Sheridan School Showcase

The benefit of being a tech coach in two primary buildings is that I am able to work with more teachers and students who are excited about integrating technology into their curriculum and exploring project-based learning. One disadvantage is that because I have to split my time between two schools, projects can take some time to run their course from pre-production to final product.

This was certainly the case with “A Short Report on France – by Lily, Paige, and Lael.”  We began brainstorming about the project in October and just finished today. The challenge, of course, is to keep the students excited and engaged in the process for an extended period of time.

But these wonderful third grade students worked hard on writing and rewriting their report so when it came time to record, they were ready and proud of the work they created. So here it is…

A Short Report On France (3:05)

Mrs. Donoval’s video “Quiet In The Hall” debuted at our Sheridan School Sharing Day on Wednesday, December 2.

As you will see in the video, Mrs. Donoval’s second grade students have something to say about why it is important for students to be quiet in the hall.

And quite to the surprise of Mr. Koch, Mrs. Donoval’s class, with the help of Mr. O’Malley and Mrs. Newtown, created a “thank you” video that was also presented at the Sheridan School Sharing Day assembly. Be sure to view it past the credits where you will see a couple of cute “bloopers.”

“Quiet In The Hall” (2:42)

“The Mystery (Thank You) Video” (1:39)

Image Attribution:
www.mediabistro.com

Last night the district technology coaches presented their annual reports to the Lake Forest School District 67 Board of Education. Each of us created a short video as our way of “reporting” to the board. Without the support and vision of our Board of Education, the tech coach positions would not exist. So we are always excited to present our reports to our board of education.

Here are two videos from last night’s board of education meeting:

Fred Koch’s Technology Coach Report – November 2009 (3:35)

NEO 2 Laptops in Action (1:26)

The phrase “authenticity affects engagement” came into full focus last spring as we embarked on the two most challenging video projects to date. “What’s Really In There?” and “The 4 Ghostly Girls” are projects that these 4th grade students were very passionate about. And because they were so passionate, they worked extremely hard to tell their stories in a creative and compelling fashion.

What made these projects so authentic was that the story lines and scripts, the research and development and the video production elements were all developed by the students. This was not an assignment – this project was what we call “a want to – not a have to.” And because of this, these students were fully invested in the video projects, not for a grade, but because they were excited to tell their stories.

“What’s Really In There?” is a behind the scenes look at Sheridan School where we get a quick peek into some of the places students are not usually permitted to go.

“The 4 Ghostly Girls” has two parts. The project began as a skit that they wrote but we decided early on that it would even better if they prefaced the skit with some background research on ghosts.

Enjoy!

You can view both videos on the 4th Grade page.

Last spring each second grade class worked on a science project with Ms. Puglisi, our Sheridan School science teacher, to create a set of videos for their weather unit. In the videos, students contributed and collaborated as script writers, tech assistants, set designers and on-camera talent – just like a real television production. We also used our chroma key (green screen) technology for added effect.

Here is one example, from Mrs. Volpe’s second grade class of 2008-09. To view the videos from Mrs. Hannemann’s and Mrs. Donoval’s classes, click here to visit Ms. Puglisi’s science website.

Mrs. Volpe’s 2nd Grade Weather Kids Video (5:12)

Image Source:
http://www.stuffintheair.com/images/Meteorologist.gif

With the help of our fourth grade team at Sheridan School, we thought it would be fun to take the traditional social studies project, the Illinois state project, and recreate “the study packet” as a website. We decided to use the website format as a project-based activity where students were challenged to take the information they had gathered and reformulate it into a different medium.

The students completed the Illinois project in the manner it was originally intended – they researched their topics, filled in the workbook packet, made their posters and presented their report to their teacher and classmates.

Then students utilized a succession of higher order thinking skills to reformat their information for a different presentation mode and a wider audience. With the help of their teachers (and tech coach) students took the content (facts, figures, information) and rewrote it for the website.

The higher order thinking skills which were involved (based on Bloom’s Taxonomy) culminated in the final act of creating (reorganizing their content). But to do that, students needed to evaluate their work from their packets. And to evaluate their work, they needed to analyze the information. And to analyze their information they first needed to understand it.

Click here to view The Illinois Project website.

When students are involved with project-based activities they are truly exercising these higher order thinking skills as they create meaningful and authentic projects using 21st century skills.

It is great to see so many teachers creating their own websites. These websites serve many purposes from keeping parents involved about classroom activities, to being a place for children to safely blog, and where teachers can showcase student work.

I created the Sheridan Showcase website before a lot of teachers had a web presence. The purpose was to have a place to spotlight some of the great technology-based projects our students were creating. Now that so many teachers have their own sites, is this showcase site still necessary?

For now, and because we feel it is a good thing to have student work published in multiple places, we will continue to spotlight some of the projects here as well as on the teacher websites.

With that thought it mind, I would like to call your attention to three fabulous VoiceThread projects which were created in the Spring of 2009. VoiceThread projects, as a platform for researching, creating and publishing really took hold in third grade and fourth grade last year.

Our last three projects were:
“Sports Trophies” – by Colin and Casper
“Crayons” – by Maria and Emelia
“The Galago” by Nia and Jillian

The NWEA MAP testing data has been published and everyone is excited about the growth shown by our Sheridan School fourth graders. Check out this presentation created by Mr. Malin, District 67’s Coordinator of Research and Assessment.
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We have posted two new VoiceThread projects over the past couple of days. Lauren A. (aka Vamp E. Pire) gives an informative report on “Vampire Squids” (did you know there was such a thing?) and Katherine R. shares the touching story about her dog “Buster.”

Be sure to visit Miyamoto’s Medium page and enjoy these two outstanding projects!

And, if you have time, please leave a comment. Our students enjoy hearing from our visitors.

Last year as a second grader, my buddy Charlie created a very informative VoiceThread project on Bats. This year he is back with another project on The Wright Brothers.

As I have mentioned before, one of the reasons I love working with these students is because they bring such joy and excitement to their projects. And the one thing I notice time after time, and with every production, is that students become their own critical self-assessors when it is time to record their voice and evaluate their performance.

The last piece of creating a VoiceThread is recording the audio and it is here where they establish these high standards for themselves. Yes, they comb through lots of images to find the ones that are just right, and the editing process of their script often goes through many revisions, but it all leads up to the recording of their script.

I really am proud of them because it is more often the case where the students say, “Can I do it again? I think I can do it better.” Very rarely do I need to encourage them to give it another try because they might have stumbled a little bit. Students love this process and want to do their best because they understand that they have potentially a huge audience.

Be sure to go to the 3rd Grade page and enjoy Charlie’s presentation on The Wright Brothers.