Exploring Media and Student Voice - From iMovie to Facebook

I had the privilege to participate in another Oregon Migrant Leadership Institute for high school students. We use videos and media as springboards to discussion surrounding the migrant population, leadership, goal setting, challenges, and more. Two college mentors facilitate discussion and lead participants in using iPads to create their own videos in a few hours. Check out the big ideas and videos in the dropdown menu we use for springboards to conversation. The Tech Activities serves as a guide for our process. Once participants complete a video on the iMovie app, it is uploaded to a Facebook page.

Here's 2016 Session 1 page and 2016 Session 2 page. A big shoutout to all of the OSU college staff who make the OMLI a meaningful experience! Thanks to Jose Perucho for this overview video of session 1.

Giving Students a Voice with iPads and iMovies

This summer, I worked with high school migrant students in a summer camp using iPads to give them a voice through videos and writing.  This posts builds on the one prior to it, Giving Students iPads vs Pens, but focuses on the instructional aspects.  Here's a fun video that two students created on the first day in about 20 min.  Watch others from this Shout Out page.

Prep and a platform are important!  A lot of prep work goes into setting something like this up.  I had 15 iPads, 4 staff, and around 25 students at one time.  I chose Blogger as the platform in part because it has a super easy to use app.  We used iMovies as the movie making app and You Tube Capture to quickly upload the movies to You Tube.  In weeks 2-3, when staff became more comfortable, we added Animoto (using an Educator’s account) and Explain Everything. The resources and handouts and general plans were posted prior to beginning each week.  It is handy to have videos, links, general purpose explanation, etc. set up ahead of time on a site to aid in the flow of instruction during a project.

Student choice: In week one, I began with a structured format that was “school like” the staff politely told me later. Staff were learning the apps, there were a lot of unknowns, and it seemed the safe bet. Students created Where I am From poems and turned them into videos.  I had my handouts, model examples videos and how-to videos ready to go on the site.  It was exciting the first day when one of the participants quickly created an incredible rap during a pre-write session.  But for what could be a variety of reasons—not wanting to share publically, or perhaps feeling the need to follow my “school like” directions, his rap didn’t make it to video.  Students in week 1 did a great job!   They followed my directions, but I was a bit disappointed in my directions and how it pigeon holed everyone into creating a similar looking video. 

In weeks 2-3, staff were more comfortable, and they opened topics up to students.  Wow, do kids have ideas and voices worth listening to!  They chose topics of importance to them such as bullying, language choice, goal setting, etc.  

Process and experience: If this is presented with a focus on the process and learning, not only the final product, it helps meet the needs of a wider range of learners, differentiating and even individualizing.

Learn together as you go:  Tablets truly give teachers the opportunity to take the seat of a facilitator and learner with the students.  Students asked each other, problem solved, worked together, naturally became the experts and taught me! I did do a lot of the leg work in managing the site and creating You Tube playlists, looking at privacy issues, etc, but some of this can be delegated to students as well.

Celebrate!  This type of learning differentiates and allows learners of varying levels to contribute.  We popped popcorn and watched their videos and related videos along the way.

Overview: This experience shows how mobile devices can be used quickly to create videos and give students a voice.  This is the tip of the iceberg when we have access to such devices and begin to rethink assignments and how technologies can support content and language learning. This experience also cements the importance of a platform (such as a blog) for workflow and instructional purposes, to share student work, and to communicate.

Happy movie watching!

The Teachers Should See This: iMovie

What's a worn out teacher to do when teaching jobs line up back-to-back with minimal time to prep for the upcoming one?  Look to the kids for inspiration and solutions of course!

Here's how the young author of the series, The Teacher Should See This, came to my aid.  The task at hand was to find an iPad app or two to support learning in a summer camp with 150-200 high school students, to give them a voice, and document some of their experiences.  Within a few hours, she selected the iMovie app, found a few how-to videos, and set off to make her own video on a Where I Am From Poem theme.

It's showtime!  Enjoy.

Now, the real question is if the teacher can pull this off.  It's the beginning of the first week, so there will be an upcoming post.  Here's the beginnings of a three week summer camp journey where I meet with the students for less than four hours for the video/blogging part, but learn so much from them!  Kids are amazing people.

Happy video making!

Summer Camp Experiences Recorded with Weebly, Animoto, and Educreations

Five iPads. Thirteen laptops. Five college staff.  200 high school students at summer camp.  Four days per session with students rotating between laptops and iPads in groups at 25 minutes intervals for two hours. What a way to spend a summer month!  

I held my breath in anticipation as this project unfolded before my eyes.  Weebly was the chosen website platform, and Educreations and Animoto were the primary apps.   PBWorks Wiki was integrated as a storage space to make easy access and viewing of the iPad creations in one place. Dropbox was used to manage pictures. I had used all of these before, but never on this scale or in such a tight time frame, so it was exciting to see this come together.

Purpose and background

The Oregon Migrant Leadership Institute brings high school students (9^th-12^th) for a week camp where they learn leadership skills.  Read about it and view the site they pulled together here.  The writing and technology component served the purpose of allowing participants to document their experiences, practice writing skills, and get some exposure to emerging technologies and resources.

