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Orange
County Register
Santa Ana, CA
Friday, March 19, 2004
Students'
films demonstrate their vision
Five blind or nearly blind
classmates created two movies, including one for tech showcase.
By Jit Fong Chin
CREATIVITY
ON DISPLAY: Irvin Rivera, 6, puts his face close to the screen to
see the enlarged letters typed by a classmate.
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CHECKING
IT OUT: From left, Cianna Means, Sean Landgraf, teacher Carol Anne
McGuire, Brandon
Reed, Carolina Snader and Irvin
Rivera watch a playback of one of their movies.
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ANAHEIM HILLS – Sean
Landgraf wants to take up videography as a hobby. Not unusual for an
11-year-old enamored with "The Lord of the Rings," but Sean is
nearly blind.
Blame it on school.
In the past few months, Sean and four other visually impaired classmates
at Imperial Elementary, ages 6 to 11, wrote, filmed and edited two movies,
turning up the sound on their teacher's Apple iBook laptop when their
vision wasn't enough.
On Saturday, one of their movies, a six-minute mini- masterpiece called
"Get a Clue What we Can Do!" will represent Orange County, along
with three other school projects, in the California Student Technology
Showcase in Palm Springs.
Teacher Carol Anne McGuire said the movie helped in two key ways: Her
students gained new confidence and skills in tackling the package, and the
final production revealed their accomplishments to the rest of the school.
"We're going to show people what we can do even if we have problems
seeing," Sean said.
Eleven-year-old Cianna Means, who is losing her central vision, helped
write the script and do the video and audio editing.
"My mom likes it that I'm doing lots of stuff right now when I have
my vision, so it makes it much easier so when I become blind I know how to
do them still," said Cianna, who relies on peripheral vision.
Cianna and McGuire also made a movie on the rain forest last year when
they were both at Barton School.
She moved to Orange this year when McGuire launched the Imperial program,
in which the students gather for morning Braille lessons before attending
regular classes.
"Last year, my vision was a little better than this year, so it was
harder to film this year," Cianna said.
To create a script, two kindergartners voiced their ideas while the older
children edited the text on computers and Braille-embossing machines.
Students took turns holding the camera and microphone. McGuire helped with
trickier bits such as zoom-ins.
"Get a Clue" begins with clips from "Seabiscuit" and
"Daredevil," movies in which visually challenged men overcome
their challenges to become heroes.
It transitions into a flying kick from Sean, a red-belt, in his tae kwon
do class. The students then take turns revealing their passions for the
martial arts, riding horses, playing flute, writing journals and doing
mathematics.
"I knew they could do it if they put their minds to it," said
Valerie Reed. Her son, Brandon, 6, has only 10 percent vision in his right
eye.
The Imperial students also created a second movie by interviewing
strangers to ask what they thought about blindness.
"My favorite part of making the movie was interviewing," said
Brandon, who held the microphone. "The hardest part was waiting for
people."
McGuire entered "Get a Clue" in a county technology showcase in
January, at which it was selected for the Palm Springs showcase. At the
county event, McGuire's students dressed up in thrift-store trench coats
and pretended to be private investigators.
"One of the things we thought was really interesting was their
editing abilities are far superior to sighted people's because of their
acute sense of hearing," said Vivian Goldschmidt, a judge at the
county showcase and a consultant at the county department of education.
Goldschmidt cried when she first saw "Get a Clue."
"It just shows us how we're sometimes our own worst enemy. Sometimes
we put our own barriers in front of us." |