them. So we put in this is the time the sea lion show happens. There's another one at 1, 11 and one something like that. This is the time that the sea otter show happens. This is the time that the 4D movie runs. Honestly, there's a lot to do.

Dylan: [00:17:02] I remember you telling me this like some of the animals were more available in the morning. They just didn't want to be out when it was busy or it was later in the day, or it was right after feeding and they went to sleep.

Jen: [00:17:14] Yeah. Certain animals, if they get fed in the morning, you want to go straight to their tank at that time versus other ones that are fed throughout the day. The recon helped a lot. It just did a lot of things. It helped us solidify a schedule. But it also showed me that this crazy idea that I was imagining might work.

Dylan: [00:17:31] Yeah. So you're like, okay, a schedule is going to be helpful. We have all the things that are available to them, but we've also put in gaps where this is time for them to actually work on the project that they're there for. How did the project get pitched to the students before they got to the aquarium for this?

Jen: [00:17:51] Because this is the first run. I don't believe I was there for that.

Dylan: [00:17:55] Okay. So you met them at the aquarium, and they showed up with their schedule. And then they showed up with a shot list too of what they were planning.

Jen: [00:18:05] Reggie had created a workbook essentially for them to follow, not follow, but it had a bunch of resources. That's where the schedule was. There was a map in there. But one thing that really stood out, other than some prompting questions of things that they could ask employees, people who worked there or just find out themselves, places for them to jot down notes for what they want their animals to say was a shot list. It was empty, but it was just a place for them to write out. And I think some did some of it beforehand. Some of them wrote it out as they were there, but it was a place for them to identify the different shots they wanted to have in their videos.

Dylan: [00:18:40] So if they were making a video about the axolotl talking about their habitat being destroyed, then they're like, I need a shot of the axolotl. Maybe one of them's swimming, maybe a close up of their face.

Jen: [00:18:51] Exactly.

Dylan: [00:18:51] Okay, so they were there. So this field guide or this workbook was really the thing that guided their experience there. And it not only scheduled their time, but it scheduled what they were actually doing when they were recording things.

Jen: [00:19:05] It provided a lot of structure for them.

Dylan: [00:19:07] What did it look like when the students were actually using iPads and running around at the aquarium? I can imagine that from the perspective of another visitor, maybe even the staff.

Jen: [00:19:17] It was so cool. It got the attention of everyone. There were employees stopping to just stare and then ask. Yeah, they weren't sure who I was. Right. So they just were staring. And I obviously then started to chat them up of, they're making a project like this is their location to shoot and film and this is what they're doing. And one of them had actually. One of them from that day recognized me because it was just a couple of weeks prior that I went and did the recon, or at least maybe like a month prior. So it wasn't that long. And she and I had a good chat, even when I was doing the recon day, because I was telling her what I was doing. Okay. And so she recognized me right away and approached some of the students. And then those students got really excited because they started asking her questions about their animal, which was the sea lion, and then telling her about their projects. They read out their script to her. She was giving them feedback. It was great.

Dylan: [00:20:09] So they did a dry run with her before they actually recorded in front of the sea lion.

Jen: [00:20:14] Yeah, exactly. And there were other schools there that day I saw, and it just looked crazy because the students that we were there with every third or fourth one had an iPad in their hands, and they were very focused on doing what they were there to do. Some of them were wearing headphones. Some of them were pretending they had fake mics that they were holding. Some of them had chosen to go the news report route, right? So they all kind of looked a little different. And these other schools and teachers were kind of just walking a bit slower and trying to figure out what the heck we're doing.

Dylan: [00:20:46] Yeah. On our Classroom Chronicles, there's a couple of write ups that we have, and there's some pictures in there of what it looked like. And I mean, it's kind of amazing. They have scripts, they have iPads, they have little, like you said, microphones and props. And this is something that I talked to Katerina, the kindergarten teacher in one of our previous episodes. The iPad is a tool, right? And determining what this actual device is going to be used for in the experience that they're about to have. So nobody was there playing games on the iPad.

Jen: [00:21:20] Yeah.

Dylan: [00:21:21] No, it was there as a camera. It was kind of like its main purpose that day, which was to record audio, record video, take pictures and come back to the school with some content that they would then use to create.

Jen: [00:21:33] So other than that, they had no interest in it.

Dylan: [00:21:35] Yeah, because.

Jen: [00:21:36] It doesn't matter to them.

Dylan: [00:21:37] It was just a tool that day. Right. And I think this is one of those moments where tech, I've said this before, but like, it kind of gets a bad rap of like, this is something that is going to be distracting. But when it's intentional like this and the students are given a job and a tool that helps them achieve that job, it can be really empowering.

