When experiencing difficulty in finding communicative materials that had a local context, a decision was made to develop a model that reflects local needs but could be adapted for any country. There is a lack of audio visual materials that are specific to Thailand, so a project has been undertaken to develop DVDs for primary school pupils in Thailand.

For the last two summer holidays, I have been making educational videos starring my two children. Whoever said never to work with children or animals knew what they were talking about.

Planning the dialogues was the easiest part even though it was very time consuming. Local books that covered the O-Net and N-Net tests were bought and dialogues made out of the multiple choice questions that were there. This task was completed for Prathoms 1-3 the first year and 4-6 the second.

Care was taken to allow for vocabulary substitution and a certain amount of recycling in order to give the DVDs the maximum impact possible. There are approximately 30 pages in each Prathom and the dialogues vary in length depending on the tasks that were constructed in the original test book that was purchased.

A local music school called Chorus Line was used to film the dialogues first and then the stars of the videos went into their sound studio to record the dialogue so that the sound quality on the DVDs was the best it could be.

My children were used as the stars of the DVDs, playing the roles of Bank and Noi. I have no experience in directing or producing film and my children are not accomplished actors although they watch enough Thai television to know how to overact. This was amateur hour at its best, but it is amazing what you can do if you really want to succeed.

Trying to keep two children focussed during the weeks of filming and recording proved to be the most challenging. I found I was at my wits end for most of the time as their attention span could be counted in seconds and I thought I was the one with this kind of problem.

It takes about five weeks to marry the video and audio soundtrack. There were times that a further visit to the sound studio was required to re-record certain audio dialogue that was not in sync with the video that had been shot previously. English subtitles were also added, so that the DVDs had an extra dimension when paused in the classroom.

Then came a painstaking period where I had to listen to the DVDs and read the subtitles for any errors. This has got to be one of the most boring but important tasks, because you know that the slightest hint of any error and someone will tell you in no uncertain terms. This would also affect the perceived quality of the product, so is an extremely important stage of the production process.

Once the process was completed, the individual clips were put into a WinZip file with a script in Microsoft Word and an MP3 sound bite and posted on my website for teachers to download as they wish. DVDs were also made available at teacher training events. Prathoms 1-3 were completed last year; Prathoms 4-6 will be ready hopefully in August this year.

In my opinion, products like this satisfy a local need and I believe that this model could be used to make materials for schools in any country as long as you are prepared to put in the hours.

Bank, Noi and Kru Beck take a break from filming.

(Unedited article published in the Bangkok Post 7th September 2010)