Documentaries

Here is a great interview about student produced documentaries. Watch the outside research conducted via skype on some of them. What an interesting idea.

See the class webpage.

A link for Skype in the Classroom.

Making Movies - Using Digital Texts to Document Personal Connections

This project was published on the Digital Is webpage.

In my junior level American Literature classes, we need to cover a play by Shakespeare each year to be able to meet our Common Core State Standards. Last year, however, I didn't get it done. I just couldn't figure out how to connect a Shakespeare play to one of the fulcrum texts we were already reading in class-at least not in a meaningful package that wouldn't distract for too much time.

Then, I found a great unit plan by Cindy O'Donnell-Allen and Jenny St. Romain, and I knew connecting Hamlet to Of Mice and Men with an overarching theme of resilience would work perfectly.

Next, I started to look for interesting ways to have students represent what they learned in a compact way. I was thinking of having students perform a scene from the play in groups. Yet, when I had done that in the past, students never created something worth capturing on film. The time for preparation and creative application just wasn't sufficient on my timeline. I needed something more focused.

In my reader program, I stumbled upon the Australian Theatre for Young People group, and saw their wonderfully stitched together version of the main soliloquy in Hamlet. I was intrigued. All I needed then was a way to connect it to the student's lives to make it work.

As I thought about what was really happening in Hamlet's monologue, I was simultaneously covering Joseph Campbell's ideas in other classes. Soon, I became convinced that each of my students would have had a similar moment in their lives which they could include in the film through location, setting, and reflection.

Legacy Work

This reminds me so much of the work we did with bookdrum last semester, but it takes it one step farther. I think I could incorporate this with my class this semester by showing the bookdrum site, and then saying we are going to add to it. That way, the studetns would learn all of the information that is there already, but they would continue to gather more bookmarks and make more connections to outside research. I am not sure if I would be able to add more information or not. I will have to check into it.

It does make me want to continue with the wiki idea, but just put a new motivational spin on it. "This will be used by future students. You will be helping them to understand what is going on in the book."

Treat Students as Entrepreneurs

I really like this presentation. It goes against all ideas of standardization, but it really relates to teachers who believe it is more important to teach about what makes each person into a hero rather than having students memorize a standard definition of hero.