Jen: [00:21:58] Exactly.

Dylan: [00:21:59] So the students themselves had a pretty specific experience when they were there. And then they leave the aquarium with this iPad full of video or pictures or videos of them doing a news report or something like that, or some sort of advertisement. What were they then tasked with doing when they got back to the school?

Jen: [00:22:20] When they got back to the school, they went into at least a few weeks, maybe even a couple of months of editing and putting their videos together and creating. There was a wide range with this group because the goal that they were given was create an animal advocacy video from the perspective of your animal. And that was kind of it, right? Like how can they, as animals, advocate for their needs in their extreme environments? That was it.

Dylan: [00:22:53] Okay. So they're back at school and they're using, was it like Canva that they used to edit things together? Great. Canva has been our one stop shop for any sort of media creation.

Jen: [00:23:05] It can be as creative of a way as you want. Sounds like a Canva ad. Not. We're not sponsored. You can sponsor us Canva if you'd like.

Dylan: [00:23:13] Not sponsored by Canva. Okay. So this was sort of your first time doing this project at the aquarium, but we published an article about this. Actually, there were a couple articles about this project. And just like some of our other projects, this then inspired another teacher, or actually it was a couple of teachers who wanted to do a very similar project the following year. So what happened there and what did you learn about the first experience that you then applied to this next field trip, again to the Vancouver Aquarium?

Jen: [00:23:42] I learned so much.

Dylan: [00:23:43] Okay.

Jen: [00:23:44] Yeah. Teachers saw the previous Chronicles that we had posted. And so Alisa, she was like, hey, I saw your article last from last year. I think I want to bring the students to the aquarium or they usually go anyways, I think it was one or the other they like already go. But it was a way to wrap up the unit, a way to, okay, we've learned about extreme environments or we go on two field trips a year. Let's just make the aquarium one of them. Nothing wrong with that. But she's like, no, let's,

Dylan: [00:24:13] Let's add some intention.

Jen: [00:24:16] Let's add some intention. Let's get them to create something cool. Like one of the immediate things I learned, and I realized even while I was at the aquarium the first time with the first group was, I need to spend some time with these students before they even arrive at the aquarium. Not that the teacher is not doing the front loading of the material, it's not even that. It is spending time with them to analyze real life examples of the work that they're going to make. It's spending time with them beforehand to make sure they know how to use the tech in a different way, because these students, they know how to use the iPads. We use them at the schools all the time. Do they know how to use them in public? Do they know how to use them in the aquarium where there's a bunch of glass and there's glare and there's other sounds that are competing with? So there are those things.

Dylan: [00:25:01] Okay. So what I'm hearing is that there needed to be more clarity around some of the way that they use the technology. So part of the curriculum is about using tools in a way that helps enhance a job that they're doing or a learning experience or gives them an extra skill. And you identified that defining that a little bit more and giving them some more language and tools around like how to hold the iPads, how to shoot video in a productive way or in a way that makes sense would really benefit this next group.

Jen: [00:25:30] So my second lesson with them, not even the first, my second lesson with them before their field trip to the aquarium was something I called a pre-production meeting.

Dylan: [00:25:40] Yeah, I loved that it had a name, it was so good.

Jen: [00:25:43] I'll talk about that later. Okay. Because first I want to talk about what I think was probably the most important part of this. The first thing we did was Alisa and I. And the reason she'll come up more is because Alisa and Rachel and both of them, the grade six teachers at the school. But they co-teach certain topics. So Rach takes social studies and Alisa does science. We had compiled a couple of documentary examples. She really likes March of the Penguins. And when I just said, yeah, like the students last year, they went in and recorded videos, they were able to create any style and format of video they wanted. But when Alisa thought about this, she was like, I would love for them to create something like the March of the Penguins.

Dylan: [00:26:25] So an animal documentary?

Jen: [00:26:26] Exactly. Yeah. And that's a very specific type of video, right? And I liked that, honestly, because I did find that with another thing I learned, with lots of creative freedom comes a lot of responsibility. And some of the students struggled with what type of video should I make? And spent more time than they really needed to, deciding amongst themselves what type of video they wanted. Will it be a humorous video? Will it be a newscast? Will it be? What will it be? So instead I'm like, okay, let's try that. Let's give them a goal of making some sort of a documentary. There are different tones to documentaries, but at the end of the day, it still is this format of video. And so this first lesson that I ran with both classes was we watched clips from a few different well-known documentaries and some others that I just went through a lot on YouTube to try to find things that would show different angles of what a documentary looks like. I had created a documentary analysis sheet for them, and it was just put in front of them. And I said, don't focus too much on writing, but I just want you to jot things down as you watch.

