Tuesday, December 13, 2011

The 20% Project - Thoughts and Lessons Learned

I got the idea for my 20% project very early in the semester.  The third week of school I filmed my students performing an in class project.  The idea was that they (the students) were all newscasters from the island of create around the year 1800BC.  At the time they were learning about the Minoans and I thought it was a good project to have them present ideas about Minoan culture.  I filmed the assignment to give the students a sense of urgency and to help foster an atmosphere of professional journalism. 
I am glad I filmed it.

Over the course of the past three months I spent my down time creating and editing a cohesive representation of what the students did.  The entire project turned out to be a crash course on editing.  If I have learned anything in this class it is how to edit film in imove. 

I love the final project.  I will be sharing it with my students on the last day of school before the winter break.  I will be filming several other projects throughout the year and turning them into similar films.  I view these projects as digital year books that I can use both as examples to future classes, but also keep as a personal reminder of the reason I do this job...to watch young people engage in and enjoy the power of eduction.  Though I have wanted to pull my hair out at times when I could not get a piece of video just right or find the perfect song, the end result is something that I enjoyed and am proud of.  Not bad for a self proclaimed techno-phobe.

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