Emma Free, Digital Learning Assistant, talks about the Workshops that she has been shadowing and practising film editing techniques.

Over the past month or so, as part of working with the Learning team, I have been shadowing various workshops at both the Yorkshire Museum and York Castle Museum that are meant for school groups.

In these sessions children are led by an actor who guides the children through a unique learning experience depending on just which workshop they have been doing.

In the Yorkshire Museum I first got to sit in on a workshop called Viking Voyages.

This was a very interesting workshop which focused on the conditions of Scandinavia during the Viking period and some of the reasons they may have had for sailing to other countries to settle or raid.

In the workshop the children got to handle some Viking artefacts as the actor explained more about Viking life to the children.

After this the children were ‘taken back in time’ by donning on Viking clothing and spinning around a few times to take them back to the Viking era.

I was also able to wintess workshops relating to Space, Telescopes and the solar system which finished with a tour of York Observatory.

The workshop I shadowed in the Castle Museum took place on the famous Kirkgate Victorian street and was about the Victorian era.

The workshop was called Troubled Times and focused on the difficulties that were faced by the poor during the era, following the story of an apple seller named Joseph Beedham.

An actor led session, the children will follow Joseph as he makes his way through Kirkgate, trying to sell his apples.

During this, Joseph proves he has sticky fingers, helping himself to some candles, medicine for his sick child and finally a present for his sick daughter, Ellie, which was a very expensive ivory ball and cup game that was popular in the Victorian era.

Eventually Joseph finds himself being arrested for theft and it becomes up to the children to decide the fate of Joseph.

The children get involved in this bit by becoming judge and jury for Joseph, though the group I was with overall deemed it that Joseph was not guilty and was permitted to go free, despite how they had seen him steal the various items.

Though it was probably more to keep Joseph’s family out of the workhouse, which I guess was a good thing.

All this shadowing the workshops is going toward something very useful, as I happen to believe it would be a very good idea to create short 30 seconds to one minute promotion videos of the workshops to go on the Museums Trust website.

This would be good for giving an idea what the workshops contain without giving too much away, but just as kind of a way to give teachers an idea of what the children in their class will be doing in the various workshops and which would be right for them. This leads me on nicely to my training in film editing.

With this I was given a very quick camera training session with Graham Thorne, who gave me a run down with how to set up the camera and tripod and was sent out into the gardens to get some stock footage of the abbey, the Yorkshire Museum, the river and the Hospitium.

This was later used for my editing training, which was a refresher session and getting me used to using iMovie to edit the footage I had.

This was another session where Graham sat down with me and walked me through what to do. It was very helpful, just to be able to refresh my memory of what to do, and I am quite happy to say that I was able to pick it up quickly once more.

Out of this I made two test films, one with Graham by my side, and the other when I was just left to play around with iMovie on my own.

With another busy month under my belt, I am starting to get myself comfortable at last and starting to explore areas that would be good in joining both digital and learning together.

Future projects they have lined up for me are filming Easter hot cross buns and developing some online learning resources for the classroom. So all the shadowing and camera training will be put to good use I am sure of it.