Jen: [00:27:36] And this is exactly how we frame a podcast analysis as well. And some of the questions on here are like, okay, what's the overall impression of this video? What mood or feeling is the clip creating? What makes it feel that way? So if the mood is really dramatic, what's contributing to that? If the mood is more funny and lighthearted, what's contributing to that? And so the students wrote down so many great things, right? They wrote like, oh, there were like this dramatic one. There were a lot of quick cuts. The music was really dramatic. It left a lot of suspense. Like they were using such good language and vocabulary without me even having to prompt them. Then I asked specifically, like, what about camera work? Like, what kind of shots are you noticing? And I used the words in here like, oh, a close up, wide angle, slow motion, just to frontload them just to. It was a bit of foreshadowing to our pre-production meeting. And they wrote things like, oh, it just seemed really dramatic when they zoomed in close on the animal and slowed it down.

Dylan: [00:28:36] So they're connecting like what they're seeing to how it's making them feel and trying to draw that connection between the stylistic choices of the producer or the director and like what it's trying to make the viewer feel. This is sort of like the start of, well, if I'm going to make my own video or my own documentary, then I want to do some of these things as well.

Jen: [00:28:59] And we tell them, right, we're like, the reason we're doing this is because you're going to create something like this eventually, right? Like down the road after we go to the aquarium where you're going to be filming, you're going to create these and bring up things like voice and different narrators and just different tone and what that means to the documentary itself. So that was a really good first meeting. And this was one of the things where immediately during the first time I ran this with the original class, I was like, I want to do this. I think I should have done this, but it's okay. I'll do this next time.

Dylan: [00:29:29] Okay, so then they do the analysis. They've got all these ideas about what video choices can be made and how those might make the viewer feel. So that's the thing that prompts this next meeting, which is the pre-production meeting, which is setting up how they're going to go about shooting a video at the aquarium. Is that right?

Jen: [00:29:49] Yep. Second meeting and this is, I think this one happened like the week before we were going to the aquarium. So timing wise, it was great. Fresh in their brains still. At this point, in between my meetings with him, a couple of weeks that go by maybe 2 or 3 weeks. And in that time, Alisa and the teachers, they've assigned groups, they were put into groups of 3 to 4 and they were given an animal or they chose an animal. So they came into the pre-production meeting knowing the animal that they're going to focus on and the groups that they're working with. And that was kind of it. Right. And that's all we needed them to know at this point, because after pre-production, they would continue to script things out, think of what they wanted to start filming. And so pre-production was fun. That is how I phrased it. My intentions, my goals for this meeting was to make sure that when they went to the aquarium, they knew how to utilize their iPads in the most efficient manner. So another lesson learned right from the first one where I realized a lot of them, I was watching them not film up close to the glass, and they were getting a lot of glare and they were like, I can't even see my animal.

Jen: [00:30:57] It's like, fair enough. You got to push it right up to the glass. We used language like a wide shot and a close up, but they didn't really know what that meant. They were just guessing. So pre-production just sounded fancy and cool, and the students were really jazzed about that. They were like, oh, this feels really real. Because I said I was like, pre-production is a very real thing in a lot of different industries, but especially for one like this where they're going in on location to film something. So pre-production means that for these people. For us, it means understanding what all these shots were. And so what is a wide angle shot? What is a medium shot? What's an establishing shot? And in order to do that, I actually brought in my stuffed penguin and I was like, this is my subject. And I put him on the desk and I filmed every shot I introduced. I basically filmed something with Pingu here, and that really helped.

Dylan: [00:31:46] But I started seeing a visual representation of these ideas for shots.

Jen: [00:31:51] Yeah. What is a close up going to do that's different from a medium shot, which is different from this establishing wide angle shot and explaining what that does, like what the differences are like. An establishing shot is usually showing the environment, showing where they're at, where they live. You know, a close up gets like their claws or their teeth. If you're talking about when you talk about what they eat, maybe the shot that you want is of their teeth, because that makes sense. Giving those examples. That seemed to help in their planning a lot because then after that, for the rest of that meeting and then for the rest of the week, they got together with their groups and started writing and drawing out some of the scenes and the shots that they hoped to capture. And this is the coolest thing too, is when we do video projects at school, a lot of times their subjects are each other. So they can say like, this is the close up shot I want, I'm going to get it. They don't direct.

