How To Launch a Film Festival

							                                                               How To Launch Your School’s “First
                                                                     Annual Film Festival”


Celebrate your students’ creativity and developing digital identities by hosting a school-wide
Film Festival / Family Night. Here's a How To Guide, along with a variety of resources to use to
launch your "First Annual" showcase for your students PSAs. Double the impact by involving
parents to join in this important conversation in an evening of information and celebration.

1. Work backwards from the Digital ID PSA Challenge Deadline, which will be May 3 in 2013. You may
    want to use your Festival to help select the winners which will be submitted to the PSA Challenge, or
    you might choose to have your festival after the Challenge winners are announced on May 17, 2013,
    to include showing them.
2. Build excitement for the Festival from the very start of the school year by talking it up to your
    students, and enlisting allies from the administration, parents, and both certified and classified staff
    who are willing to support your great idea! Your school’s Community Liaison or ELAC coordinator
    can be an excellent resource to help get parents to participate.
3. As you weave digital citizenship principles into your curriculum throughout the school year,
    encourage students to visualize how important values and messages could be taught through multi-
    media.
4. Embrace the pedagogical power of “students teaching students”. Show students multiple examples
    of student-created videos to teach concepts, starting with our 2012 PSA winning videos as
    inspiration. Also, there’s a wide variety of student-created academic videos on Next Vista for
    Learning which are excellent for teaching content in multiple subject areas. Students need to see
    that the ability to create short videos is fast becoming a must-have 21st century communication tool.
    Having students perform quick skits to engage with content is a great way to develop their capacity
    for teaching contcepts to peers.
5. Introduce the PSA General Guidelines and Forms early on. To be eligible to win, all PSAs must
    conform to copyright protocols, and other requirements as described in the Guidelines. Share the
    task of direct instruction in these areas by dividing them up with your colleagues, when possible.
6. Two-to-three months before your target date, design and distribute posters to promote the Festival.
    Here’s a sample flyer we created. Be sure to include both who is invited and who students should
    contact, the what, when, where, how, and why information.
7. Coordinate with your ASB and/or other clubs to sell food and drink at the Film Festival as a fund
    raiser, or organize a potluck for families to enjoy food, fun, family, and film.
8. Consider inviting the school band to provide live music to your festival!
9. Choose your MC. It could be you yourself, or a very poised student, or a colleague. Someone to
    introduce each video and help maintain momentum.
10. A few days prior, create your Film Festival program listing all entries and categories if relevant.
    Students get so excited to see their name in print! One idea is to hyperlink each video in the
    program to “cue up” the films in program order and use that to launch each one.
11. Enlist 5 adults (parents, teachers, classified staff, community members) to serve as Film Festival
    Judges. If available, judges can submit their scores electronic to a google form which will
    automatically calculate totals for fast results. People’s Choice awards can be voted on by using Poll
    Everywhere on cell phones, or other electronic polltaking device.
12. Decide and design certificates & prizes for all participants and the winners
13. Prepare handouts for parents for a takeaway of information on the district’s policy on digital
    citizenship, and list various parent-friendly resources, e.g. our DC en Espanol page.
14. The night of: enjoy! Your students will be proud, and parents and community members will be
    impressed at all the learning that has been displayed this night.