Creek Project--Update One

I'm not going to track the Creek Project on a daily basis. Some days very little if anything happens with it. And some days, something happens, but not enough to prompt a blog entry.

We are closing in on the midway checkpoint. On March 9, 7 days from now, the students will have to turn "evidence" into the Biology teacher. All of them have so far turned in their project sheets--detailing their questions, and their projects.

I have only worked with a few students. I showed one group how to create a voki, or use gizmoz (which tends to work a little better on student computers). I was a little disappointed because the student computers do not all have flash up to date, so neither of these programs were running properly.

I worked with another group to show them how to remove lyrics from an MP3 using Audacity. That way, they will be able to record themselves singing their new lyrics over the music. They plan on working on this from home, though, where they have garage band. Being a PC user at home and school, I'm not as familiar with garage band, and don't know if they will be able to do the same thing. However, I am optimistic. I didn't just show them how to do it. I knew there was a tutorial on youtube, so I did a search, explaining to them what I was searching for and how. After finding the tutorial, I made the students follow it. They had to watch what was happening and read the captions. After a successful run, I made the students repeat the process without the aid of the tutorial. I feel confident that they will remember how to do it in Audacity, and will be able to figure out how to do it in another program.

Today, I touched bases with the Biology teacher again. She is in the process of introducing the project to her non-honors class this week. Yesterday she had them pick a question, and yesterday and today they worked on researching their topic. This way, they are more focused on what the purpose of the project is than on the technology or "product" part of it. Then, once they have gathered their research, she is going to introduce the project. She is still deliberating on how much in class time to give students to work on it. These students do not have a study hall like the honors students, and many of them will not have the ability to work on their projects at home. She has also decided to limit their project choices. They will be able to do a Photo Story, game, poster, or design another project (and get approval). This leaves the students free to be creative with their project design, but it also focuses students who might be overwhelmed with too many choices.

She regrets the order she did things in with the honors classes. Because she introduced the project all at once, a lot of students focused on what they were doing instead of why. Students had decided to do a Photo Story or a web site before deciding what question they were answering. Because of this, the projects might end up not fitting the objectives of the students. One example is a group of students that decided to do a website on fish--but they had no clear idea of what the purpose or function of the website was, or what information would be on it, or how to make it an interesting, engaging site that people would want to visit. I think we both agree, in the future, it would be a good idea to assign students to pick a question before introducing the project. For honors, at least, I still feel that it might be reasonable to have them responsible for doing research while putting together their projects. It would force the students to make intelligent use of their time, and redirect both the project and research based on one another.

Sight Project--Day Four

Day four was much better than day three. I was really impressed by how well the students from the class that had all of the issues got over it. I've seen in the past that if something goes wrong with a project, students can write that project off all together and adopt a very negative attitude. But, at the beginning of class, they all got out their computers and started working. This is either a resilient class, or a class that really likes this project.

There were significantly less technical issues overall. That made the creating process go much more smoothly. And, I was better prepared to deal with the few issues that did come up.

I was impressed by students awareness of one another. After it was clear that some students were beginning to record, everyone automatically switched in to careful whisper mode without being told. A few students preferred to be out in the hallway to record (probably more from being embarrassed about talking to themselves in class than concerned about background noise.) And I was pleased to see students helping one another out. A few kids did figure out some parts of the program I hadn't shown them and, not only did they use them, they helped other students figure them out as well.

There were varying degrees of planning for narration. A few of them used the notes section on the recording page to plan out their narration. Some of them wrote scripts. A few decided to ignore all advice and wing it. I am curious to see how the presentations compare.

And that idea also ties in with something I overheard later in the day. I'll come back to that.

This was the last time the students had inclass time to work on their projects. As a result, a lot of extra kids showed up to the study hall later in the day. It was so packed that kids were sitting on the floor. Quite a few students even elected to stay afterschool to work on the program.

The teacher and I both stayed about a half hour past our contract hours. I don't know if this was something she was upset about or if she was okay with it. She didn't seem particularly put out, though. I was very tired by the end of the day, but more than happy to stay and help the kids out. I knew that, to some extent, they didn't get enough class time for the project. If I knew that all of the kids had access to Photo Story at home, and could have planned out their narration while watching their videos, even if they couldn't record, I would feel differently. But, I know that for most students, they weren't able to work on it at all outside of class. So I was happy to stay and give them the extra time they needed.

I was a little dissapointed by one comment I overheard. A student had just finished the narration for one slide--describing what she would do with her very last day of sight--and turned to the girl beside her and said, "not that I'd actually do that." I felt that she had missed a large part of the point. This project was supposed to be about her, and she just made it about the pictures she happened to have on her camera at the time.

In the future, I would like to introduce this project to students earlier, and give them time, outside of class, to collect pictures of things they would miss if they went blind. I might start having them do this at then beggining of readin "The Miracle Worker." That way, they would have time to think about what was important to them, and to find pictures of it. I might even start encouraging them to find and download internet pictures of things they couldn't acutally take pictures of. That way, studnets would be better prepared for the project, and it would have more of a connection with Helen Keller.

Another interesting twist might be to have them collecting these photos and images while reading the play, but with a different objective. Instead of collecting what they would want to see with three days of sight, they could collect what they would want to show Helen if she got her three days to see. That way, the students would not only have a personal connection with the project, but with the play, and would have to reflect on themselves in a different way. I'll have to share that thought with the teacher. The idea of more prep work ahead of time will probably appeal to her. I'm not sure how she'll feel about alterin the purpose of the project though.

And now back to the comment I over heard. This was either afterschool or in study hall--for some reason I can't remember which. One student basically said that the had really disliked this project, but now thought Photo Story was really cool. He wants to use it for a project he's doing in his bio class.

The reason seems fairly simple. Students don't know how to use these programs. They get frustrated. They want someone to take them by the hand and give them all the answers. But, if forced to figure some things out--or led through some problem solving--they will slowly get it. Once they get it, then they can focus on the project and not the tech.

I've been eager to get teachers to use tech in an appropriate way--in a way that supports their learning goals. I'm rethinking. I shouldn't focus on "which tech can achieve this for you" but on "how can the tech your students are familiar with achieve this for you." I would like to see teachers doing more projects, using the tech more frequently. If they started the year with an easier project--a learning goal that was simpler for students to achieve--the students could focus on learning the tech without loosing sight of the context of the project. As it stands, some students lost this project while trying to make Photo Story work.

For the rest of the year, and next year, I will beging talking with my teachers about this idea. I hope that they will see it and understand. I think it will also help with the teachers learning the tech. As much as I enjoy being in the classroom with the students, I know that the teachers are not becoming as comfortable with the tech as I want them to be. I we focused on one or two programs, and made them fit the learning goals, then the students and the teacher would have time to learn the programs and become comfortable with them. Then, by the time harder projects came around, the teacher wouldn't even need me any more.

Hmmm...a very smart man once said to me that his goal was to be obsolete. Funny. Guess it took me this long to really understand what he was saying. We had different learning objectives for our students, but the same goal for ourselves.