Jen: [00:32:46] You cannot direct the animals at the aquarium. And I tell them that, right. It's like you are going to have this wish list of shots and like a real videographer, you might not get them. You might not get any of them. And how are you going to redirect? Yeah. Or you might get a few of.

Dylan: [00:33:00] Them when you go to the aquarium. Do you only have that day to shoot? Not like BBC earth, who might hide in a hole in the earth for six months trying to get a shot of a mouse or something like that.

Jen: [00:33:12] Crazy.

Dylan: [00:33:13] Okay. So they get this incredible opportunity to then take these shots that they've learned about. Then they've created. Did they storyboard some of this to get an idea of what they're trying to say or like what they're going to be aiming for eventually? Or was this just like, let's try and get the shots first, and then we can come back and like make something out of those shots.

Jen: [00:33:36] Yeah. I want to say, because I feel like the storyboard template comes out with any of my video projects, but I didn't for this one. And I think the reasoning was exactly what you said. I didn't want to set them up for failure. I didn't want them to get so hung up on exactly what the video the shot will look like and go and realize they can't.

Dylan: [00:33:57] Okay, so this was almost like flipping it a little bit and saying, like, you're going to get footage. And then once you have that footage, then we're going to come back and we're going to edit that footage into something that will work for your documentary. So I guess the practice there is to shoot a lot of video because when you come back, you're going to do a lot of editing. Yeah. So is that what happened?

Jen: [00:34:19] Yeah. They went and the day of the aquarium visit was great. Yeah. So yeah. Now we're on site. We're on location field work site being the Vancouver Aquarium.

Dylan: [00:34:30] Yeah.

Jen: [00:34:31] Same idea.

Dylan: [00:34:31] With an iPad.

Jen: [00:34:32] With an iPad.

Dylan: [00:34:33] With a shot list and a schedule.

Jen: [00:34:36] Yep. Another thing we learned from last year was some of the groups from last year, the year before this project. Some of the groups got so focused and hung up on getting the perfect shot that they didn't even explore the aquarium. And I didn't want that to happen either. Right. So for this group, I was very specific of when we arrive, I want you to focus that first hour, hour and a half on going straight to your animal site and capturing footage. Honestly, all you need is an hour. Then based on that, start exploring. Go to the shows. Some of your shows will actually be for the animal that you are exploring and learning about. So that works out. And then take the rest of the day to explore different parts of the aquarium. And then if you have extra time, continue to film more. And that really helped because I think this this group actually did manage to see different parts of the aquarium more because some kids will go to the aquarium every year and some kids have never been there. You just don't know. And so we want to make sure that they're still getting to see different parts of it. And so, the aquarium, yeah, mostly it didn't change in terms of what it looked like, still looked very bizarre to these employees and other schools watching this group. And we had double the amount of kids because this was two grade six classes. Yeah. So there were about 60 kids, 50 to 60 kids running around the aquarium. And every third or fourth student there was an iPad. Yeah, there's an iPad in hand.

Dylan: [00:35:58] There's some great shots of the group that was, I think they were doing the Cayman, the like small alligator that's there and it honestly looks like they're dangling an iPad like feet above this alligator. There's obviously like what, 8 or 10ft in between them and the, and the Cayman, but oh yeah, it looks like they're literally they just have their hands over both in the exhibit.

Jen: [00:36:18] Child and iPad dangling over this alligator.

Dylan: [00:36:20] The perspective of that picture makes it look a lot more dangerous than it actually was.

Jen: [00:36:24] I promise it wasn't. I keep the kids safe when I'm there. So the story behind that picture actually is such a good moment as well, because the Cayman, which is actually neither a crocodile or an alligator. These students taught me about.

Dylan: [00:36:40] It's in the family. It's neither.

Jen: [00:36:43] Yeah. And they're much smaller, but still very scary looking. Big claws. Lots of, lots of teeth. It was at lunch this the group of students that were focusing on the Cayman came up to me, heads kind of just down. And they were like, Jen, we need your help. And I was like, what's going on? I thought maybe there was an iPad issue. They were like, they came in, didn't come out the entire hour we were there. We sat and we stood and we waited and we waited and it didn't move. It was just sleeping. Tucked away in the corner. We could barely see it. What are we going to do? Like, how are we going to make a video out of all this footage of nothing?

Dylan: [00:37:19] Yeah. So they came with an expectation that they were gonna get something. Nature did not respond.

