Today the publishing company Houghton-Mifflin sent a crew to my school to film a lesson and interview teachers about integrating blogging into the classroom - and, yup, you guessed it! I was one of the three teachers. I was psyched to be asked to help a history and english teacher, who co-teach a Facing History and Ourselves class, integrate blogging into their lesson about genocide in Rwanda. The students had gone on a field trip to the Choosing to Participate exhibit at the Boston Public Library, and were asked to reflect on their experience in a writing assignment that connects to their study of genocide. In an effort to share their reflections with each other, they posted onto a collaborative blog, and were asked to make connections with each other through the process of commenting on each other’s posts.

This was SUPER fun! Not just the part about being filmed (actually that was the least fun part)! I thoroughly enjoy planning with teachers and inventing ways to use technology to enhance the learning experience and understanding of the content. Many teachers are intrigued and/or capable of using web 2.0 technologies in the classroom, but may be apprehensive or simply have no time to do the IT legwork before the lesson. So yesterday, I set up the blog using edublogs.org, set up and tested the accounts, and pulled together the lesson’s walkthrough of the what, who, why and how’s of blogging. The three of us then broke the 1 hour lesson into the parts we were each comfortable with leading and the teachers integrated their history and english standards into the lesson.

It was kind of strange being filmed while teaching. It felt intrusive and surreal at first and I worried that this was more of a show than a class - would the kids actually learn anything?! In fact, I am embarrassed to admit that I was asked to “start again” when I opened up my part! Yikes! But I totally needed to because I was so not comfortable at first…I could feel the eyes of the 26 students and I saw the cameras on me…and then I remembered I was not there to be filmed, I was there to teach, and so I got into the groove of teaching and it all flowed from there. The kids had some great input to the lesson which put me at ease, as we talked about why people blog and the differences between internet lingo and formal narrative. The tool itself worked smoothly, and I think we all got so engrossed in the lesson that we didn’t mind ducking under the boom or having a camera lens shoved in our faces. Well, maybe a little bit!

The crew gave us rave reviews afterwards! One said she almost cried at some of the interactions and conversations going on! It all seems like a blur now to me, which reminds me of the value of capturing those teaching moments. I have to/like to reflect afterwards (usually in this blog), but I have wondered whether recording my own lessons would prove equally or more valuable. But do I really have time in the day to listen or watch every one of my lessons?! Notsomuch. But I think being able to watch yourself or listen to yourself at least once would be enlightening. Some teachers prefer NOT to and adamantly advise against it, though!

I guess I’ll find out how I feel about seeing myself in action when they send us copies in a month or so. We were each interviewed afterwards about the lesson and about the integration of technology in general. The crew said I was “a natural” and that “the camera loves you.” LOL ( : I say, don’t quit your day job, lis.

The lesson will be the case study for the “integrating blogs in the classroom” chapter in Houghton-Mifflin’s nationally distributed Teaching With Technology book (or some title like that). I think that comes out in the fall, along with a CD and online version of the video.

I am super grateful to be in a school and among colleagues who support the co-teaching, interdisciplinary, technology-integrated approach to teaching and learning!

On that note, it’s Friday. Enjoy your weekend!

Phew. This week has been super tiring. Grades were due and the semester changed so this week is like September all over again for me. Print out syllabi, go over expectations and policies, set seating charts and basically get to know a brand new set of 150 names and faces! In a way its a great opportunity to recharge mid year, and revisit the curriculum and refine it. BUT it can be tiring too and you never know what these impressionable freshman will come into your class with after a half a year of high school under their belt with a different teacher. I am super excited though to meet them and find out who among them is ready, eager, and willing to be a media maker!

During the first phase of the video PSA project, the media makers have been given a 4 page proposal to fill out, which include a storyboard and “pitch” piece. Their mission is to convince the big time movie producer, (me), to fund their film. They must pitch to me their “30 second elevator speech” and use industry standard vocabulary to identify shots and angles in their storyboard. If I approve it, they will be given a camera, tape, and my blessing. The first team to be approved gets to use the marker for a week. (the marker was originally a $25 wall art from Bed,Bath & Beyond, until my dad added hinge on the side! We will use post-its to mark up the “slate”. This is low-budget filming, folks, we gotta be creative!).

