Digital Imagery Reflection

This was supposed to be a project on textiles but it was not finished in time so I put this project on the Presidential Primaries together at the last minute. I include information below about the process of working on the Textile project as it was my primary focus for 10 days.

My project is an introduction to the Presidential primaries. My Civics students are not very media savvy and haven’t been following the news much, so a really basic introduction is in order before I get them started researching the candidates, the process, and the issues.
Normally, I would have introduced the topic verbally in a mini-lecture. By using Movie Maker, I think it will capture their attention, give them a visual reference, and hopefully get them excited.
I start out with an introduction of the candidates then highlighted the major issues being debated. This will be accompanied by a handout with basic information about the primary process and a timetable. The students will then be asked to create a Powerpoint on a candidate of their choice and share it with the class. Next they will choose issues to research, again share them with the class. We will have a debate where each student gets to role play one of the candidates and finish up by holding our own mock primary just before the real primaries begin.
Previously I used Powerpoint to create slide shows but I like the added flexibility with Movie Maker and IMovie. I’m nowhere close to mastering these programs but will continue using them in particular to create visual introductions to topics. It seems like a great way to jumpstart a new unit.
I’ve done learning style surveys of my students and the majority have a visual strength. Art is a focus at our school and we have some amazingly talented kids. Using visuals makes so much sense but it’s the time factor that gets in the way. This took me hours to put together as I was using the program for the first time. I’m sure it will get easier as I become more familiar with it.
I had originally planned on presenting one of my textile unit IMovies for the Digital Imagery Project but none of them was finished in time. I saw a great opportunity in my school’s two week integrated unit on textiles that was perfect for getting some students involved but now I see that it was too ambitious. I had small teams of students working on them in 4 different classes and these multimedia projects were to be the culmination, presented to the school to help tie the two week unit together. Even though they are not complete I wanted to comment on the process. We used IMovie as we have Macs at school, however, most of the students have PCs at home and don’t like using the Macs. It always amazes me that the students, who have grown up with rapidly evolving technology, are more resistant to change than I am.
One group abandoned IMovie after spending an entire week compiling slides. Without informing me, a team member railroaded the whole thing and in one evening, recreated the entire project on her pc using Powerpoint. I was disappointed as I wanted these students to stretch their technology muscles and delve into another area that they were not familiar with.
The US History team (2 students) was the most ambitious. They are incorporating interviews that they conducted with former textile mill workers. This project has the most potential, but it has dragged on for so long due to various fieldtrips and assemblies that they are starting to get bored with it.
The final lesson learned; keep the task short, well-defined and doable in a reasonable amount of time.

My Digital Imagery Project

.This slide show was created for my civics class to introduce them to the presidential primary topic. Keep in mind this is a charter high school and although we are not officially an "alternative" school, we are more or less an alternative school. These are kids who are so jaded and so uninspired that I wanted to add a little humor into the lesson to get them into the subject. Revealing this to you after the fact, I can report that it was well received both technically ("you mean you made this yourself?") and subject-wise. My students are now going gang-busters into the topic researching the candidates and the issues and creating powerpoint biographies. One student commented that 16 year olds should be allowed to vote because "after all we are studying this stuff and our parents don't know anything about it!" After the powerpoints, they will work on preparing for a debate where each student will play a different candidate. I have one senior in that class and even though we don't require it, I asked him if he would like to videotape and edit the debate for his senior project. He is thrilled! I researched the rules on citations in an educational slide show and my finding was that the url of the images was sufficient, that I didn't need to get permission from the source. This is what I have been telling my students all along so if I am wrong, please correct me. The source is U of MD copyright and fair use in the classroom publication, perhaps I have misunderstood it. Thanks so much, Susan

Curriculum Exemplar0-Global Nomads

This is an organization that arranges video conferencing between US school groups and folks around the world allowing the students to encounter another culture without leaving home. The experience is interactive with the students on both sides asking each other questions. The purpose is to bring the world closer together, help to dispel misunderstandings amongst cultures.

One particular activity involves a 10 part series of interactions with students in the US and youth in Uganda. Part of the process includes the students in the US donating goods and funds to support relief efforts there.

I would love to get my students involved in this. The article that I read mentions how beneficial it is for "at risk" high school students and that's sort of the profile for my students. Anything to make the learning about something real.

My questions about this exemplar have to do with the logistics. To begin with, I have been to the website any number of times and still don't understand exactly how this works and how much it would cost my school (i.e. we don't have video conferencing capability). The complicated nature of arranging the technical aspects is enough to put many teachers off from the beginning. I will try to call these folks and get more info, I visited the link to the company that provides the video conferencing technology but they post no prices. I would like to try it at least once and see what impact is has on my students. I came upon this last year when I was searching for a way for my students to speak directly to students in other parts of the world (i.e. via skype). I need to dig deeper because with the level of technology packed into today's computers, there should be many organizations that could help my students establish a dialog with other students around the world. The beauty of the Global Nomads is that "live" visual experience, I only wish it were more accessible.