Jen: [00:37:23] Exactly what happens in real life too. Of course I'm sitting there. I'm panicking a little cause I'm like, what do you expect me to do? I can't. Am I gonna dangle my lunch in front of it? Like. But I was like, you know what? Let's just let's go take a look. Yeah. And turns out there were two groups that had the same issue. So they heard what was going on. They were like, yeah, we also want to go back because we tried for that first hour, hour and a half, nothing happened. So they just had to move on and go take a look. But they're like, we want to go back now and see if we can get other footage. Or maybe you have ideas. They had so much trust in me. I'm like, do you think I can? Sure. You have ideas to make the video look good? I was like, oh no. And they showed me some of that footage. Oh, you couldn't see anything.

Students: [00:38:11] But it's gonna go by super fast cause it's not doing anything: Exactly. Don't do anything. That's a good shot right there. Slowly move it. Scales. Yeah.

Dylan: [38:19] It's just brown. Some water and I mean, they have good camouflage. So that's their whole thing, is that you can't see them until it's too late.

Jen: [38:31] So thankfully though, when we went back shortly after, like five minutes after standing there and me trying to come up with creative solutions of like, okay, let's redirect, right. We can do some research on this animal already. I know you don't want to just abandon it. It's also nearing the end of our day. You can't just go and film another animal. You can see, you know, you can see it a little bit. You can see like it's but maybe like half of its tail. And maybe this will involve a little bit more voice over. It won't have as many action shots. As we're figuring this out. It comes out.

Dylan: [39:04] It's show time.

Jen: [39:05] Yeah. It knew it knew.

Dylan: [39:07] It was ready.

Jen: [39:08] It was ready. And it came and gave us a show. That's why there were so many pictures.

Students: [39:13] Video go moving video now, now, now. Oh that's good. This is good. It's going under Ben. It's going I got I'm keeping I got it, I got it, I got it.

Jen: [39:24] They were so excited. They were like, so pumped. There were maybe 2 or 3 iPads out. The rest of the poor, the public that were there to see it, they were like, what is happening?

Dylan: [39:34] Yeah. These kids had the front row seats.

Jen: [39:37] Absolutely.

Dylan: [39:38] For the camera show.

Jen: [39:38] One of them actually, he was really panicked because he was like, my iPad is with my other group member. And we couldn't even find them before they came back. And he was just rambling. And I just pulled out my phone and I was like, here you go, just use my phone. It's okay. So there are some shots. But when he gave me my phone back, I was able to snap a couple of shots. It just looked so funny because they're so excited about the Cayman. Yeah. And then I'm behind them, so excited about them being excited about the Cayman.

Dylan: [40:02] Just levels of excitement.

Jen: [40:04] Yeah, yeah. And some of their videos worked out came out so well. And there was a shot, I remember in one of their projects where I asked if they had slowed it down. I was like, this looks really dramatic. And they were like, no, that's remember Jen? It was just floating in the water, super like kind of creepy looking.

Dylan: [40:18] That's how slowly it moves.

Jen: [40:20] Yeah, yeah. I thought it was slowed down.

Dylan: [40:22] That's so good. One thing I wanted to ask you about was it sounds like during lunchtime they had some downtime where they were reviewing footage. Yeah. And you were circulating?

Jen: [40:33] I didn't ask them to do that. I didn't expect them to do that.

Dylan: [40:35] So they were just they were into it. So they were like, we have some downtime. Let's review our footage. Let's see if there's anything we've missed.

Jen: [40:41] Yeah. So that they could go back and film more.

Dylan: [40:43] And they were using some of the language like you heard them talking about like, oh, that's another shot. We need to do that.

Jen: [40:49] I was hearing the language like right at 10 a.m., you know, as soon as we walked in there and I was just circling the groups and checking in on different, different students, I was already hearing that language of, hey, hey, make sure you get a close up of its teeth.

Students: [41:03] I got, I got it. I'm taping. I got it, I got it, I got it. Yes, I got it.

Jen: [41:09] One of them came up to me and was like, Jen, how can I get a good establishing shot of the sea lions environment? Because when you get a little bit too far, you can see that you're at the aquarium. They're like stairs and like the concession stand. I'm like, well, you know, like, understandably your documentary we know that this was filmed at the aquarium. We cannot fake the fact that this is the real environment of a sea lion, but they're using the language and they are understanding the intention because the only reason they can ask me that question is because they know what an establishing shot even is.

Dylan: [41:41] That's great. That's great. So the language that you set them up with then kind of brings them through this whole experience at the aquarium and they're capturing shots regardless of whether or not their animal cooperated or they had to revisit their animal. Yeah. So it sounds like this version was more successful because of the scaffolding that happened before. That means that when they came back to school after doing that field work at the aquarium, was the editing and sort of like creation part of this project as successful? Did that scaffolding bring you all the way?