So far, I have 2 teams who are reaching out to local middle school students and addressing peer pressure and responsible video gaming. Another team is exposing stereotypes, and another is investigating the cultural divisions in the city’s neighborhoods. An older team is taking on the truth about STDs, and another group is promoting after school alternatives to gang memership.

I’m super excited about their ideas and keep pushing back “What is your message?” “Who needs to be in your audience?” and “Who are you helping in the community?”.

Here are the video production teams from today’s section :

Originally uploaded by msradden

My small but savvy advanced web group is gearing up for their client to come in for the kickoff interview session. We picked a company name (”4 girls, a guy and a laptop”) and each student is completing a layout in Photoshop of their employee profile within the company web site. They will post their resumes and cover letters as well as a complete bio. Next week we will slice them up into HTML, link them and FTP each page! Stay tuned for the launch…

Headsets

Originally uploaded by msradden

These ladies from my Media Seminar class listen intently (well, not while posing for a photo opp, maybe!) to their voiceovers for the “I AM” identity animation in Flash. They are inserting text and images at keyframes during the animation to help viewers understand who they are, where they are from, and where they want to go!

Yamil

Originally uploaded by msradden

It’s a great time to be a sports fan in Boston these days…The Sox play game 2 tonight of the ALCS, the undefeated PATS take on the Cowboys tomorrow, and there’s even some hope for the Celtics…So I’ve posted this retouched photo made by one of my media students in honor of one of my favorite Sox, David Ortiz!

Students in Media Seminar used industry standard retouching techniques in Photoshop to create “realistic” photos of themselves in a future job or place that connects with their social, academic, and professional goals. These images are part of a larger animated identity piece in which students reflect on where they are from, who they are, and where they are going, incorporating voice overs and imagery to reflect their identity.

Additionally, we studied the ethics of retouching images and the kinds of messages that manipulated media send. As part of a reflection on this project, the students were asked how to identify manipulated imagery based on a reading I provided, and reflected on when it is acceptable to manipulate imagery and when it is not. We had some great discussions in class, and hopefully after the reflections are posted in the class blog, we can have some online discussions as well.

Oh about that class blog…BPS blocks Blogger.com inconsistently, so my original collaborative blog on blogspot.com won’t work. Plus the school’s email server blocks the invitation emails to the students. Kids need a GMAIL account to even post. I have since figured I need to install a word press blog on my own or the school’s server. I did correspond with a BPS OIIT member who was unsure what teachers were using across the board. He did recommend edublogs.org which I will check out too. Bottom line is, once again, a great online tool is “banned” from usage in the classroom, and teachers like me who see the educational value in it, have to find a workaround. Like using shareware to grab FLVs off of youtube to show in school since Youtube is blocked as well!

DLP Screening and Q&A

Originally uploaded by msradden

The Facing History and Ourselves office in Brookline were shown the four student-produced films from the DLP summer pilot program for the first time! WOW! I was soooo impressed all over again! And super proud to have been a part of it. As I watched the films I relived the suggestions I made for the storyline, or the edits I contributed to the narrative, and the “how do I…?” teaching moments with Premiere. I recalled the jokes, the A-HA! moments, the shared personal stories, and the “how did you DO that?” moments when I sat down and they taught ME a thing or two in Premiere! It was a truly collaborative teaching and learning experience that I will never forget! And tonight, seeing some of “the cornbread crew” again and the final pieces after so long, I think I was just as proud as the students were to see my own name in the credits! ( You can read more about the program in the blog )

Afterwards, Arva, Sophia, Jessica and Sevon fielded questions from the audience. They ranged from “what was the most challenging part of the project?” to which a collective groan was given about logging and the lack of A/C, to the “heavy” question of whether after all of this any of them wanted to be an activist. Arva explained the “cornbread” theory in her reply. Mel King never thought of himself as an “activist” in the sense that he was more important than anyone else during the civil rights movement in Boston. He said the woman who baked the cornbread for the meeting each week was just as important to the movement as the one who lead the meeting. As a result of this anecdote and the humility of the interviewees across the board when asked a similar question about their leadership, none of the students felt they could plainly say that they wanted to be an “activist.” Yet as Jessica pointed out, “I know how to be a leader, but I am not afraid of being a follower either. Being a follower is just as important as being a leader.”

