May/June

My visits to Peninsula continue to be frequent. We are now assembling i-Movies of the students' reports. I have given another tutorial using the computer and projector in a whole group setting to explain how to access images and sound files and drop them into an i-Movie file. Linda has asked students to use three transitions as well as beginning and ending captions, and at least ten images to accompany their narration.

We have set up a computer station in the back of the classroom where I meet with two students at a time. One student is working on his/her report, while the other is observing the process. Once students demonstrate competence with the software program, they will be available as "experts" to teach others. This system is working nicely and one-by-one, i-Movies are being completed. The students handle the mouse and do the work on the computer; I am just there to trouble-shoot and answer questions as they come up. I like the idea of working with buddies. Two heads are much quicker to solve problems, like how to extend the time of an image so that it corresponds to a particular sound track, or how to edit the sound track, or how to add a particular transition, or caption. Overall, the students are learning the software quickly and seem to be enjoying the work. Linda is happy with the final products.

The last day of school, Linda and I met so that she could set up a blog to post the i-Movies over the summer. We used the Blogger platform. She found a template to start with, named her blog and downloaded one i-Movie report. The report that she posted was that of a student named Angel. Angel is a special education student who has struggled in Language Arts her entire student career. She is reluctant to complete assignments, yet she was highly motivated to complete this assignment. Angel's first draft of the writing assignment had to be completely rewritten because she had directly copied and pasted information downloaded from the web. Once her written work was accepted by her teacher, she had to practice reading her report over and over in order to pronounce words correctly. She worked hard to find images that represented the concepts she explained in her report. She was very proud of her final product and produced more than she would have had this been a paper/pencil report. In her case, the use of technology motivated her to do more.

Linda's goal is to continue downloading the i-Movies over the summer and then link the blog to Friends of the Dunes as an example of their work with students. Though not there at this time, it should appear by the beginning of the next school year. The blog, Peninsula Restoration, can be viewed now, in its very early stages. We will have to wait to see what kinds of comments, if any, the blog elicits once more posts have been made.

Working as an inservice provider/coach made this project different for me than last year's project, where I helped my own students create an i-Movie. I needed to adjust to the context of another teacher's classroom. I had the luxury of working with two students at a time without needing to juggle other demands of classroom management. This made the "teaching technology" aspect of the project much easier than it would have been otherwise. Linda was very happy with the outcome and feels confident she could work on her own now after having collaborated closely with me this year. I imagine she will be in a position to help other teachers at the school who express interest in implementing an i-Movie project or in creating a blog. It will take time to know how this plays out in the future at Peninsula School.