Jen: [42:19] I think the, yeah, I think the scaffolding made a huge difference throughout, but especially when it came down to, okay, now we have the shots, we've been to the, we've been on site and we've been on location. We have the shots that we want. What are we going to do with them now? Some of the groups, understandably, had been a month and a half, maybe two months since that first analysis lesson. Some of them had forgotten, not so much forgotten, but you could see as they were editing, they weren't sure of the direction anymore. But it was great because a five minute chat was all I needed to regroup.

Dylan: [42:58] You went back and played some of these clips for them from the original movies and said where are we going here.

Jen: [43:05] That was part of the regroup of like, remember these. And you could see some of them going like, right. Oh yeah. Fair enough. These students are there so much going on in their lives and their brains are, there's a lot going on. And they probably remember those videos. They probably forgot that that was the correlation, right? Like they're like, oh, I remember this. Oh, that's what you wanted from oh, okay, I can do that. The really cool part about this project was what happened in between field work day and editing day. It was before we were going on the field trip. I had mentioned what we were doing in this class and the project itself to the principal at the school. When I was telling Jason this, the principal, he kind of sat up and he was like, I know a documentarian, I know a filmmaker, a videographer, and he specifically makes documentaries. I was like, oh, okay. And he just kept going off, yeah, he's filmed The Amazing Race. He's filmed MasterChef Canada. He also filmed Polar Bear documentary, where he spent 3 or 4 months living in Churchill, Manitoba, where the polar bears are, and created this amazing documentary. Oh, by the way, he has an Emmy. This is an Emmy Award winning filmmaker who films documentaries. It wasn't for the Polar Bear one, but it doesn't matter.

Dylan: [44:24] Doesn't matter. Doesn't matter. You have an Emmy.

Jen: [44:26] You have an Emmy. Exactly. And he's like, let me just message him right now to see if he is down to come in and talk to the kids. And I was like, yes, you should absolutely do that right away. Please. And it was like within ten, 15 minutes he messaged Ian. Ian Kerr.

Dylan: [44:42] Ian Kerr.

Jen: [44:43] Yeah, yeah. Very accomplished, you know, filmmaker but all around just cool dude. Yeah.

Dylan: [44:49] This is so cool because you're not only bringing the students to a location to do field work, but you've also now brought in an expert into sort of connect the dots for them, right? And this is what these learning experiences, this is like where they thrive, which is when you connect them to things outside of the classroom. And you give students sort of like a look into something that they could step into. Right. And inspire.

Jen: [45:16] Them. Yeah.

Dylan: [45:17] Yeah. So this is very cool.

Jen: [45:18] I couldn't even have asked for this to happen even if I wanted to. Like this was so serendipitous.

Dylan: [45:23] We can also do in the classroom pretending to be experts or presenting as an expert or something like that, bringing someone who has like the weight of it. Totally different. And he brought in camera equipment.

Jen: [45:36] He brought in the weight of his Emmy.

Dylan: [45:39] He brought in the weight of his Emmy. That's how much weight.

Jen: [45:41] Very heavy actually.

Dylan: [45:43] Wow.

Jen: [45:43] Yeah. It's much larger than I thought. So that happened. Ian graciously agreed to come in and chat with this group, and it happened right after the field trip. I think it was the week after we were at the aquarium and before they really even started editing, which was a great time because it was good to regroup and remind them, okay, remember these people we were I was talking to you about, well, here's one of them. And Ian had a great talk with them. It was a bit of a like a Q&A session. And he showed some pictures of him working on this polar bear documentary, which we watched before he came in. So we did another analysis, but this time of his work. And then we got to talk to him and the class, the teachers and I, we helped them just come up with some questions that they would have wanted to ask him. And they asked some really great questions as well. But the talk was amazing because Ian walked us through just like his life and how he got to where he's at today, all the different types of work he does.

Jen: [46:43] He had some really good life advice for everyone, not just the students. I think it was great advice for me too. What did he say? If you want to create, if you want to create good art, consume good art. Like if you like whatever you are trying to produce, what you expose yourself to and what you consume needs to be the highest quality as well. Right. And that makes so much sense because if you're not, then that's going to speak volumes and when you try to create and produce something, and I think it was such a validating thing for me to hear because of what we do a lot of times, which is analyzing real work. And I think that always makes a big difference when we're trying to do things in the classrooms of, let's analyze a really good podcast, let's analyze a really good video so the students know that's what we're striving for. It doesn't have to look exactly like this, but that's the end product that we're hoping to create.

