Debriefing session

The debriefing session was originally scheduled as being a one-hour event during our final Storyboard session on Thursday December 15th 2011. Two of the eight students were absent so I caught up with them together one week later on their last ever day of primary school (December 22nd) as both of these students were in Grade 6.

The debriefing session involved the children being able to see their completed animations. This presented a huge challenge to get the animations finished in time. In 2010 when I had 18 students in the project, there was no debriefing session so we continued working on the animations right up until the last day. In 2010 I also had the option of playing DVDs to my classes during the final week so I could work with each student at the back of the room. This was good as it allowed each student to be there for the finishing touches involved in the video-editing environment. This also gave me the idea of having a smaller class size as this type of project requires quality interactions which is harder to facilitate with a larger class.

The debriefing session was conducted in a semi-formal fashion where the children were free to take the discussion in different directions. Ideally, this one hour event would have been longer as the final director's commentaries also had to be recorded during this session.

The only compromise was that the original plan of interviewing the children was not possible. The debriefing session consists of interview like data but it was better to keep this data together as a debriefing session rather than break it up according to the input from each participant.

Video of the debriefing session

The edited debriefing session ended up being 21 minutes long. To make the video easier to stream I've broken it into the following four chapters:

Chapter 1

This first chapter is mainly instructions from me about how the director's commentaries work. 'Stadium design' and 'Stringed instruments' animation were also viewed by their authors for the first time. (The other three students had seen their animations by this time).

Chapter 2

• Discussion about reference frames.
• Discussion about the children's understanding of their purpose for director's commentaries.
• Opinions about ownership of the animations in terms of my assistance.
• Discussion about the ethics of me editing out 'ums'.
• Definition of 'objectivity'.
• Discussion about cognitive load.

Chapter 3

• Discussion about the ideal class size for a project such as Storyboard.
• Comparisons between the 2010 and 2011 animation classes.
• More opinions about ownership of the animations in terms of my assistance.
• Clarification of the difference between the weekly audio director's commentaries and the final one that accompanies the animation footage.
• Discussion about how authoring animations compares to more traditional projects.

Chapter 4

• Additional footage of the two children who were absent for the first debriefing session.

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