Category: Students

Posted on

Digital Storytelling in the Spanish Language Classroom

I recently blogged from the 2011 US Innovative Education Forum (IEF) sponsored by Microsoft Partners in Learning. Here’s a guest post from one of the IEF finalists I met at the competition. For more on the competition and other guest posts click the IEF tag. ~ Peter

Independence HS Grad
Independence HS Grad

Teacher: Matthew Kelly, Independence High School (Charlotte, NC) Matt’s project site 
Project Title: “Espero [I hope]: presentational communication in Spanish through digital storytelling” 
Overview: Advanced and intermediate students of Spanish explore digital storytelling as a medium for self- expression using the Spanish version of Microsoft Photo Story 3 and Microsoft Movie Maker. The assignment required  students to speak, listen, read and write in the target language and introduced concepts of media literacy based on autobiographical narrative.

 

 Matt writes: 

“My mates and I witnessed an immense growth in vocabulary since we began speaking in Spanish dialect. I consider myself bilingual today.” ~ Zillah (Gambia/UK), grade 12

Grammar in a meaningful context Deep down this project was born as a grammar exercise. The project arose out of a curriculum meeting I had with my students to plan the direction we’d take over the next few weeks. They said, “We need to work on the conditional tense, the future tense, and the subjunctive mood, but we don’t want any worksheets and we’re not going to fill out verb charts.” The idea was to give students meaningful work that would naturally lead them to use the target grammar. All writing, discussion, and presentation was done in Spanish.

The Personal Essay: Our Hopes for the Future

We started with the students writing an autobiographical essay describing themselves and where they are in their lives right now, then going on to talk about their hopes and aspirations for the future. Students then recorded these essays as a digital audio presentation.

Fears for the Future: Exploring Technique Through a Science Fiction Film

Photo Story 3 makes movies by stringing together still photographs with music or narration. I wanted the students to make careful, deliberate choices about what images to use and how to sequence them along with the audio in order to create a coherent narrative. To see an example of successful filmmaking using still photographs, students viewed Chris Marker’s 1962 film La Jetée in French with Spanish subtitles. Native speakers of Spanish were surprised at how much of the French they could actually understand. Students identified the images and sequences that were the most memorable for them and discussed what made them effective.

You be the Director: Bringing Hopes and Dreams to Life

Having practiced with Photo Story 3 and having explored the technique of telling a story through still photos, students used Photo Story 3 to turn their digital audio presentations into digital video. Using their own photos and appropriately licensed images, students brought their essays about their hopes for the future to life in digital video.

The Oral History Project: Sharing Hopes and Aspirations for the Future

To give students a basis for cross cultural comparison and to encourage growth in the domain of interpersonal communication, students interviewed pairs of native and heritage speakers of Spanish their own age about their hopes and aspirations and recorded these interviews as digital audio recordings.

Tips for Implementation

Most students suddenly become perfectionists when recording digital presentations. Allow native speakers in the group to serve as coaches, listening to and critiquing their classmates’ recordings. This will provide opportunity for growth through non-threatening feedback.

We used Audacity® for our digital audio recording. Allow students who have used it before to circulate and serve as coaches. With a little practice, most students quickly become adept. Microsoft Photo Story 3 is quite easy to use and appropriate for classroom. Make sure students are aware there is no spell check feature in any language!

Many students have been encouraged by teachers to appropriate images from the Web without regard to license or attribution for use in school projects. This project offers an opportunity to educate students about plagiarism, respect for intellectual property, media literacy, and proper attribution of sources. You may wish to:

  • instruct students to use only their own photos;
  • show students how to search for images licensed for reuse;
  • show students how to use www.bibme.org to simplify the process of proper attribution; or
  • direct students to an online archive of images preapproved for educational reuse with citations provided.

 

Summary

“My mates and I witnessed an immense growth in vocabulary since we
began speaking in Spanish dialect…I consider myself bilingual today.”
–Zillah (Gambia/UK), grade 12

That’s what one of my students had to say about her experience with this project. For language teachers taking a communication based approach to language learning, this is a project that will really get students talking. The project addresses all the domains and functions of language: speaking, listening, reading, and writing, and both interpersonal and presentational communication.

