Reflection Time

It is hard to believe another eight weeks have already passed!  One of the things I found helpful from this class was the blog posts.  Knowing that anyone could read what I write has helped me be more focused and attentive in my writing.  I appreciated having a topic to discuss or a question to answer.  It was interesting to see how others interpreted the question or topic and see the different ideas everyone had.  The one thing I know I want to do more of is responding to the comments on my own blog page.  I think that would help the discussion further and promote more of a sense of collaboration.  I would read my comments, but I rarely responded. 

The digital story was a fun and creative assignment.  While it was a challenge, I love how the each aspect was broken down into steps.  This not only helped me complete the assignment, but gave me ideas for how I would broach this type of project in a classroom.  Having walked through each of the steps, I understand better how the process works.

As others have mentioned, I wish I would have had more time for the infographic.  I had to complete some research and create a rough draft which took some time.  I then experimented with several different tools to find the right fit for what I had in mind.  While I am pleased with the final result, I think I would have benefited from having an additional week to complete the assignment.  

I enjoy looking back and seeing all the new things I have learned and experienced.  Now time to rest up for the start of a whole new set of learning!

Nutrition Infographic

This project was very challenging for me.  The first obstacle I had to overcome was simply picking the topic!  I finally chose to do something with nutrition.  My Cub Scouts are working on their Fitness activity pin and are required to plan a menu for a week and keep track of the foods they actually eat for a week.  After our last meeting, I realized the boys understand they need some of each food group, but do not really understand what a "serving" actually is.  I hope to use this at my next meeting and have them analyze how many actual servings of each food group they ate. 
The second major obstacle I had to overcome with picking the tool to create the final project.  I looked around at many different tools and even started creating the project in several of them.  The final project I created in Microsoft Word.  It had all the graphics I needed in one place, and I was pleased with the final result.  The one issue I ran into was being able to save it as a picture without the image being distorted.  After a bit of researching, I used Zamzar.  You do not have to register, but you do have to provide an email address so this might not be a good resource for students.  However, if you are ever in need of a different file format that the one you have, this might be worth looking into!

Digital Story

Whew!  This task was challenging, but I am fairly pleased with the end result.  The video was created with Photo Story 3.  I had never used the software before so it was interesting to see the different types of features.  In retrospect, I think I prefer Movie Maker, but I am glad to have tried a different method. 

I think the most challenging aspect of the project was staying within the 5 minute time limit.  For me, it was more of a matter of what NOT to include as opposed to what elements to add in.  Enjoy!

Digital storytelling process so far

When I first looked over the digital storytelling assignment I was nervous.  I have never completed this type of project before and it seemed a bit overwhelming.  However, it has been a smooth ride so far.  As with most things, the key is to break a large task into small manageable pieces.  Writing is no exception.  Whether writing a large research paper or creating a fun story, there are certain pre-writing tasks to accomplish which make the whole process smoother.  I think the hardest part, besides picking a topic, was staying within the time limit.  I wanted to include enough information to tell my story, but I need to eliminate non-essential details.  This is why the writing process is so important.  In my first draft of the script, I just wrote down everything.  During revision I could go back and edit the piece and think about what details are important and what doesn’t fit in with the whole story.  After having a peer review the story, I now realize I still have some more cutting down to accomplish. Currently I am attempting to polish the script so I can move on to the next phase of the process and start looking at scenes.  When I start organizing the scenes, a similar process will occur.  I will first just put everything in and then go back and review it….multiple times! 

Teaching Plagiarism

With resources so easily available, it is important to explain plagiarism at a very early age.  Even kindergarten students can begin to understand it in simple terms.  A week ago I was in an art classroom where the third grade students were beginning a new project using lines to design a robot.  To kick off the project, the book Robot Zot (a great little story!) was read to the students.  Before the students could begin, they had to fill out a sheet giving some details about how they would complete the design and provide a name for the robot.  As I walked around the room, I noticed quite a few students who either chose the name of the robot from the book or picked the name of a popular robot from films.  We stopped class for a few minutes and talked about why this was unacceptable.  We talked about how using the name someone else came up with was a form of stealing. 

 Having these types of conversations early and often, I think, are important to help students understand plagiarism.  Plagiarism is such a big word and most young students need repeated exposure to the word with plenty of examples in order to understand the concept. 

Learning to cite is a constantly evolving skill.  I felt confident citing works in print but have had to learn new methods when citing online and multimedia sources.  To complicate the matter are the different types of formats.  Do we teach the students MLA format?  APA?  During my undergraduate program MLA was the primary method taught and expected.   The first paper I wrote where the instructor required APA format was daunting and took much longer as I had to learn how to cite with a different method. 

For students in younger grades, I think it is more important the students recognize the need to give credit for resources they have found than to worry about formatting the citation correctly.  Teachers can model giving credit when showing examples of projects, by listing citations on worksheets given to the students, and by explaining what the citations mean.  Sometimes it is just a matter of capitalizing on those teachable moments, such as we did when naming our robots for an art project.  If you are looking for more information, Kathy Schrock’s Guide to Everything has some great additional resources for teaching about intellectual property.