Feelin’ Stronger Every Day…
By tnturner on Dec 14, 2007 in Digital Storytelling, Professional Development, Technology Integration
First things first. A game. Who sings the song that I’ve entitled my blog post after today. Winner with the first reply gets a….my undying devotion?
My head’s been all over the place over the last week. I’ll honestly say that I refrained from even opening up my dashboard page for fear that I would type more negative material. Yes, my last post was negative. I’m trying, I really am. I’ve had some great conversations with great friends to help me keep my focus on the true prize.
We had a great photostory 3 workshop on my campus Monday evening. Many thanks to Karen Seddon who is coming out every month. (Last month was Audacity, this month was Photostory 3). The good news is that 5 of my teachers showed up. The bad news was the amount of complaining from teachers that the workshop was so late in the day. Yes, it was after school. All five of the attendees were newer adapters, even going so far as saying they are true, green newbies. That’s okay. Baby Steps. I’d forgotten the importance of that little mantra.
We have a 5th Grade teacher on campus that has been doing research projects, the old fashioned way. Let’s research, and oh yea, let’s write about 4 pages about what you’ve researched. Notice, not what they’ve learned. I tasked her with finding a way to spice up her project outcome. For the most part, she obliged. Instead of a paper, she offered her students a choice of a powerpoint or a display board. Progress. YES! That’s not the end. Begging would be an appropriate way to say what I did. I begged her to come to the PD on Monday night. Happy to report that her project outcome has changed again, with a due date pushed back to the end of January. We’ve discussed dates/times to come in and teach the students how to use Photostory 3 to create their own stories.
As described by me in previous postings, her reply to the school based mantra of “there’s no time for such projects like this” was this: “I don’t care, these students NEED to learn how to research and create something.” I should also note that this is an educator that has been teaching for almost 15 years. Baby Steps!
I have another post brewing in my head. More on that later, don’t want to get them confused.
Seeking the Wisdom of the Ages.
Tom.
Technorati Tags: PD education technology edtech photostory3
3 Comment(s)
The song is sun by the greatest horn group of all time…Chicago!
I guess I’m undyingly devoted to you Mr. Childers! Doesn’t mean I will root for Tennessee though.
We use iMovie and it integrate very well with traditional research. Not only is it a great motivator but it also requires additional levels of thinking for students to analyze their research and choose the most important elements and accompanying illustrations for their presentation.
Point being that traditional research and technology presentation can go hand in hand (students also made dioramas and flipbooks on animal camouflage in addition to their class film).