Here's the article I found, it was in Edutopia.

http://www.edutopia.org/global-nomads-magnolia-texas

Edutopia Magazine (and website) great resource

If you haven't seen this publication or the website, it is worth a look. I think they offer free subscriptions to teachers.
It's "Information and Inspiration for Innovative teaching in k-12 schools" funded by George Lucas. www.edutopia.org

Myspace rules at my school

I went ahead and made a written survey out of our Technology Interview and gave it to all of my students (the majority of the students at my small charter school). The overwhelming finding was that almost all of the students use myspace regularly. Is there some way I could use this for teaching?

Teaching with blogs

I got a bit carried away and spent way too much time checking out blogs and not enough writing about them.

First of all, I set up a blog for my students to use on edublog. I'm hoping to use it for homework as some of the examples of blogs did. My problem will be getting my director to approve this but I will print out some of the info from Safe and Responsible Bloggings.

My favorite education blog so far would be the High School Journalism blog. The format is so close to what I would like to do with my Social Studies classes. There are lots of prompts for discussion and also some news items to comment about. I do something similar but my students bring me their thoughts in writing and it's not so interactive as many of them are shy to discuss it in class (eventhough I offer extra credit for doing so). As almost all of my students are adept at using "myspace" I'm betting they will feel more comfortable with blogging for homework.

One blog that had potential but left me cold after seeing some of the others was "Highschool AP Government". The teacher was using it for various class assignments which was great but it was done in such a cold and boring way that it was uninviting. I mention it because I realized that while the concept of blogs is so "cool", it doesn't mean that all blogs are good blogs and we need to make them enticing to our audience or else we are just creating a different mode to dish out the same old boring stuff.

At the blog mhetherington.net there were a lot of examples of using podcasts for teaching. I'm going to study this more as I'm dying to get started using podcasting with my students.

Technology Through My Students’ Eyes

INTERVIEW SUMMARY

Most of my students consider technology their world – cell phones, myspace, music -- and wouldn’t know what to do without it.

“I think I couldn’t do without a cell phone and if it wasn’t invented I would die.”

Most of them have cell phones, tv’s with dvd players, computers with internet connection, and digital cameras (important for taking photos to download to myspace).

At home they spend a lot of time talking on the phone and online (on myspace).

Their parents use technology in similar ways such as talking on the phone and sending email, but some mentioned seeing their parents use the computer for work but they weren’t very sure exactly what they were doing.

In school, the students mostly use laptops to look up things and to create powerpoint presentations.

Most of them had the same answer for using technology at home and one mentioned typing up her work.

For entertainment, all of the students mentioned myspace and playing games. One used her cellphone for playing games because she didn’t have a computer, another mentioned having a playstation, but most use the computer for playing games.

There were mixed results for how the students learned to use technology. Some mentioned specific classes at school and others viewed it more as an evolutionary process in their lives.

Wish list at home? Most said they had everything they needed, although one student wanted her own computer.

Wish list at school? One student wished we had a Playstation at school so he could play games in his spare time. The others thought what we had (laptops) was adequate.

Teaching teachers-4 out of 5 said they would teach the teachers how to have fun with the computer and to use “myspace”. “how myspace is important” “how myspace is okay”.

4 out of 5 said that “myspace” was their favorite thing to do online.

As for learning more about technology: “I know all I want to know about it.”, “Nothing.”, “Everything I can.”, “Anything and everything.”, “How to more effectively research a topic.”.

REFLECTIONS

Myspace is the overwhelming factor in these kids’ lives. I guess what bothers me most is that I see kids spending all this time cultivating relationships via technology (computer and cellphone) and I’m wondering how this impacts their ability to have human face-to-face relationships? As for myself, it’s much easier for me to communicate via the computer than face to face. I can be bolder and chose my words more carefully. I wonder if there have been studies done on this yet?

The other aspect of the interviews that I found disturbing is that most of the students thought that school should be about having fun (not necessarily having fun while you learn) and that teachers should be incorporating myspace into the learning. I would like to explore this possibility further but I’m not sure it’s appropriate as I’ve heard about teachers using myspace and getting in trouble.

One caveat about these students (and most at my school) is that they don’t have any hobbies or extracurricular activities, nor do they spend much time doing homework. Thus they have about 7 hours outside of school each day where they fill their boredom with myspace and the cell phone. As you can imagine their general knowledge is extremely poor.

Another comment is that every one of these students is from a lower middle class family(downright poor in one or two cases) and yet they all had access to plenty of technology.

Thanks for reading this and I would love to have your comments, questions, and feedback. susan