WINDHAM — Two weeks into a video production class last winter, two juniors at Windham High School started helping their instructor teach the other students in the class.
It was apparent Matt Cotton and Kevin Dolan knew the material.
Rather than spend the semester slogging through familiar lessons, they entered an independent study program.
It became a project they hope will help other students learn — and teachers teach.
The juniors, who have known each other since they were fourth-graders, created and produced a video for a New England-wide contest, Learning for the 21st Century Video Challenge.
They learned this summer that their three-minute production won honorable mention and $500 for the school from the Nellie Mae Education Foundation.
The foundation awards grants to schools and supports learning at every opportunity, inside and outside the classroom, drawing on the experience of not just teachers, but other adults, too.
The students' independent study was overseen by school technology specialist Kathleen Weise and Paul Bencal, dean of technology.
Cotton and Dolan jumped in with both feet.
After hours brainstorming and talking to fellow students, they arrived at their core idea.
"(Education) didn't involve students enough," Cotton said. Conversely, education would improve if students were more engaged, they thought.
The two 16-year-olds wrote a script and imagined scenes, sketching them on paper, that expressed the idea.
They and other students read their lines on camera.
The scenes were shot inside and outside the school, close up and from a distance, using various camera angles.
They spent about 10 hours editing the video, and adding music and other effects to enliven the piece.
The students, both of whom are interested in studying computer science in college, advocate in the video for more student debate and discussion in class — more of a round-table approach to learning.
They also would like teachers to do more interdisciplinary teaching, perhaps combining history and art through written works and artwork, to reinforce ideas.
Weise said the students' efforts are inspiring.
Their video, which can be seen on YouTube, has been shown to all this year's incoming freshmen at the school and to teachers.
Cotton and Dolan said they hope the video made an impression on teachers.
"I would love to see teachers take this to heart," Dolan said.
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