What worked

Staff pulled together:  Plain and simple I had an amazing staff of college students!  Within a few hours of training (the first hour with them looking at me with uncertainty and their eyes glazed over), they arose to the occasion in a huge way.  The photographer set forth to figure out syncing pictures on the laptops in Dropbox and on the iPads.  The iPad experts who had never held iPads before became experts, creating examples and planning lessons.  After the first day, it became apparent we needed more help, so two Weebly/Wiki experts jumped in coordinating the uploading of the iPad creations to a wiki the participants could access and in helping students with writing and design.  Here’s a link to the staff page.

Technologies:  I was pleased with the resulting integration of Weebly, Educreations, Animoto, and PB Works Wiki.  They met the needs of our purpose.  They each have free accounts for educators.  I upgraded to the paid version of the Weebly account, but everything else used was free.  (Animoto is worth applying for the educators’ account.  It only took a few minutes to get it.  There are a lot of added benefits, including longer videos.)  I also love the idea that students can continue to use these tools on their own.  It was exciting to see how these technologies supported our intended purpose and learning.  Weebly has an easy drag and drop website design interface, but it allows for more.  We limited our use of it due to time.  Educreations is a great way to use voice over, practice speaking skills, etc.  Animoto is a quick way to make videos with text, pictures, and videos.  View all of the technologies and resources introduced to the participants here.

Focused participants:  I’ve done this for three years before using blogs and was pleased with the past experiences.  However, integrating all of these technologies stepped it up a notch.  The students had less time (25 minutes compared to 50 in previous years).  Despite having a shorter time, they wrote as much or more!  They used their time wisely when they were on the laptops and seemed excited to create on the iPads. View the Shout Outs here and all of the participant pages here.

Tweeking here and there

Ongoing changes occurred, particularly after week one.  During week one, I realized that Weebly was capable of supporting more students than I had initially expected on one student site.  This led to simplifying and changes in the other sessions.  After day one and repeating the directions four times every 20 minutes, I found myself near exhaustion.  Screencasting with Snagit saved my voice.  I recorded the directions, played them, and stopped and discussed as needed.  It felt a bit odd, but did the trick.  It also freed me up to walk around the room responding to technical questions as the videos were playing.

The staff also brainstormed other ideas with the use of the Voicethread app, but we were limited in time and decided it was best to stick to two main apps.  Voicethread seems to have a lot of potential in having students think more critically though.

Working with high school students in a summer camp experience is rewarding.  It also really, really, really makes me appreciate the work high school and middle school teachers do!  Wow, those kids have energy!

Try Blogging with 180 High School Students. It Works!

Imagine 40 computers in use.  The tip tap of typing fills the room.  Partners in the front read aloud their writing to each other while editing.  Two classmates in the back chat about how to get started on their posts.  A staff member reminds a student of the resources available to find a synonym.  Both English and Spanish bounce around the room. This is in part what Kacey and I experienced at the Oregon Migrant Leadership Institute (OMLI) where about 180 high school migrant students blogged.

The past two years, I have developed the institutes’ blog and lead the students in blogging.  In addition to working with the participants, I have had the pleasure of working with the college-aged staff.  It is simply amazing to watch the college students mentor the high school participants.  The seized learning opportunities and transformation of the students and staff is inspiring.  Every time I partake, I receive more than I give from this amazing group of young people who have so much to offer society and our future.

During the 2010 OMLI sessions, we started small scale and were in a small computer lab, but we grew  this year.  There was limited time to blog—four, fifty minute sessions.  The sessions consisted of basic blogging instruction, technology discussions such as digital footprints, and writing instruction.  They offered participants a taste of what it is like to be in a university lab and exposure to the writing process.  Perhaps most importantly to students, they were able to record some of their experiences and thoughts.  Take a look at some of their work in the links that follow!

Session 2: Thank you for your patience and persistence as we problem solved when the network was down on the last day.  You demonstrated leadership skills by sticking with the blogging experience.   

Session 3: It amazed me how concentrated you were on writing and producing your best. You had some amazing uninterrupted time to write due to your dedication.  Your developed writing with details and description, given your time constraints speaks for itself.

Kacey graciously filled in for me in my absence during session 1.  Here’s a comment from her.

Session 1: Thank you for your hard work in your first adventure in blogging.  I learned a lot from you and hope to hear how things are going.  

Staff: We both thank you for helping with technology questions, the writing process, and commenting.  We also appreciate reading your point of view on the staff blog!

Our take aways:  We both had fun exploring blogging with a group of this size.  Cheridy also experimented more with Picasa, setting up and managing multiple blogs, and Prezi.   In addition, we were reminded of the importance of having a low tech plan B, and glad when one kicked in when the Internet was down one of the sessions!  Just try blogging without Internet.

Listen up participants!  The teacher in us will say it one more time:  "I" doesn't want to be small.  Don't hurt it's feelings.    Don't forget to use your resources. For those of you who expressed interest in continuing blogging, email us your blog url address if you keep it up.  Happy blogging!