Photo by pawel szvmanski on Unsplash I am on the final leg of my masters journey. This final leg involves making a mini-documentary. That's right, this 2nd grade teacher will become a documentary film-maker. How, you might ask...I don't know. But I did learn some good tips today to help me identify the characteristics that differentiate a good documentary from an unclear one.
As homework, we were provided with several sample mini-documentaries and capstone videos to analyze for clarity and effective story telling. Some of the older capstone videos I watched did not have a clear story line or purpose, other than stating multiple times the main idea in a phrase. The B-roll video didn't really support a story effectively. I really enjoyed the video, Teach Like a Youtuber, by Professor Mike, on how to create effective instructional videos without being on camera. The creator, talked about the need to include several reasons why your subject (X) is important. I've always been a fan of no text on screen while there is audio narration. My brain cannot take both in at once. One sample video had final take home points appear as gradually appearing text on a black background at the end of the video with only music in the background. I like this quiet moment to take away the main points. I saw several great examples of visuals that support the narration in the video samples provided and articles that supported this idea. Hopefully I can put some of it into practice. I've made very simple videos before with photos as B-roll. I really loved the experience. But now I'm nervous and excited to expand the B-roll to video clips. I think the biggest hurdle right now is writing the narrative. What is it that I want to say? I'll head back to my short video presentation for NapaLearns that I showed back in December and decide what I like and what I want to change from there. That first video felt more like a promotional video and this time around I'd love to tell a compelling story instead. It's easy to agree that my research topic, peer-teaching, is a nice idea. But with my final capstone video I would like viewers to feel the initial need and then resulting joy at implementing a strategy that brought students together and improved learning.
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Transforming lives by instilling and inspiring lifelong learning in every student...sounds pretty good, right? This is the mission statement of my school district and our assignment this week is to analyze it. Is it all-encompassing? What are the 21st century learning goals? First, I'd like to say how I love the aspiration to inspire LIFELONG learning in EVERY student. A true acknowledgement of this means we lay aside the compulsion to constantly teach knowledge and instead teach skills and habits for continued learning. Within the past year, the district has certainly stepped up its technology game due to the need for virtual learning. This has provided students now and in the future, if we continue with a 1:1 device to student ratio, with access to tools to develop these skills. However, just because we have technology, doesn't mean we are completely hitting the target. In this community, we have students who come from a huge range of home support. The top needs of many of our students are counseling, assistive technology, one-on-one instructional aides, and more small group targeted learning opportunities. These are areas, from my observations, that are constantly pushed to the side as less important. SST meetings are in actuality parent teacher conferences where new solutions, intervention ideas, support personnel, and resources are supposed to magically appear. At a minimum, 3 months must pass without intervention from another expert in order to request that other experts take a look at the student's needs. Often, the year runs out and the next teacher starts out all over again. The district has employed dedicated resource specialists and counselors but they are overburdened and I don't think that we are really inspiring life-long learning in these many students whose needs aren't being met. In order to be inspired by adults in their life, students need to be seen and known. Merging schools, especially middle schools, creates less meaningful adult connection and a larger sea of students who get lost in the waves anonymity. I love the array of programs offered in our many schools but I hope as a district we steer ourselves even more towards becoming an inspiration of lifelong learning for every single student that we are given the opportunity to affect. ...I'm starting this blog post with three dots...The three dots represent a deep breath. I just typed my last word of this post moments ago and was scrolling to place an image when the handy trackpad interpreted my scroll down as a command to go "back"...back to a blank page... Now that I have practiced some calm down techniques, I will briefly share my logo design journey. My district-purchased teacher iPad was a big motivator for me to get using Adobe Fresco to create something great. Shortly after getting started, I needed a tutorial from a good friend who also happens to have a degree in graphic design. Despite the magnificent tools in the app, you also need to have some drawing experience and a steady hand, even though the smoother tool really helps with that. I sketched a bit on the