The audience gained a perspective of the amount of work and literal sweat (it WAS hot in there!) that was put into this pilot program by the planning team, the teaching crew, the DLP staff, and the students. And what was clearly apparent was the pride and accomplishment each student felt about not only their piece, but the process they went through to produce it. And in fact their films will be used, for the first time ever, as actual curriculum assets within the 10th grade History of Civil Rights curriculum for Facing History and the Boston Public Schools. WOW!!

Sometimes teaching is so tiring and discouraging and you can feel like you are not making an impact because you just can’t reach them ALL that day. But then you have days like this, when you realize that you DO make an impact, one kid at a time, in small and big ways.

Kinda like making the cornbread…

I am halfway through my involvement in The Digital Legacies Project and loving it! This week the students have been logging Aroll, annotating the transcripts, and writing their narratives. Every member of the crew logged the same tape of their interviewee in order to get to know the footage. Facing History hired professional crews to film the A roll, retakes, and B roll of Boston to assist in getting high quality footage. The students conducted the interviews as well as filmed from their own perspective. I have been spending all of today digitizing the tapes using Premiere. The file management is so critical, and must be prepared for Digital Arts Alliance to come in and work with the kids in the editing process next week. I think DAA will be blown away by the skill level of the students. I taught them Premiere basics last Wed and Thurs and they were flying with it!

I am anxious to see what stories they come up with, the connections they made with the activists they interviewed, and the visuals and sound they choose to use in their films. There is SOOO much footage and SOOO much you can do with it in Premiere, that if they do not come into the lab with a plan, they will be overwhelmed and waste precious time.

I have been learning a GREAT deal from this program about what to incorporate into my own digital video curriculum during the school year. The DLP kids are doing WAY more than my students did, not necessarily because they are more capable, but there is more time, greater focus and importance on the end product, and hey, the students are getting PAID, not GRADED, so this is a job they are into and may pursue in college and a career.

I’d say the majority of my time has been spent in the lab making sure all the equipment works, software is installed, and supporting the students in the use of the equipment and software. I have also spent any extra time taking photos and recording footage in an effort to record the process we are all going through. I have been maintaining the blog as well but it has been tough keeping up with all that is going on and changing every day!! Check it for yourself at digitallegaciesproject.blogspot.com!

I went from beach bum to working 14 hr days! My eyes burn as I write this…but it DOES feel good to be “back.” I reported to TBA on Monday for the first day of my participation in the Digital Legacies Project for Facing History and Ourselves. I am basically managing the lab, teaching the students Adobe Premiere, and helping to manage the logging, script writing, and production of the students’ documentaries.

The 10 students selected for the program are fantastic! They come from all over the city. Being back around high school students gets me excited all over again about all things technology…They are vibrant, on the cutting edge, enthusiastic, curious, investigative, and above all, passionate about the skills and concepts they are learning. They have brought experience & confidence to the table too, which makes the curriculum a tad bit easier to teach.

 Today was the major lesson of the week which was file management, intro to Adobe Premiere, capturing and logging digital video, and basic effects and transitions. They all seemed to get it under their belt, but for each crew, there is always one who is hands-on and strongest out of the bunch for editing.

They are conducting their interviews today and tomorrow so they are both nervous ad excited all at once. One student got a nose bleed during the anticipation! But he managed to pull himself together into his oversized suit jacket! So cute. The girls are super confident and it is so awesome to see them step up with the tech skills, teaching back and taking control of the footage.

 The Facing History team is a great group of people to work with! We are all equally flexible and creative and energetic, and when we are not, one steps up for the other at just the right time! The curriculum is a pilot for FHAO, so indeed we are constantly adapting it, changing objectives, and adjusting activities at the last minute.

The knots in my back that usually develop in early September, were back on Monday! And between this and teaching at Bunker Hill on Tues and Thurs right after a day of FHAO program…well, let’s just say that a long run or tall glass of wine are both effective ways to eliminate the knots!

All in all, I am lookin forward to what the students will produce in the next 2 weeks. You can read their reflections and daily summaries on, yes, another Blog that I manage : http://digitallegacies.blogspot.com