Dylan: [47:34] That's reminding me of something that I've heard about, just like sort of creativity in general. When you work within an area that is in a creative field, sometimes you worry about coming up with something that someone else has done and you want to have ownership over this thing. Like I've made this thing and it was just me. But like, inspiration doesn't really work like that, you can't work in a vacuum or like work and not look at other things. You have to consume stuff that you feel like it's going to inspire you. And Ian's point of, let's watch the thing that is the most inspiring, the highest quality stuff, then that's, it's going to inform how you make things. It's going to inform how you create things in the world. And like, I think it's amazing that these students got to hear that from someone.

Jen: [48:25] I don't even know if these students realize how lucky they are.

Dylan: [48:28] Well, it's one of those things that you feel like it goes in the back of their head, and then later on it'll pop up and like, oh yeah, when I was in grade six, a guy with an Emmy showed up and he said something like this.

Jen: [48:38] Yeah, we got to do this thing.

Dylan: [48:40] Cool experience.

Jen: [48:41] I'm hoping they remember this down the road. That's as much as you can hope for, right? The resume of Ian is quite impressive.

Dylan: [48:49] Yeah. So Ian shows up. He has this really inspiring moment, talks to the students about what it means to be a documentary filmmaker. Then the students are now in this editing mode, and they move to creating these videos, their own documentary movies. What was their creation process like and what did they make? What did you see on the other side when they were done with these videos?

Students: [49:13] It is known as many things, the predator of the Pacific, the Emperor of the ocean, but best known as the Blacktip Reef shark. This may look like a regular fish to you, but trust me, it isn't. It can detect extremely low concentrations of substances like blood in the water, and that's not even its coolest adaptation. It also has electroreceptors that can detect the electric fields of its prey. Another cool adaptation the Blacktip Reef shark has, is an organ on their flanks that detects light water movements made by other fish.

Students: [49:59] This is the sea otter. They are known to be very sociable and lovable animals. This documentary will show you their habits and lifestyles. Sadly, we could not get all the footage that we wanted since a part of their enclosure was closed off to the public. So please be patient. We hope you like it.

Jen: [50:20] All of these videos were fantastic, but you can really tell the groups with the students that got it, like really got it. Because you can tell right away from the tone of their videos, it sets off very dramatic. The color scheme fit, the music fit. The voiceovers were very.

Dylan: [50:39] Some of the recorded voiceovers.

Jen: [50:40] Yeah, some of them recorded voiceovers. Some of them started off that way and some of them had forgotten, like I had mentioned. And so there was a bit of showing what they had watched from before and then showing each other their classmates work. So the other classmates and what they were doing and just inspiring each other in that way. But the videos they created were amazing. And all of them were so different. And we didn't want all of them to be these super dramatic, slow, and kind of scary sounding.

Dylan: [51:11] They didn't all have to be David Attenborough, dramatic retellings of nature stories.

Jen: [51:16] Some of them could be, and some of them were, but some of them were a bit cheeky. You know, some of them were a bit more upbeat, especially if their animals were like the monkeys, you know, those ones.

Dylan: [51:25] The otter ones were very cute.

Jen: [51:26] Super cute. Exactly. Yeah. Like you're deciding on how you're pulling the heartstrings, right? You know, and so the end result of all of this was amazing. They had a few weeks after coming back to work on these projects, so they had quite a bit of time to edit. You could tell which group some of the groups. And I didn't do this. And again, I'm learning every time I do this. Some of the groups who had self-assigned roles. So some of the groups who decided I will be the editor, right? Like we can all put things in, but I'm going to do like the final sweep, right? And those groups, you could tell because the tone was consistent.

Dylan: [52:07] Whereas when it's something you would change, I think for next time is to prescribe roles within the groups.

Jen: [52:12] Which, we had roles sort of. Right. But they all had like one collective role. We didn't separate the roles. And you could tell when an editor was changed halfway because the tone would shift and the style would shift and even like the font would change. You know, there wasn't the one final person looking through and being like, hey.

Dylan: [52:30] This is reminding me of a newsletter club at one of my schools where we had a creative director who was responsible literally to just make sure that every page had consistent fonts and that kind of thing. It wasn't that they weren't contributing in other ways, it was just one of their additional responsibilities was just consistency.

Jen: [52:52] It's like what you do as our editor in chief with The Classroom Chronicles. You make sure.

Dylan: [52:57] Creative director.

Jen: [52:58] Yeah, exactly. You make sure our tone is consistent. We don't use bold fonts whenever we want. I bold things so much and then you'd take it away.

Dylan: [53:09] So one of the things that we heard from the parents in this project was that their child had been to the aquarium so many times. It was one of their favorite places to be, but this was one of their favorite times going because they had a job, because they had a responsibility when they were there.

