Gap Filler Idea - Digi Award Project - Part One

Mrs Harris' literacy group have been working on a digital project. We are creating commercials that pitch a creative idea. These commercials will be entered into the Innovative Ōtautahi Digi Awards.

We learned about Gap Filler, an Ōtautahi enterprise that fills that gaps of our city with creative, fun ideas. You may have been to the dance-o-mat in the city or exchanged a book for free at a pop-up book exchange.

To help us navigate the creative process we took our learning journey through the design thinking format.

Our task was to generate an original idea to fill a gap in our local Cypress gardens.

Firstly we needed to empathise. What problems do we have in Cypress Gardens? Who uses Cypress Gardens, and what are their needs? How can we make Cypress Gardens a better place for our community? We took a stroll around the gardens and took some photos to help us generate ideas.

We used the keynote application during the ideate stage. The app allowed us to import our photographs and sketch our ideas over top. We were able to record notes and even our voices to add detail. By this stage, some of us were generating similar ideas, so this is how our digi teams were formed.

So what makes a good commercial? Next, it was time to learn about persuasive language. We needed to convince our audience that our idea was the best. We wrote our commercial scripts, making sure to include catchy phrases and powerful persuasive language.

To plan the structure of our commercial we used a storyboard format. This included sketches of our filming location for each scene, information about digital effects and a list of props required. Throughout this stage, we were going back to the ideate element and checking that our ideas would come across clearly in our commercial. We also shared our storyboards with the class to get some feedback.

Oral language has been another focus area of our learning journey. A good commercial has a speaker who projects their voice and speaks clearly to get the point across. To practice our oral langauge we have been participating in oral language games such as fortunately, unfortunately and going over our commercial script. Ask your child about fortunately/unfortunately, it's a fun game that everyone can enjoy.

We have been busy organising or collecting props for filming day, which will begin soon. We have also been given a challenge to include a green screen effect in our commercial. It has been fun experimenting with the app. After many weeks of learning about the elements of a commercial, we are excited to put it all together.