Putting 2010 into Perspective - Russian Mihis

I haven't posted in a very long time, and its been all about perspective. For starters this site isn't even officially open. I still am a little unsure and I haven't really shared it yet with anyone. But I digress - I wasn't suppossed to be working on it now but have some down time. Like last year we've started off working on our Maori Mihi (Greeting/Introduction) with the students. Last year one of my goals was to take these and get them out there, cross promote them with Youtube, Teachertube and generally spread them around (with an embed from our site to get traffic back of course). I can't recall specifically why this fell by the wayside like so many of my ideas last year seemed to but they did. Anyway I have one student whose really strong in her Reo and things Maori this year, a real leader and after three attempts this is what we came up with.

Last year I don't know if I would have persisted with this video. I knew it was valuable but I would have probably settled for the original version that wasn't very good. Originally we were going to have the student teach another student who wasn't comfortable and show a lesson. It just didn't work because the Girl speaking who was really confident seemed unsure of herself as soon as someone else was introduced to the equation. We tried the original concept twice and both times I said no to the footage because it wasn't powerful enough. The final version that you just watched came about because I said to the student, go ahead and create a practise version for the other student to watch, when it came back I just thought, no that's good enough to stand by itself. The 'magic' that was part of this didn't come from our side of the world it came from these two students in Russia. Watch this.

To me its everything that you could want. I know its short that some of the translation is not completely perfect but what I love about it is the concept, that students in New Zealand can teach students around the world (or in Siberia anyway)

The fact that the teacher encouraged her students to create the videos - I didn't have any input into that it was completely on her own initiative. I was just thrilled another positive was that because of the nature of the collaboration I could take this to other teachers and show them and get a reaction out of them. I was on a site the other day, looking at a High School Cultural Video, it was some of my ex students, preparing for the Polyfest. Normally I would have been keen to see it, then I saw the video length which was thirteen minutes! What I like about the Russian Mihi's is that length wise theyre short and sharp. In out. Result.