Journal+-+Alison

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=Entries= 1/30/10 I have had a few opportunities to work with video in my classroom. What has been interesting to watch is the students' shift from just "acting out" to acting for a video. I always present opportunities for my class to act, whether it is just acting out a vocabulary word or a scene from a story they just read. However, I have done a few videos while having my students not only write and "star" in their videos but participate in the editing process. What has "shifted" is the way the students are starting to think about video. They used to think that they could just be silly in front of a camera, but now they are starting to think about the post-production aspect. Just recently my class did their own "I have a dream..." speeches in honor of Martin Luther King day. I recorded them with the intention of putting together a sort of montage of their speeches. The kids started telling me about getting "sad" music for the background and one student came up with a brilliant idea of recording all of the students saying "I have a dream..." over and over in the beginning before showing their speeches. I have seen a lot of bad videos done by people who are thinking about stage acting for the camera not thinking about editing, music, etc. The fact that in such a short time, my little 3rd graders are "seeing" differently. I'm not sure I will have the time to do some of the amazing projects I thought of over summer training....perhaps too ambitious before the reality of "data' and "standardized testing" kicked in....but I'm finding that just doing a simple project in one afternoon can sometimes be sufficient to get the kids, and me, thinking outside the box.

9/19/09 When we were at PCDS this summer, I left with big ideas on all of the projects I wanted to do with my class. However, on the first day of school- reality set in! With only one computer in my room and some very challenging students- some things would need to be paired down.

Thank goodness I have a great alliance partner- Tina! We started off doing camera workshops just having the kids get in front of the camera and slating then running the camera. We gave them terminology like "quiet on the set" "hit your mark" and 'ACTION!" We also had them do interviews with each other practicing with the mic. The challenges were working with 2 classes and keeping them quiet. However, the success was in their enthusiasm and engagement.

Since then, I already completed my first video with my students. It was a very short and sweet video on alphabetizing which we wrote and shot in the course of 15 minutes! I did a lot of the basic editing myself, but then put it up on my projector and allowed the students to pick out music for segments- etc. My hope was that they would see the process and have more thoughts about other projects we may want to tackle later in the year.