Project links:

Posted on

Big Ideas and the Relevant Classroom

idea
idea

I just finished reading a provocative NY Times Op Ed piece “The Elusive Big Idea“ by Neal Gabler. 

Ideas just aren’t what they used to be. Once upon a time, they could ignite fires of debate, stimulate other thoughts, incite revolutions and fundamentally change the ways we look at and think about the world… The ideas themselves could even be made famous: for instance, for “the end of ideology,” “the medium is the message,” “the feminine mystique,” “the Big Bang theory,” “the end of history.” … In effect, we are living in an increasingly post-idea world … Bold ideas are almost passé. … Instead of theories, hypotheses and grand arguments, we get instant 140-character tweets about eating a sandwich or watching a TV show.

Big ideas have given way to 140-character tweets just as engaging interdisciplinary learning has been annihilated by the monotonous factoids of test prep.

My thoughts quickly turned from Gabler’s thesis to its implications for teaching and learning. Certainly our assessment mentality has narrowed the curriculum. In many classrooms, instruction has moved away from engaging and open-ended investigations to the monotony of test prep. Interdisciplinary projects have given way to measuring student achievement on routine standardize tests. Guess we can’t blame the loss of big ideas all on Twitter – NCLB is helping to stamp them out as well.

I can still remember a warm June day back in the mid ’70’s. I was in the final review for my 11th graders about to take the NYS Regents exam in American Studies. As I worked the blackboard trying to pull it all together, a student in the back row finally made some connections and blurted out something like, “I get it now, all those southern and eastern European immigrants came to the US to work in the new factories!” I publicly congratulated his “insight,” but inside I realized that I needed to stop the relentless parade of historical facts and focus on better connecting my students with history and its relevance to their lives.

One change I later made was to begin the course by administering a survey of a broad array of questions on issues such as civil and criminal rights, gender, social class, environment, economy, public policy. We would tabulate the results to reveal that we had different perspectives on many issues. First, we respectfully discussed them in small groups, then whole class. Eventually we looked to see how these perspectives had come to influence US history.

When it came to time to study the debate over the ratification of the constitution, my students didn’t have to ask the question – “why do we need to study this?” They realized that they were looking at “Round 1” of an ongoing debate over how strong the central government should be.

“Big ideas” flourished in the form of timeless historic questions that gave my students a connection to a more relevant, engaging history. With a more personal connection to history, they also developed a greater mastery of content and shifting historic perspectives. PS – they also scored well on the state tests. 

For more ideas see my post and downloadable Slideshare,  ”The Student As Historian – Resources and Strategies.”

Image credit flickr/nhuisman

Posted on

How To Make the Block Schedule Work

block schedule
block schedule

Transitioning to a longer class (block schedule) is not as simple as combining what was taught in a few shorter lessons plans and throwing in some homework time at the end of class. It requires looking at the key elements of a lesson and re-thinking how they can be leveraged in the context of more instructional time.

  • Content – what knowledge and skills will be studied?
  • Process – what material and procedures will be used?
  • Product – what will student produce to demonstrate their learning?
  • Evaluation – how will the learning be assessed?

Instead of the block becoming an insufferable 80 minutes of having to “entertain” students, it becomes a learning environment filled with more student exploration and reflection on their progress as learners.

I’ve helped many teachers see the block as an opportunity to create a more engaging student-centered classroom by giving students some measure of decision making in these four elements. Instead of the block becoming an insufferable 80 minutes of having to “entertain” students, it becomes a learning environment filled with more student exploration and reflection on their progress as learners.

Of course, you can’t simply “throw students in the deep end” and expect them to take responsibility for all their learning decisions. But with scaffolding and support, students can take increasing responsibility for their reading, writing and critical thinking.

In support of a training project I’m conducting this week, I’ve created a Google web that features handouts, resources, videos and web 2.0 links. It also serves as a model for how Google docs and webs can be used as learning tools in the classroom.

