Final Project

http://northhighschool.webaloo.com/turnerenglish10.aspx

My active English 10 course page. I have developed an entire trimester to digital media and media literacy. In addition to the curriculum, the website itself functions as part of my final project.

In previous years, we have had a short (3-4 week) unit on Media Literacy, and the unit has seemed rather stale, with old videos from the 80s and worksheets, not the kind of thing I want to be using while telling students about how to use and read new media. I spent the majority of my thought from this class creating the class website and the curriculum itself for the entire trimester. I have created distinct units: Blogging, Newspapers, 2D Visual Ads, TV Commercials, and Newscasts, along with other internet and new media experiences. While I have been able to maintain the required writing assignments, vocabulary, and grammar, they have become incorporated into hands-on project units. So students will not only learn literary and media terms, but they will have to apply them in the creation of a professional-like product, while also writing about the choices they made, focusing on the vocabulary and grammar pointers along the way. Students have so far responded quite enthusiastically.

Digital Poem

Creating a digital poem using PowerPoint was difficult, but well worth the effort. It can make a poem more interactive and also I am able to highlight aspects of the poem that I find significant; therefore students would be able to do the same. I did however take a long time and requires for many of the triggers and motion paths, much PowerPoint ability and patience. I think that the activity may be too difficult to expect students to do well only at home, and without having excessive amounts of computer lab and tutorial time, the assignment may be too difficult in my current setting. The power the project unlocks is exceptional though--again, the power to add multi-media to the poem, to create a veritable thought web while presenting the poem, sounds, images, ideas, highlighting alliteration or rhyme within the poem's words, adding video and hyperlinks--there is just so much to engage the reader with the poem. The final problem I have run up against is the fact that I cannot seem to get the poem posted to the internet without ruining the triggers and timing of the PowerPoint since it is not simply a series of slides, but runs more like a movie.

Vlogging and Video Production

I have always loved the use of video production in the classroom. It allows students to explore texts through role playing and acting out moments from books or history, or informative videos or presentations, etc. It also allows students to draw together many images and video clips in an abstract manner without acting needed. Video production encourages high-level organizational and thinking skills for students to be able to synthesize the amount of images, sounds, text, etc. with preparation and editing. While any video production project can be engaging, and creative, while stressing high-order thinking, it also requires vast amounts of time and technology. Just transferring video from camera to computer let alone acquiring a camera, computer, or editing software can be hard for many students, and their teachers. It also requires the teacher to relinquish quite a bit of control since students need to be able to work independently and at their own pace on longer, in-depth, and difficult tasks. Vlogging on the other hand eliminates much of the technological, planning, and time constraints with only the need for a webcam and YouTube. There could be many applications down the line for Vlogging, from allowing teachers to lecture or explain assignments online with visuals, non-verbals, and facial expressions to go along with the materials available online. It could provide an interesting grading tool as well.

Creating a Class Wiki

http://northhighschool.webaloo.com/turnerenglish10.aspx

After much time experimenting with PBwiki, I finally created a class website through my district's website. The benefits of a class website are numerous--I can easy post assignments and discussion questions and students seem to respond to it much more than a normal journal or writing the assignments down in a planner. I can easily work from any computer with Internet access--transferring files, downloading, and uploading at will. When I find interesting tie-ins to what we are doing in class, I can simply add the Internet links to the website--this allows me to capture news stories, youTube videos, pictures, online newspaper stories, literature posted online, any audio and traditional website links. At first there was difficulty in the amount of time it took to maintain the website. However, I learned that if I never doubled everything up and just did everything online instead of creating a word document or a plan of some sort first, that I could spend the same amount of time in my planning as I do normally, while offering students a much richer learning environment. There is also the added benefit of more flexible timeframes for assignments, since students can submit their posts from home. I am able to track how often students check the website and especially nice is that every submission has a timestamp. Students are already much more accountable for their work and I am seeing an improvement in timeliness since they know there is some flexibility, but ultimately no way to lie to the computer and me about an assignment, and there is no way for it to be lost.

While a wiki would give students an opportunity to shape their learning space, and certainly could decrease the amount of time I spend on maintaining the page, the power for many of my students may be too great. I am already seeing some students taking advantage of the fact that they can post anything to the message board. I have had to delete 3 posts already. The other concern is that students are not able to access the Internet at home or don't have a computer, and with our school only having 30 minutes of computer time available in the library after school, some students are feeling like they are being left behind. So far I have allowed them to do the assignments all by hard copy, but that has been doubling the amount of time I spend preparing once again. While not perfect, the website for the class is especially valuable and a powerful resource. I will continue to attempt a wiki--it has simply taken too much time and effort to get off the ground compared with a normal website through the school server, which is already set up for me.

Interactive PowerPoints

I created many PowerPoints for my final project for a unit I am doing on Media Literacy. I tried to include more questions in these PowerPoints, along with activities that I used in conjunction with the slides. I reduced the length and amount of text, and in others, included pictures and videos instead of words. I wish that I could imbed more videos in the presentations, but I just didn't have the time before the lesson to get all of the information. I also made us of using the PowerPoint to jot down notes from the students directly on the PowerPoint, making students feel part of the presentation, it allowed for all students to see what someone just said--nothing needed to be repeated and there is a log of what was said that we could go back and work through and analyze. When used in class, students seemed to be interested much more than with a regular PowerPoint--usually they groan when a teacher puts on a PowerPoint because so many do it and it usually means notes notes notes and listening. I wish I could have added more moving objects and better more interesting transitions and animations. The PowerPoints were wonderful once created, however, the creation process takes quite a bit of time compared to less interactive ones. Finding multimedia to imbed, sounds, images, videos, etc. etc. took quite a bit of time, however, I feel it is better that way so it is worth it. Having students respond and asking questions in the PowerPoint is helpful, effective, and quite easy. However, I fear that too many questions and using that strategy too often just creates a new "tradition" of PowerPoint presentations. 

Introductory PowerPoint on Media Literacy




PowerPoint on Communication

My Trip to Asia Pacific University

Online Role-Play

I didn't feel as involved in the discussion as I would have liked to--while I was interested by the argumentative aspect, I just have a difficult time talking online. I have limited access time on the computer and was limited this week from that point, but it was compounded by the nature of the posting. It was not linear, it was not divided by issue or stance, so at times it became impossible to respond--to know whether someone has already made you point, to know if anyone would read a response that was to a post three days old, to pick and choose who to respond to, etc... Most of my time was spent reading the other posts and then I was either too tired, bogged down with thoughts, or out of time to respond.

I also had a hard time know what others thought of my comments since the discussion was not synchronous or in person--I have a hard time arguing deeply without instant reactions. Collaboration was difficult and shallow at times because I felt there was too much competition, I couldn't build on others well because small nuances were unexplained to me. Evidence was also so abundant that there was no time for a discussion of the bias or appropriateness of the evidence. Without the time, and the voice of power (as I was a student) I felt I was on the outside and not taken seriously or able to keep up with where the discussion was going. The discussion was also too free-flowing and not ordered by argument for me--there was no closure on the issues or clash.

Personally, the discussion didn't affect my opinions much. I am very neutral and don't feel that I could have an educated opinion on the issue yet. I think if there was indeed an actual policy proposal I would be more inclined to do research and become more involved. I think that the role-play is great in allowing anonymity in your arguments because regardless of personal belief, you can be free to be anyone you want. I personal enjoy taking the opposite opinion in a role-play of what I personally believe--I feel I can argue for the opposite side better because I understand who I am against better. All and all the role-play is something I would love to try to incorporate into my classroom and use it as a conversation starter and teachable moment as well.