I'd never created a podcast before. I'd listened to them in the past, but without a real "topic of expertise" and an audience, I never tried creating one. This was interesting as we had to have a plan, and not just start talking about something and hope it turned out well.
The tricky thing about creating the podcast was that you had to come up with a subject (In my case, playing a hunter in World of Warcraft) then create a powerpoint presentation based on it, then create a script to follow when narrating. I felt like the creation process should have flowed smoother somehow, but I'm not sure yet how to make it do that. After all the work, I ended up a minute and a half over, and had to cut some large chunks of extraneous information. That in and of itself was a good task to do, as it's always easy to go off on a bunny trail, in fact I remember this one time, when I was at this thing and I....
Yeah, I do that.
I really liked this project, because it took away some of the mystery of creating a podcast. It's not nearly as difficult as I'd always assumed (not that I've stayed up nights thinking about it or anything). When I was finished, I felt like I'd created something good. Granted, it's an example of how to do something not in anyway related to English, but for me it's a proof of concept that I can make something like this in the future when it really matters.
I imagine podcasts would be fantastic in the classroom in a number of situations. If you created a set of them for each topic you covered in class, and a student missed one of the days you lectured, you could point them to the podcast that covered the topic you addressed and they could catch themselves up, and can't use the excuse "I wasn't here that day." The other side of this, is if I'm out sick, rather than relying on a sub to cover some heavy topic I feel like the students really need to learn about while I'm out, the sub can show the podcast and make the kids take notes or something. Education continues even in my absence, and the content is mine, not the school system's. That's nice.
I like that the podcast project wasn't necessarily tied to our area of focus. We're free to teach something that we enjoy outside of school, whether that's drumming or World of Warcraft... We got to have fun, and learn the techniques. I think if you'd tied it to our areas, we'd have done fine as well, maybe to make things a little trickier, find out what subjects are represented in the class (Science, Math, Social Studies, English) and pick a standard for each of them to work under. It's easy to come up with something under a standard we're familiar with, but working under one of the others would be a nice challenge. Granted, with the limited amount of time we're afforded, you can't make it too rough, or it might not get done. Meh, I like it the way it is. Don't change it. :-D
Sunday, June 17, 2012
Project 4
Project 4 centered around creating a website that merged 2 candidates areas of focus. In our case, Social Studies, and English. It turned out to be so easily combined that it's hard to see where Joe's work began and mine ended. We focused on propaganda of WWII and it's effect on the people of that time.
One of the interesting things we ran into, was the question of how to address the heavy racism so much of the propaganda of the time used. This led to some very interesting discussions on how to talk about racism, knowing your students and the area you're teaching in as well as knowing the RIGHT way to discuss something as difficult as racism, as well as the purpose it served at the time.
I think creating and maintaining a website for your students is a neat idea. Maybe have YOUR site as a teacher, and then pages off of it that deal with the topics, you'll be discussing and the projects the students will be doing. I think this would go a long way toward helping a substitute teacher who has to step into your shoes for a day or three. Rather than having them teach on something they may know very little about, or giving the students busy work and losing the time, you can have your sub go to "www.mysitethatcoversthetopicwe'retalkingabout.com" (I should reserve that domain name...) and spend a half hour there reading up on what you want them to teach about. They may not get as in depth as you might, but they'll be better equipped, and may give better instruction than if they'd had to wing it. The difficulty in maintaining a site like this is based around the idea of the pre-test we discussed in class. I can make a website and adjust it to my first year's class, but next year when my second year class understands topic A, but no one gets topic B, I'd have to go back and rework the whole site again to cater to their understanding. That's a pain. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it, but it would be a lot of work
On our team, once we decided on the topic, and the layout of the site, we divided the subject matter and went to it. I did about half of the front page, half of the Allied Propaganda page, I wrote the section on antisemitism and I wrote the page explaining the pamphlet we wanted the students to create.
Because of the nature of the topic, I don't know that either of us had a specific focus other than that of the main project. If I had done the website on my own, I would have looked at the impact of the propaganda the same was as a Social Studies teacher would have, and I think Joe would have done the same.
Joe and I worked well together, and I think the site we created was very good and would be an excellent tool for teaching students about WWII propaganda.
