Digital Videos

We watched a PSA last week that talked about a young individual that had won multiple championships in several sports. Then at the end, we found out all the accolades were only in video games. Not diminishing the skills of video players, but playing the real sports are usually harder than they look on screen. Few if any people pick up a sport and become a champion without much hard work, practice, and learning.
I have been thinking that students see creating video the same way. They get a camera and expect the results to mirror what they have seen in professional venues. It takes a lot of background building to show students the many levels of learning they need to master to even begin to produce decent video. On the other hand the whole experience is a great task for thinking skills. There is just so much going on in creating video that even when the teacher scaffolds the learning and assesses the project in stages, there are still so many variables that students can choose to explore. It is in these situations that I often find the gems of student learning as students decide to tackle a problem and find a solution. These gems are rare but definitely valuable.

Podcasting

I recently read about the possibilities of podcasting. I decided to try it out. I made my first podcast for my students talking them through a quiz review. I added photos to make it a little more interesting and posted it on the class website. Some students used it. Next time, I enlisted the help of my son and turned it into an interview. I interviewed King George III, Paul Revere and Thomas Jefferson. The questions I asked them were amazingly similar to the information that would appear on the quiz. This time I kept it as a MP3 since a couple students had suggested they would like to download it on their ipods and not everyone had video capability.
Having learned that podcasts need to be more episodic, I could continue this interview concept (as long as my son can master the accents). Further, I have thought about putting students in the driver's seat. As a class, we could develop an overall name for the podcast and students could be interviewers and historical interviewees. That would probably be an ever better review than just listening to me. It would certainly have the engagement factor.

History to Current Events

My thoughts for a wiki to use in class combined with my desire to make connections from history class to real life and my students desire to talk about current events. Unfortunately the pacing of this class leaves little time for anything extra. I thought it would be interesting to start a class wiki where students could share their thoughts about how things connected. Anyone could add a topic and others could add to the conversation about the connections. For example my students are learning about effigies. I showed a picture of an effigy in the Egypt protests. On a wiki, everyone could add viewpoints on the connections from past to present. Another comparison we made was the Committees of Correspondance in the 1770's verses Twitter and Facebook in Egypt today. Other examples the Tea Party of 1773 and the Tea Party political movement today.
I think students would like to have a place where they can "try out" their understanding. It could also have the added benefit of having students be more interested in current events.

Blog, blog, blog

Ok, per my assignment in graduate school I am supposed to blog. Here I go. It's not that I'm anti-blog. I was reading Blogs, Wikis, Podcasts and Other Powerful Web Tools for Classrooms by Will Richardson and I can see the potential for using blogs in various projects or just communication between myself and students. I think it could help me to know students much better as individuals and give voice to those students who might be reticent to speak up in class. Given the privacy issues, I would want to have my middle schoolers blog in a protected environment, not yet open to the entire world. But I do realize that sort of limits the excitement of blogging. The attraction is to publish your thoughts for the world to see and comment upon. But parents sometimes frown upon that.
For full disclosure I am in the age group that tends not to want to share personal information with everyone. I do have a Facebook page but you would laugh if I told you my total number of friends. I understand the net generation is going to feel free to share info electronically. I don't discourage that, but do talk about the possible concerns with students in class. And this is my hesitation with blogging. Now if I had a book to sell, a movie to promote, a product to launch, a campaign to run, I would definitely see the advantages of blogging to the world. But for my observations on life and such, I’m just not there yet. However, I am still learning, so I may get there.