Adobe Premiere Pro - Essay Writing in Social Studies
This video is a collaboration between my wife and I. She was the subject matter expert and talent, and I was the producer and editor. In the end, we made a solid series on essay writing in social studies. A sample of one of our seven videos in the series is on the right. I didn't got to school for mass communication, but I had a few friends who majored in it. They taught me the ropes my junior year of college. It's not 11 years later, and I haven't stopped learning about video production since.
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Goal 3 - Use Google Docs to Edit Documents and Foster Student Collaboration
In my Video Production classes, students often write scripts. I decided to try using Google Docs to help them collaborate with me and each other. I found Google Docs to be a highly effective tool for group work because more than one person can edit a document at the same time. The days of emailing each other documents are gone. Students, teachers, and anyone can edit a document simultaneously. This was a huge accomplishment because my students are often spread out across campus. Having a cloud-based location for the script made it easy for all of us to access it and make edits when needed. The screenshots to the right show some of the collaboration that occurred during class. We like to identify the major parts of a story arc that should exist in a good story. Additionally, we sometimes like to highlight what should be filmed in one day. Once it's filmed, we can mark it as filmed, but until then, the highlights help the students set goals.
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Skype in the Classroom - Solar Cookers International I knew a lot about solar cooking when I started the project Serving with Solar, but I didn't do it for a living or share the technology with developing countries like those in Africa. An essential component of a project-based learning unit is a real-world purpose and collaboration with professionals outside of the the school. I sent an email to Solar Cookers International, and they connected me with their program director, Svetlana. Students prepared questions about solar cooking and Svetlana answered them for the students during this Skype call.
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Student Scribes - Collaborative Note Taking in Science Class
Students in science class tried something a little different this year. After I taught them how to use Google Drive, each of them took turns submitting their notes to a shared class Google Drive folder. I can't claim this idea as my own; it comes from Alan November in his book Who Owns the Learning? It was something I wanted to try and I think the students really benefited from it. They saw multiple forms of note-taking from different students, and they each received a round of formative feedback before posting them publicly to the folder for the rest of the class to see. Screenshots of the drive are to the right. You can see the folder itself along with some diverse note samples.
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