(Don'Wow. I know may have mentioned once or twice that I am moving. Well, the moving truck came on Thursday, and we moved out of our house and into a hotel on Friday. We will be parked here until next Tuesday, when we take three planes to our final destination: Israel!
Ok, so let's think about this equation: (Hotel + Hotel Wi-Fi + 3 adorable distractions) x Capstone Video = A boatload of fun! A few of you have mentioned in comments that you are facing similar dilemmas this quarter, so I feel good knowing we are all in this together! I chose youtube editor for my video editor. Three reasons: I was all ready vaguely familiar with it, my husband is very familiar with it, and I have a chromebook. I don't have time to learn a new interface at this moment. Youtube editor was pretty user friendly, I only needed to watch the tutorial three times and ask my husband about ten questions. All in all, I would say I am a fan. The tricky part was designing the cards that cut into my video. I tried a few things, but due to time constraints and familiarity I used Screencastify. There was probably something easier to use, but it did the job pretty well. The editing took the longest past. I ended up with about six minutes of video and I would say it took two hours of editing alone to create a usable product. My video clocks in at 2.04. I made three mistakes I wish I could fix, and it makes me cringe when I watch the video, but to fix it, I think I would have to go back to the start. That said, I am going to give myself a solid B for the final product. You can find my final product here: www.youtube.com/watch?v=OezAnzfMxtw&edit=vd
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My husband is an enormous fan of Casey Neistat. For those of you who have not been introduced, go meet him here. Given this insider information, I enlisted my husband's help for this week's assignment. If left to my own devices, my six year old would be filming me on my Nexus 5x, which means my raw footage would have been a close up of my chin or the top of my head. My husband would help to ensure that I had something worthy of all the work I have done here in this cohort. I have long held that my husband and I would never work well together in a work kind of environment, but I was willing to sacrifice any sense of peace of hearth and home for an A in this class. I am just that dedicated. SCRIPT I managed to wheedle my script down to 2 1/2 minutes. I am hoping to shave off more time in the post-production process, but I thought better more to work with than less. If I have too little, I don't want to have to go back and film more footage. My movers come on Thursday and I am in transition for the next ten days after that, so that wouldn't be pretty. Pre-Production: I waited for my husband to set the stage. May have been better not to wait for him. He is something of a micro manager, and he didn't really understand the elevator speech vision vs. Oscar worthy documentary. This took some time to work through. Once we settled that, we had to clean. The bookcase filled with serious tomes is covered in My Little Ponies, Legos, and Starbucks cups. That took some work to sweep away. Then, of course, the star had to get ready. By the time we were ready to film, it was 10.30 at night. Sigh. Production: My husband is the Stanley Kubrick of directors. I am the Stephen King of listeners. For those of you who don't know about the 36 year old feud that revolves around the classic film The Shining, learn about it. It is the stuff of legend. Needless to say, our visions still didn't align during production. We managed to work through our differences and he had some great suggestions. Per his advice, I used my computer as teleprompter and set that in front of the camera, so that my line of sight closely matches the camera lens. There are awkward moments in the raw footage where I stand up to scroll my teleprompter, but he says we will work that out in post-production. Post-Production: I need to add B Roll Footage, Music, and Factoid Card. I need to create my Factoid cards and choose the images for my B Roll footage. I need to edit out all the awkward pauses in my 3 minutes of raw footage I collected. Hopefully, I will have 90 seconds of something at the end of all of this. P.S. My husband really insists that I mention that my footage was shot on a DSLR camera. I have no idea what that means, but it's a cool looking camera. 8:00 a.m. (Kids playing on Leap Pad, with a 30 minute timer) What editor to use? In deciding upon an editor, I have a few challenges to address:
9:00 a.m. (One fight into the morning and they are now settled with breakfast. Let’s see how long this lasts): Ok, so I would guess that before you can storyboard, you need some kind of script. I wrote out a rough draft of the ideas I would like to convey in my elevator pitch. Reading that out loud came out to be 4.5 minutes. Ouch, way too long. I am not even going to bother story boarding until I have trimmed my script enough to fit into 90-120 seconds of material. 1:00 p.m. (After a morning of chalk art, applesauce breaks, and a gazillion interruptions): Well, it really is only a first draft, why am I driving myself crazy? Let’s just hammer something out before bedtime. I am going to look at some other storyboard ideas...let’s see...Andrew put something up. 3 minutes and 180 seconds of self-doubt later: Why did I look at Andrew’s storyboard? It’s like asking for trouble. I mean let’s be honest, his stuff is always amazing. Now I am going to sit here and think: I so cannot pull something together like that. Andrew: you are awesome, don’t take this personally, and it really is an awesome story board. 