Possible project--Science Presentations

While working with the Social Studies teacher on his Business Plan project, I got an email from one of the Science teachers. She was having blue tooth issues--which is unfortunately not something I'm that good at helping with.

While I was trouble shooting, we got to talking. Her students are currently working on presentations for infectious diseases. She wanted to be able to video tape all of the students and put each presentation on a CD. While we were talking, we started throwing around ideas, and got to the idea of allowing the students to edit their presentation videos in Movie Maker. That way, they could edit out long pauses or such.

I told her I was doing something similar with the Social Studies teacher, and invited her to stop down and check out how things were going if she had time. I also said that I would try to estimate, based on that project, how long she would want to give her students for editing.

She seems to like the idea. It gives another dimension to the project, and it gives the kids a chance to basically give themselves a second chance if their presentations don't go off perfectly.

Business Plan Project

I started working with one of the Social Studies teachers last week on a video project. It was part of a larger project that, at the beginning, I didn't know much about.

The larger project was for students to create a business plan. The video part of the project is for students to create a commercial.

I began by going back and getting a better handle on movie maker. I haven't looked at it in a very long time, and I've never really used it. I felt it was my first duty to know the program in question. I took an afternoon to look at the connections, how to transfer files, what the file types were, and how to work with the video. It was pretty easy.

I next managed to find a few minutes with the teacher to go over how the program works. He didn't seem to think it was too difficult, either.

I then created a set of directions for students. I ran them by the teacher, and made a few changes. We then started talking about turning the projects in. In the past, the teacher had not known anything about video editing. Students had just had to rewind and re-shoot any mistakes. Then, the teacher simply uploaded all of the videos to his own computer. He wanted the directions to include saving to his computer, but I pointed out that that would mean having each group use his computer to edit. That would have been a large logistical nightmare.

In the end, we decided to contact the tech department and set up a teacher workspace folder for him. This is a folder that all students and the teacher can access. In this way, it pretty much fills the function of a drop box. There is less security, but I don't think most students would think of it that way. I had the teacher go through and set up a folder for each class under his workspace folder.

Now, each group will be able to record their video, edit out any mistakes without hogging the camera, edit it on their own computer, and share it with the teacher easily.

One of the important aspects about being a coach, in my opinion, is having the experience and the mind set, to be able to foresee issues, and see a way around them.