When I was searching for my digital tool to present to the class, I found a lot of really great resources that I will probably use as a teacher. I found my personal favorite which I will present to the class, but there was another tool that i also thought was terrific, and I had a hard time deciding between the two on which to use. Since this week is a free blog, it's your lucky day because I am going to share it with you!
My second favorite resource was called VUVOX. This tool is really great. It enables the teacher to create a "music video" presentation. What high school student doesn't love music? Well, maybe I'm a little biased as a music lover myself. Of course, you're potentially going to run into problems with the student's different taste in music, and their criticism of the video becuase of this. At any rate, I think it would be fun to create them and hopefully maintain student's attention a little longer as most students are used to their senses being bombarded as a way of recieving information. I don't think that a typical auditory lecture would compare to the use of a music video to convey information to your students.
I don't necessarily think that all of your presentations should be like this, but I do think that it is a useful tool in presenting new information. I also thought that it would be a neat idea to have this up and running as students came into the classroom as a source of visual and auditory stimulation to deter the students getting too caught up in their own conversations during the class change. In this way, you aren't necessarily wasting the time students have in between classes, but are providing them with a review of information during what would have been useless time otherwise.
Finally, I think that a teacher could use this resource so that the students could create their own music videos to demonstrate their knowledge of information that they learned. Creating an account on vuvox is free, and it is pretty easy to use, so I think that the students would have fun doing a project like this- and they would be able to use their own taste in music (within reason...it would have to be appropriate) negating the issue of students having different tastes in music.
www.vuvox.com
Friday, October 26, 2012
How to grade a film?
Since this is a free week for blogs, I am going to write about a conversation we had during class groupwork this past week. In our group, we talked about chapter 6 of Miller. To refresh everyone's memory, it had to do with creating a "found poem" and making a video based on the poem. In the chapter, Miller talks about a teacher who integrates film into her lesson plans as a way to be "up to date" and stay relevant as a teacher in a digital age. The biggest problem that I personally find with doing things like this is that I would have a hard time deciding on the best way to grade a project like that.
We talked about the possibility of writing a paper about what you did in the project, and what you learned about the work of literature by creating the film. This poses a problem for me, though. If you are writing a paper about what you learned about literature by creating a film, isn't the film just a sort of busywork then? I think that the student would be able to write the paper on what they learned about the literature without doing the film. This is not to discredit the idea of creating a film, but rather to think of a better way to grade the film itself, and not base a grade on the paper written about the creation of the film.
Obviously, the students will not have the abilities of Steven Speilberg or even necessarily know the first thing about film, but film itself is obviously a medium that should be studied and understood by students as movies and television are the way that most information is conveyed in today's society. I think that the film should be graded not based on a piece of literature necessarily, but based on the understanding of how film conveys a message. This would keep the lesson relevant, and not relegate the lesson in film to the "fluff" category.
We talked about the possibility of writing a paper about what you did in the project, and what you learned about the work of literature by creating the film. This poses a problem for me, though. If you are writing a paper about what you learned about literature by creating a film, isn't the film just a sort of busywork then? I think that the student would be able to write the paper on what they learned about the literature without doing the film. This is not to discredit the idea of creating a film, but rather to think of a better way to grade the film itself, and not base a grade on the paper written about the creation of the film.
Obviously, the students will not have the abilities of Steven Speilberg or even necessarily know the first thing about film, but film itself is obviously a medium that should be studied and understood by students as movies and television are the way that most information is conveyed in today's society. I think that the film should be graded not based on a piece of literature necessarily, but based on the understanding of how film conveys a message. This would keep the lesson relevant, and not relegate the lesson in film to the "fluff" category.
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