1 episode of Paw Patrol later: Let’s review the ICARE document...what the heck is a B-Roll? Ha ha ha! B-Roll! Summer vacation started three weeks ago and I am moving in two weeks. How am I going to pull together a whole bunch of videos of students? Who was taking said videos while I was teaching? Oh wait! I took tons of pictures during the school year. >>INSERT HOLIDAY WEEKEND VISIT FROM GRANDPARENTS<< 6:00 p.m. (One long trip down the rabbit hole of Google Photos which I turned into a activity): Ok, I have collected a few dozen photos. Some of them must be usable. P.S. my kids don’t like looking at pictures of kids that aren’t them. 9:00 p.m. (Everyone is in bed after a many renditions of Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star and two chapters of The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe [BTW: My kids think Edmund is such a meanie]) Storyboard done-ish... now I am supposed to respond to other people’s blog. Oh wait...I am supposed to blog…To be continued... Doc Appender: I hate you Doc-Appender. I spent around 30 minutes trying to configure and re-configure this App. It didn't work. The end. Awesome Table: This was easy as pie. I downloaded the add on, connected the dots as I was shown in the demo video, and viola! It provided me a beautiful set of tables that broke down each of the answers I asked. This is a great way to review one's own tests. Are my tests too hard or too easy? Take a look at the charts and you will have a pretty good idea it seems like most students got most of the questions right or wrong. Flubaroo: Love you Flubaroo! Once again, I followed the demo video, connected the add on to a pre-existing form/spreadsheet I had in my folder, and it provided me a nifty graph. Form Notifications: This was another nifty and easy add on. I added it to a pre-existing form I had ("Animal Farm Test") and tested it myself. The first response (see below) didn't include my name or e-mail, which I would prefer to see so I could do a checklist while waiting for tests to be submitted. Knowing who submitted a form is key to knowing who should and shouldn't still be on their chromebook. I went back to the Add on to see if I could remedy this. Form Notifications (Take 2): Form Notifications apparently does not have the option of showing me the names of who has submitted a form. I will be in touch with them to see if they can remedy this. Otherwise, I can't imagine using this one much for class quizzes.
The Just in Time concept is very interesting. Using Forms for a "pre-entry" ticket to understand what students took away from the previous week's lessons is great. There is an aspect of accountability and the teacher can benefit from being able to re-adjust the day's lesson to what the students missed from the homework assignments. I really like that. I strongly believe that homework should not be busy work, it should have practical, real world applications. In English class, that means homework should be reading the short story or novel we are learning. Class time should be reserved for discussions, projects, activities, or group work.
One of the things I suspect that JITT requires is that ever elusive teaching need: time. Reviewing these kinds of forms every day, prior to a lesson, and then re-orienting my lesson around that information would be unrealistic for me. I am a working mom with three small children. I am happy if I have time to eat...ever. I would need to orient my lessons plans around this from day one. I could envision using the forms as a way to do an end of the week review of what the students really understand from the reading and discussions the week before. Then, I could orient my Monday morning class around reviewing the concepts I can see that they are lacking, based on the information from the end of the week FORMS. I have experimented with the "flipped classroom" model, off and on, for the past five years. A supervisor recommended it to me as her favorite model. I read the book, and dove right in. I haven't been impressed with the results. "Flipped classroom" seems to me to be no more than a glorified lecture. As Dr. Mussallem comments, "Good teaching, regardless of discipline, should always limit passive transfer of knowledge in class..." (http://www.edutopia.org/blog/flipped-classroom-ramsey-musallam).
It is difficult to to a quick check for understanding and to gauge for how the material is being received. If I give a bad example in a flipped lesson, I can't look at my students to get a read on how it is being received and if I should try a different approach. While proponents of the model believe that it will allow teachers to utilize their time in better ways, like higher order thinking and differentiation, as a wise teacher once told me, "If you don't have the time to do it right, when will you have the time to do it over?" If a flipped lesson goes over poorly, you have not helped anyone. A teacher needs to know their strengths and weaknesses. Personally, I am a dynamic classroom personality with a strong ability to quickly pick up on my students' understanding of the lesson. I really lose something by allowing the front loading of information to happen in an off-site environment. It would take me time to assess their understanding of the lesson, and that time is valuable. Even with a quick "entry pass" or similar tool, I have lost something...a je ne sais quois, if you will. When I find flipped lessons successful: I use flipped lessons when I am out. I give the screencast video to my sub, along with any relevant worksheets and explanations. The students can watch the lesson together, discuss it, and ask each other or the substitute questions. The students appreciate this kind of lesson, when I am out, and the substitute can evaluate real time and give me feedback on the success of the lesson. |