Reflection on Teaching

This past Friday, Neil and I taught a lesson on the origins and causes of World War I. The actual lesson planning was difficult, as I had to make a lesson plan fit for one teacher adapt into a two-part job. We also made last-second changes as different thoughts came to mind. My behavior plan was simple: humor. Turn every situation that could be seen as potentially disruptive into a funny little joke. I would rather lose a moment of the class' attention than 5 minutes berating one disruptive student. Also, humor keeps the class in the interested mindset, instead of scaring them into silence. The more kids are comfortable, the more they will respond. I would say the lesson plan kept everyone moving and interested, so the behaviors were small if any. The objective was to have the students realize that the war was not just started by a single assassination. I wanted them to understand how the alliances set before the war started set the tone for tension in Europe, and that the assassination was the first spark that ignited the war. My assessment, the closed-eyed quiz, worked. I could see, and more importantly the students could see, how much they had learned in that day. Also, during the assessment, the students had no fear in getting an answer wrong because no one could see their answers. My lesson plan did not go exactly as I planned, and I don't mind that. The game at the end could have been explained a little more, as sort of a role play. That's what I would've changed: just a brief visual introduction to the game instead of just expecting the kids to pick up on it. I think it went pretty well. The peer evaluations I received were mostly positive, saying that even those who didn't like History were entertained. It was a new spin on dusty information, and was received warmly throughout the class. They were hardly any misbehaviors, and the interest level was kept at a pretty high and constant pace. Like I said, I would have introduced the game a little more if I was to teach this lesson again; but other than that I believe that, in a real classroom, notes would have been taken in addition to the participation, and the kids would have gotten it.

Digital Story Reflection

The digital story was complicated. I knew about the software I was using, and had no problem getting the pictures to the video clip. It was a little bit hard to sync the pictures in the same timing as the narration to reflect what was being said frame by frame, but it was done. The big problem was uploading it to Youtube. I've had copyright problems with Youtube before, but mainly just e-mails stating that their may be some copyright infringement in the video. This happens all the time, especially with the audio portion. I decided to make the video private, but if it gets taken down once public I'll have to revise it. It's easy to avoid copyright infringment by flipping the video horizontally, which I will consider doing.

Digital Story

Here is the link to the youtube video of the Digital Story created by Neil Carroll and I. It covers the Gettysburg Address: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oQgizdlQcOc

Post Blog (Feb 24th)

At the end of class today, we actually have some physical pictures and an audio for our video. We're putting our ideas down into something that we both feel good about.

We'll continue to get more pictures, and fit them into our video at the rate time to reflect what the audio is saying. It shouldn't be too bad to edit them, as I've used MovieMaker a lot.

Work since Tuesday

In the time between Tuesday and today, I haven't had a lot of time to work on the digital story. I still have the main idea, and know it will be completed before it is due, but so far no physical progress has been made.

On Tuesday, we developed an idea, and designed how it is going to look. I'd like to actually start putting things into movie maker today, and get something I can save to work on more later.

End of Day 1

Today we actually got a good amount of work done. My partner and I were still working on a couple of setbacks in both our lesson and our digital story; and we got back on track in both areas. We have a good idea for the digital story which I feel comfortable with; and our lesson plan is all set up. All we have to do is finish our power point and then put our ideas into material.