An+Interview+With+Mr.+Hirten

Bella Farkas An Interview With Mr. Hirten January 1, 2016

A few weeks ago, I sat down with Mr. Hirten to discuss his video making for the school, his storytelling class that he teaches for students at Hunt Middle School and how the new ipads have really made his class possible. I started out by asking him about the kinds of videos he makes for the school. He told me that he makes videos that are meant to “show the community what cool stuff we’re doing” here at Hunt as well as, to some extent, “show Digital Promise, the non-profit that gave us our ipads, that we are infact using them.” Mr. Hirten’s most recent project was about a “sixth grade teacher at our school who has been doing the same project for about ten or fifteen years and how the ipad has revolutionized how it's done, so many things have changed in terms of making it equal for all kids and all different learning styles.” The sixth grade teacher, Mr. Pease, has really noticed that with the new ipads, student engagement in the project has definitely gone up.

I asked Mr. Hirten about how his storytelling class works and what it aims to accomplish. “Basically,” he said, “I have a group of students who want to learn to make movies. And we discuss everything from lighting and framing to how to interview people, as well as, of course, the technical side of editing.” He added that imovie is a great app on the ipads for beginning filmmakers and that his group focuses largely on that app. As for the class he told me that it is going “very well.”

Though Mr. Hirten was not a part of bringing the ipads to our school, he said that our school’s principal, Mr. Fallin, approached him right off the bat as to whether or not he was interested in teaching a class showcasing some of his video making skills to students at our school. Mr. Hirten was clearly very eager, as video making is one of his many hobbies and accepted the offer.