One of the interesting things we ran into, was the question of how to address the heavy racism so much of the propaganda of the time used. This led to some very interesting discussions on how to talk about racism, knowing your students and the area you're teaching in as well as knowing the RIGHT way to discuss something as difficult as racism, as well as the purpose it served at the time.
I think creating and maintaining a website for your students is a neat idea. Maybe have YOUR site as a teacher, and then pages off of it that deal with the topics, you'll be discussing and the projects the students will be doing. I think this would go a long way toward helping a substitute teacher who has to step into your shoes for a day or three. Rather than having them teach on something they may know very little about, or giving the students busy work and losing the time, you can have your sub go to "www.mysitethatcoversthetopicwe'retalkingabout.com" (I should reserve that domain name...) and spend a half hour there reading up on what you want them to teach about. They may not get as in depth as you might, but they'll be better equipped, and may give better instruction than if they'd had to wing it. The difficulty in maintaining a site like this is based around the idea of the pre-test we discussed in class. I can make a website and adjust it to my first year's class, but next year when my second year class understands topic A, but no one gets topic B, I'd have to go back and rework the whole site again to cater to their understanding. That's a pain. I'm not saying I wouldn't do it, but it would be a lot of work
On our team, once we decided on the topic, and the layout of the site, we divided the subject matter and went to it. I did about half of the front page, half of the Allied Propaganda page, I wrote the section on antisemitism and I wrote the page explaining the pamphlet we wanted the students to create.
Because of the nature of the topic, I don't know that either of us had a specific focus other than that of the main project. If I had done the website on my own, I would have looked at the impact of the propaganda the same was as a Social Studies teacher would have, and I think Joe would have done the same.
Joe and I worked well together, and I think the site we created was very good and would be an excellent tool for teaching students about WWII propaganda.
Wednesday, June 6, 2012
Project 3
Project 3 was to create a movie in iMovie that taught the students more than they would normally have learned through either reading or normal lecture. This was a cool project (I seem to say that about all of them). Like any project though, it had some difficult parts. Initially I started the project in Windows Live Movie Maker on my personal laptop. It's a great tool as well, but the computers in the lab here at school were literally 13 versions behind. Wow. There was no way I could work on the project here at school durring the class we were supposed to work on it. I started using iMovie durring class, and was able to complete it durring our normal class time. The most difficult part of the project was citing the things I used in my video. Citing an image of a newspaper found on the internet is ridiculously confusing. I even bought the MLA handbook, and it couldn't really help me that much. Citing my references actually took longer than creating the actual video, but as a future English teacher, I figured it was worth doing it right.
I was honestly impressed with the ease of use in making the video (both in iMovie and Windows Life Movie Maker). Years ago I used Adobe premier to put together something similar, and it was extremely difficult. Granted, that was 12 years ago, and in a very high end program, but at the time, that's what you needed if you wanted to make something well. Now you can do it with free tools. That's saying something.
Using iMovie to go more in depth into the history and culture of a book (in this case Grapes of Wrath) was something I really enjoyed, and is something I could see doing for other works of literature I'll have my students read in class. Video and English go hand in hand. That's the whole reason we have movies in the first place.
I could see having my students do either something similar to what I created, where I represent something of the time period, or perhaps have them record themselves recreating a scene from the book (now easily done from your phone) and putting the pieces together in iMovie or something similar. This could be a very cool tool for making literature not only interesting to read, but something they'll never forget.
I was honestly impressed with the ease of use in making the video (both in iMovie and Windows Life Movie Maker). Years ago I used Adobe premier to put together something similar, and it was extremely difficult. Granted, that was 12 years ago, and in a very high end program, but at the time, that's what you needed if you wanted to make something well. Now you can do it with free tools. That's saying something.
Using iMovie to go more in depth into the history and culture of a book (in this case Grapes of Wrath) was something I really enjoyed, and is something I could see doing for other works of literature I'll have my students read in class. Video and English go hand in hand. That's the whole reason we have movies in the first place.
I could see having my students do either something similar to what I created, where I represent something of the time period, or perhaps have them record themselves recreating a scene from the book (now easily done from your phone) and putting the pieces together in iMovie or something similar. This could be a very cool tool for making literature not only interesting to read, but something they'll never forget.
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