Image credit: flickr/dibytes

Posted on

Five Reasons to “Like” Project Based Learning

like small

I’m the Aug 1st kickoff speaker for the 2011 PBL Summer Institute held at the Valley New School in downtown Appleton WI.  As the opening keynote, I’ll be setting the stage for what should be five days of valuable workshops, culminating in Project Foundry training – an effective PBL management system. Tweet us at #VNS11 and view our Twitter visualizer here.

To get things started I’ll highlight five reasons why the traditional approach to instruction is failing our students:

  1. Teaching isn’t telling.
  2. There’s a new literacy that alters the traditional information flow beyond the classroom.
  3. Life’s become an open-book test that has devalued lower-order thinking skills.
  4. Students need to be able to succeed in an unpredictable world.
  5. Most classrooms rarely engage students in reflecting on their progress as learners.

Along the way I’ll use activities and sample projects to illustrate five reasons to “like” PBL. Click here for a link to my presentation website with a variety of PBL resources, videos and more.

The conference is co-sponsored by the TAGOS Leadership Academy and the Wisconsin Project Based Learning Network. 

Image credit: flickr/FindYourSearch

Posted on

How to Flip Your Classroom – and Get Your Students to Do the Work

 backflip-1

Recently I shared lunch with colleague and friend, Mike Gwaltney. He teaches in a variety of blending settings both in class and online. We got into an interesting discussion about ways to deliver instructional content and learning process both in and outside the classroom. The conversation quickly turned to the notion of “flipping the classroom.” This is the idea that teachers shoot videos of their lessons, then make them available online for students to view at home. Class time is then devoted to problem solving – with the teacher acting as a guide to teams of students. It’s a great approach that flips the delivery of the lesson to homework – it’s like a TiVo time shift that can reshape your classroom. More about flipping here.

Watch this video to see flipping in action – cool graphics courtesy of Camtasia Studio.

Both of us admired teachers (like these in the video) with the time, technology and talent to do video productions – but questioned how many teachers would be able to morph into video producers. Moreover, with the growing catalogue of free online content – we questioned why a teacher would even want to bother to produce their own online material. As Mike quipped – “why would someone video their own Lincoln lecture – when you can watch Gary Wills online?”

Flip the delivery of the lesson to homework – it’s like a TiVo time shift that can reshape your classroom.

Ultimately, we saw flipping the class as a great opportunity to engage our students in taking more responsibility for their learning. Why not let your students curate the video lessons from existing content on the web? As a follow up to our chat, here’s my seven-step how to:

1. Start slow! Pick a single upcoming lesson or unit that you already plan to teach.

2. Recruit a few of your savviest students to do the research to find existing online video material to support the lesson. They should include a text overview defining what the students should be looking for in the video.

3. Also work with the student team to develop an in-class activity that students will do after viewing the video.

4. Post the video lesson to your content manager. Don’t have one? Just use a free Google website – very easy to embed or link to videos there.

5. Then run the video as a pilot lesson for the whole class. Part of their assignment is to decide what they like (and don’t like) about the each component of the lesson. In other words, they assist in the design of rubrics for selection of videos and integration of the video lessons into a classroom activities.

6. Then repeat step 1-3 until you get a good basis for selection of future videos.

7. Repeat 1-6, as needed, until your students have curated a collection of online content to support your classroom. They would also be responsible for better defining what constitutes “high-quality” online content and how that can be best used to support a more student-centered classroom.

Extension: You might even consider adding some pre-assessment for upcoming units – using a formative pre-test or student self-assessment rubric to let students decide which elements of an upcoming unit need video support. Then based on the formative assessment – assign teams of students to curate online content while you work with them in class to design future follow up class activities. If this process works, think of all the class time you would free up. No concerns of running out of time to “cover” the required material. Instead of class time being filled with the pointless transfer of information from teacher to student, you and your students would have the time to apply and explore the content in a more engaging and project-based classroom. Who knows you might gain so much time that you’ll have the chance to discover your inner Scorsese – and go on to produce your own instructional videos?

Image credit: flickr/Nasser Nouri