Jen: [53:29] It was really heartwarming. It happened right after the field trip. Rachel had gotten an email from a parent, and then she quickly forwarded that and shared that with myself and Alisa. To paraphrase the email, it said something along the lines of, my child has been to the aquarium so many times over the years. He's done camps there. We've done different programs. There we go a lot. We have an annual membership, and frankly, he's starting to get bored of it. You could tell. Right. Because he's in grade six now, he's a bit older. And she said that this time was totally different. Like he was super excited to be there. He knew he had a goal. He was talking about it beforehand and after the fact. Yeah, this is like part of the email, but also part of conversations that I knew the teacher had had with the parent afterwards, which was like, all I needed to hear because I'm like, this is why this is my reason that we're doing this and hoping to do this with more and more teachers as well. That was a standout moment.

Dylan: [54:27] That's incredible. Yeah. Like, I love hearing you talk about taking this idea and bringing it into other places. We've been doing recon at some other locations, the Burnaby Village Museum.

Jen: [54:38] Steveston Heritage site.

Dylan: [54:39] Steveston Heritage site.

Jen: [54:41] We've technically been to the art gallery.

Dylan: [54:42] We went to the art gallery. That hasn't turned into anything just yet.

Jen: [54:45] Yeah, but you never know if it might later on. That's a big focus of mine, for sure. And so I'm about to go on another field trip in a few weeks, actually, to the Steveston Heritage Sites.

Dylan: [54:57] With students.

Jen: [54:58] With students. Yes. With two grade five classes talking about they're doing their unit on immigration. So the bunkhouses and the shipyards, all of that at Steveston, lends itself very well. They do have an educational program. And so we've worked with the existing program, worked it into a project that they're going to be working on. The students are going to create junk journals or really just like scrapbooks almost, if you think about it like that, but of materials that again, there's a little bit of perspective writing as well. Like they're going to take on the perspective of a certain type of immigrant that's coming into Canada to do a certain type of work. What would they have encountered? What type of tickets would they have had? And then taking pictures when they're there in Steveston, but also coming back and creating fake receipts and artifacts for them to put in? This can only happen when they're there and observing and documenting. And so yeah, I'm excited for that one. But some recon was done for that as well over spring break, Carlo and I went and checked it out.

Dylan: [55:52] The field work there is going to be taking pictures of artifacts and then maybe recreating them back at school.

Jen: [55:58] Yeah. Or just using that picture, taking pictures of their bunk bed or taking pictures of the sink, right? Because then you can write whatever you want about it to personify this person as if you were them.

Dylan: [56:10] This is so great. Thank you for sharing all of these incredible stories about the field work that you've been designing for all of these classes.

Jen: [56:17] Thanks for letting me talk about it.

Dylan: [56:19] You are also presenting on this.

Jen: [56:23] Yes, I am.

Dylan: [56:23] In July. Yeah, at the Deeper Learning Conference in Chilliwack. Yes, July 2nd to fourth. We're both going to be there.

Jen: [56:30] Yeah, yeah. You're doing something.

Dylan: [56:32] I'm also presenting, but you're going to be presenting specifically on turning field trips into field work. Yes. That's kind of like your thesis statement for your workshop.

Jen: [56:40] The name of the workshop that I'm running is purposeful field trips, designing, and learning beyond the classroom. And so it's going to be very similar to what I talked about in this podcast, but I'm working on the development of it right now. And it's going to introduce basically the framework around how I've been working with the teachers on designing an existing field trip that they go on, or designing some, or being able to go to a location they've never thought they could go to because there wasn't an established learning educational program and how we can make that location a reality in terms of turning it into a field trip location, using it as a field work location. So yeah, I'm excited for that.

Dylan: [57:19] Yeah, it's going to be great. The Deeper Learning Conference in Chilliwack, July 2nd to 4th. Jen and I will both be there and come say hi if you're going to be there. Yes. And we want to hear about maybe some of the field work that you've been doing in your classrooms.

Jen: [57:22] Yes.

Dylan: [57:23] Thanks for listening and we'll see you next time.

Dylan: [57:29] You can find Imagine This on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite Podcatcher. You can also read all about these field trips in the Classroom Chronicles. You can find links to each one of the times that Jen brought classes to the aquarium in our show notes. You can also reach out to us on Instagram @classmates.team. If you have a field trip that you think could be turned into field work, let us know. Send us a message and you can also find Jen and I at the Deeper Learning Conference in Chilliwack on July 2nd to 4th. Hopefully we'll see you there. And if we do come, say hi.