The Great Movie Project Year 2

Last year all Grade 8 students chose groups and created student movies. 
the project was based on the student videos created at Maybry School in Georgia.  The students  chose the topics, they did this work on their time and it was a success. It is time to reflect on the successes and failures of that project.  Why you ask? Simply because it is about to begin again and changes and tweeks will be made from our experiences last year.



Things that worked

• Topics The Students really liked the wide variety of topics available.  The whole idea of the project was to have students become aware of issues in the world and locally that were important to them.  Once they found a topic that was interesting to them they had to try to "Make a Difference". 
• Student Presentations To start the project off we had the students prepare presentations for the rest of the school.  They were to give presentations about a variety of charities that the grade 8 students and the student council had chosen to take donations for.  All the 8's made posters and pamphlets talking about the charities and one group of students from each of the 4 rooms made presentations to the rest of the school.

816 Charity

View more documents from spmath.

• Google Documents The ability for students to work at home and collaborate on the same document was brilliant.  Each group created a Google Presentation and each group member took control of different slides.  They also invited their homeroom teacher and myself to the presentation so we could see progress and add our 2 cents to the mix.  If there is one thing that I would suggest to anyone doing a project like this is to build in these collaborative tools.  The kids were more productive because they could participate with each other at home at the same time. We pushed the limits of collaboration when we created 2 Google presentations as notetaking devices for a movie on Child Labour we had been watching.  Over 30 kids were collaborating at one time in the lab.  Google Docs is a must for any teacher

•  Pay it Forward Over the Christmas break we expected the students to do an activity that was similar in nature to the movie Pay It Forward. Students were expected to do a random act of kindness over the break.  They had to write about it at their blog.
  
• Awards Presentation Having the students chose winners was motivating for the students.  As teachers we decided on the 6 movies that would be in the award categories but the students decided who won the "prize".  It gave them ownership over the finished project.
  

Things that need to change

• timing We started this project before Christmas last year.  The goal was to have the project done before our Student Led Conference in April.  That did not materialize.  Movies were not done until the beginning of June.  To allow for speedier editing and to allow students to complete the movies on time this year the team has booked a pod of laptops from the division.  During February to April this year the students will have a set of laptops and other equipment to complete the primary production on their movies.
  
• more time for editing You could really see the lack of editing on some of the videos. The students just did one draft and did not spell check, edit pictures and well..... just slapped something together.  This year the students will spend more time of editing and will be taught more techniques about successful movie making. 
  
• post a first draft and a final production More student evaluation and feedback is needed.  We will use your youtube channel to put up the drafts of the movies and elicit feedback.  Based on the feedback students will be able to improve their movies.
• music Students often chose music that was non CC.  This caused many problems.  Audio tracks were wiped by Youtube when their spiders determined that copy write had been broken.  This year I will find sites where you are able to use CC sanctioned music.  Less Itunes more ambient sound to get the idea across.
• Teamwork  A different goal of this project was to bring my other team members into the blogging "read write web" universe.  This met with limited success.  I seemed to be the go to guy all the time.  Most of my other team members seemed reluctant to use these tools and learn how they could transform their teaching at the same time.  It was not a total loss though.  Two team members are game to try this again and students and teachers will once again be making movies at Sargent Park School.

If you are looking to try a project like this please contact me  or use these helpful links:

1. Sargent Park Mathzone The grade 8 blog hub where instructions for the project were given.  This link houses all posts with the label 2minutes.
2. Make it Interesting My personal blog where reflections on the project are housed.  This is the link with 2minutes attached to it.
3. Sargent Park Wiki One of my school sites where the project was hosted.  It is not add free anymore so the information will be moving soon.
4. Maybry Online The inspiration to get the whole project. Met Dr. Tyson at a PD event and from there a kernel grew into a whale of an idea.
5. 50 Ways to tell a story Simply one of the best sites explaining the different ways to use the web to tell a story.  A must for storytellers.
   

Now for some House Cleaning

It is the summer and I am the daytime caregiver for my wonderful 3 boys. This means that computer time is between the time before they get up and breakfast. After that it is go go go with the list of items we need to fix around the house and finding activities that are interesting to them.

I have a few loose ends to tie up before the next year starts.

• The first is to wrap up the CIU20 Math Conference I keynoted in June.
• The second is to reflect on my year and all that happened.
• The third is to go about setting up 8 blogs for the grade 7's and 8's this upcoming year.

This post will be about the experience I had in Pennsylvania in June.

I was asked to keynote and provide 4 sessions to math teachers in Pennsylvania in December last year. Enthusiastically I said yes to this en devour. I would provide these teachers with a Keynote. (Warning the slides and the audio do not match. I have 100 slides and am unable to sync them all to the audio. I have chosen to evenly split the audio and slides so that you are at least able to follow along. Sorry for the shoddy job.)

