April

I am making very regular visits to Peninsula School now. I carry my camera to take photos of student drawings, and my flash mic to record student voices. The students all have completed a draft of a report of information about a plant. We sit down together, student and I, and I listen to the student read his/her report. I'm helping Linda, their teacher, respond to the writing. This has been an interesting experience for me because she used a structured format that included an "introduction" and a "conclusion" for each report. This structure has created a cookie-cutter feel to the writing. I had to giggle to myself (or sigh in frustration and exasperation) after the third, "In conclusion, _____________ is a very interesting plant." This problem required diplomacy on my part in dealing with both students and their teacher. I'm not sure how successful I was in trying to improve the conclusions, as some student grew weary of revisions. I also had the usual opportunity to talk about paraphrasing and the dangers of plagiarism.

I was surprised how much difficulty some students had in reading their reports aloud, and I realized I needed to spend time with them practicing if we were going to get a good recording. Students had different responses to the recording process. Some were highly motivated by the mic and by the prospect of hearing their voice. Others had the exact opposite response. One girl in particular couldn't "stand" the sound of her voice and wanted to be sure her project wouldn't be downloaded to the web.

At this stage, we are assembling the components--sound and images, and organizing files, clearly labeled, on one computer so that students may access them when the time comes to make an i-Movie.