Sight Project--Day Two

Day two was a very productive work day for the kids.

A few kids needed some technical help. A few kids have decided to make collages in paint and transfer them into Photo Story. Some students still needed help with figuring out how to save files to a specific place, figuring out why they couldn't just paste a picture into the insert picture dialogue box, or selecting multiple pictures at once. For the most part students worked diligently throughout the class period finding and importing pictures. No one has started narrating yet.

I am a little worried about the three day timeline. Students were not given any set limit to how many or how few pictures they need, and so some have about thirty. I wouldn't be as concerned if the program was internet based. As it is, though, we gave students the url where they could download Photo Story, but not everyone has internet access, and not every parent is going to let kids randomly install software.

I talked with the teacher about the time. She asked my opinion. I told her that the kids were making good use of the time (better on day two than on day one), and that I didn't think most of them would get finished in time. The projects are due Friday, so they will have two days to work on them outside of class, but not everyone will have access to the software at home (and most probably don't have microphones). She agreed. She decided to continue telling students that they only have one more work day, but to give them a fourth day. That way, the will continue to work during day three, believing its their last chance, but they will have the needed fourth day.

Most students are still in the process of finding and importing pictures. Some have started to plan or put their actual stories together--thinking about what they want to say. I find that they want to get instant feed back before committing to anything. But they aren't looking for teacher feed back. They are looking for peer feedback. Its been a noisy project, but most of the conversations are about what they picked and why. I don't think most of them realize that these conversations are part of the planning process. By explaining what and why to classmates, they are preparing to record those same thoughts.