What message does the "way" you teach convey to your students?

view presentation (tags: 21stcmathciu20 charbeck chris harbeck presentation)

and also go about preparing 4 sessions based on the work I do in my classroom . I thought this would be easy. I was to do this presentation during the last week of school for my school division. This meant that all of my year end duties had to be done well in advance. This part of the story went off with out a hitch.

Arriving in PA I set to work finalizing the keynote and making sure that the other presentations were worthy of a performance. Much to my dismay the wifi in the hotel was weak and working on presentations online was difficult. I overcame this obstacle with some pain (working early in the morning) and was able to create a wiki for all participants.

http://21stcmath.pbwiki.com/

All of the material I created for the participants is here. Some of the comments I received in the evaluations of this conference need to be shared because it shows the weakness of my presentations.

A common comment was that participants wanted more hands on time to create and work on blogs. I would have loved to provide this but in just an hour per presentation this would have been difficult. Another problem was that only 1/3 of participants had computers with them. What would the other 2/3's have done. I hope that my style of showing how to quickly for the 1/3 and explaining for the other 2/3's was not too stale.

If I was to do this again I would ask for an entire half day to explain and provide hands on techniques to participants. In 3 hrs one could accomplish quite a bit and give the needed first steps to participants.

Another common comment was that "My district does not allow..." for all the tools demonstrated during the conference. My recommendation for all of the participants who mentioned this is to talk to their tech people. They will listen and show you what you can use and cannot use. Show them the possibilities of 2.o applications and set your students on a course for learning.

My hosts were gracious and nice and I hope that I provided valuable information to the participants in my presentations. I am glad it is over and am ready to do it again if anyone wants to hire me...

Refletions

I should have done this in June. Last year was my second year using 2.0 tools and applications with my math classes. I think that these students did a great job and learned in new and different ways. My learning curve was steep too. I let go, giving control to the students instead of being the omnipotent all wise being that I was in the first year of blogging.

What went right

Class blogs Students used the class blogs to do growing posts and scribe posts. This was a good introduction to blogging for most students. I was able to use these activities to prepare them for what was to come. I also made commenting part of the scribe post assignment. Students were given a list of other classes that scribe or use blogs and were asked to leave a comment behind. I found that many of my students were great commenter and started to comment more on their own school blogs. Problems.... Not everyone participated in their class blogs. It was hard to get the "less" motivated students to participate and do a scribe post. I also found it hard to find the time to comment regularly on these posts.

Class hub After switching to the "new blogger" at the beginning of the year the class hub was a great communicator with the students. I had my skype availability, chat boxes and email on the hub for students to use. Students skype chatted with me and g mail chatted regularly. This allowed the room to be open beyond the 330 bell. I would have students asking me questions up until my sleepy time it I was in front of the computer.

I liked hub post like "what did I do wrong?" This got the class thinking and doing different types of problem solving.

I will use the same hub this year. I am hoping that students will continue to use this hub as a place to get the class information that they need.

Wikis This was my first season with wikis. I used them to do student led conferences and the first and second unprojects. Students liked the feel of wiki's because of their familiarity with other apps like facebook and myspace. They created some amazing content and blinged it up using applications they learned on their own. This was a complete success. Wiki's got all of the students participating in communicating mathematically.


This year I will start the wiki's earlier and integrate them more into everyday homework, and assignments.


Darren mused about "expert voices".

This got me thinking. What do 13 and 14 year olds want to be experts in or more importantly how can they show that they are experts. My solution were unprojects. I called them unprojects because the only part of this assignment that was in my control was the topic and the amount of information needed to be provided so that a student could be an "expert". The rest was up to the students. The communicated math in so many different forms. Some sang, made movies, created wikis or blogs. The most important aspect of these projects was the participation rates. Over 90% of the students created some kind of unproject. All of these students pushed their own limits to new heights, some by just participating and others by going way beyond the call of duty. I found out during this assignment that once students have a grasp of some 2.0 tools out there they will start to do math work at home that is meaningful to them.




This year is going to be different. I have a class of students that has not blogged before and will be raw. They will need some extra pushes to get the creative juices flowing. I am confident that great things will continue to happen this year in the Sargent Park Math Zone. My goals are to do more interactive slide shows, make movies and podcasts and incorporate all of these pieces into the greatest Student Led Electronic Portfolio's my school has seen. As more and more 2.0 apps appear on the horizon it is going to be fun to mix them into my math teaching pedagogy.

Thanks to my former students for being so inspiring. To this years crew..

It is going to be a great year. Thanks you in advance.