Instruction to Inspiration
We were designing a supplemental video series for an after-school engineering program…
The parameters were tight, and the complexity of the teaching points kept overwhelming any entertainment value we tried to inject. So we switched gears and decided to make our videos inspirational rather than instructional: the teachers would cover the learning points, while our videos would introduce them in a fun and approachable way.
The result was a video series that inspired kids to tackle topics that might otherwise intimidate them.
Episode 7
The most emotional episode – the protagonist’s younger brother sabotages her engineering project! There was a lot to include in only four minutes, including the climax of a conflict, organic emotional moments, and brief references to learning points.
Episode 8
Our director wanted some physical humor to offset Episode 7’s emotional seriousness. The series featured an alien creature, so I made him hungry, and tied the learning points to his chomp-chomp-chomping!
Episode 9
Episode 9 widened the narrative to include the protagonist’s dream-team group of friends. The challenge was scripting five characters into a four-minute scene, revealing their personalities clearly, but also leaving space for other elements to shine.
Overall,
I was happy with how it turned out. We created an entertaining show with just enough learning dust to keep it relevant to the curriculum designer’s objectives.