iPad and then moved to Canva after I had an idea of the elements I wanted. There, I could easily search for the design elements and colors I wanted in my logo and simply played with position, font, and spacing. Having others look it over with a critical eye has also really helped. One element I'm still trying to get right is the heavy border on my overlapping speech bubbles. I wanted to create a transparent overlay effect like a Venn diagram where two shades make a third where they meet in the middle. However, when I made one thought bubble transparent, the border also became opaque. I'll have to keep fiddling or recreate it in Adobe Fresco. The most difficult part, I think, is creating an infographic that matches the design of my logo. Of course I won't find a template that perfectly matches my fonts and colors, so I have basically chosen a template and switched out every single element of it; a lesson in patience. Also, what kind of stories do you tell in an infographic? Your action research journey? Prescribed steps for success? Cool tools to use? Stats on why your prescribed idea is important? As of right now, I'm still working on it, but no doubt, by the time you read this, you'll be able to see what kind of mash-up of those elements I've come up with. My journey in search of a research topic feels like a twisty mountain road. I began with the idea to research the balance and efficacy of technology use in primary grades. With an indefinite end to virtual teaching, I decided this would be hard to experiment with. I moved on to looking into efficient formative assessment and feedback. I was really inspired when I watched a video about a high school teacher who had his students self-assess in mathematics while in teams. They would then work in their team to fill in the information gaps for each team member to be ready for their next assessment. I have always held in high regards a self-run classroom. After collaborating with Dr. Redmond and Susan Craig, I decided on researching peer-teaching during these unusual pandemic circumstances. During virtual teaching, it is easier than ever to talk the entire precious time available to meet with students over Zoom. There is so much pressure to cover all the bases but it's important for teachers to remember, even in these circumstances, to stop talking and let the kids start doing. Apart from that, kids have been isolated from their peers. By researching peer-teaching, I could hand the learning baton to students and measure the effects of what I hypothesized would be a much needed opportunity to connect with and learn from their peers. When I think about my future path beyond this masters program, I have many question marks. I think my research findings provide hope to teachers that student collaboration is possible even in the primary grades in the midst of virtual teaching. Perhaps at some point I will get even more specific with my findings on what adds to the most effective peer-teaching practices. I see more research needing to be done because of the disparities between my first research cycle and my second. Perhaps I could use my research in a coaching position at some point but certainly it informs and improves my current teaching practices. For this week's homework, we looked through some websites of graduates of the Innovative Learning Masters program. We were specifically analyzing their direction toward an audience and how effective it is. I looked more in depth at a website focused on using technology for individualized goal setting in elementary school. I thought that the author made it clear from the home page that what she had tried out was certainly doable in any classroom. With this kind of statement, it seemed to me she was addressing teachers. Her list of resources were lessons, assessments, and a list of technological tools she recommends, also leading me to think that she is aiming her research outcomes towards benefitting teachers. What I enjoyed the most about her website were the large visuals. On some of the pages, text was broken up into sections and demarcated by separate alternating color backgrounds and symbols that all had a similar theme...This might be a tangent I should save for my 703 class on transliteracy. When I shift my thoughts on audience towards my own research, I mainly think about how my findings might be beneficial to teachers even though of course I'd want any administrators or parents to gain from it anything they could. Teachers have direct contact with multiple students, a scenario perfect for implementing peer-teaching in mathematics or any subject. Keeping teachers in mind, I need to mull over what kind of wording, organization, steps, and resources would make it easiest for them to gain the truest picture of what I was able to accomplish and am excited about. I enjoy websites where the tabs or headers match the content. If the page is indicating resources and how-tos, I want to see a clear sequenced list of steps and resources with links. If I want the back story, I'll go to the About the Author section. Mainly, I want the teacher-reader to step away from my website, with a new idea or tool they're looking forward to trying out again in a new light or for the very first time. |
Minna NummelinLife-long learner and dual language 2nd grade teacher. Archives
April 2021
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