Multi-faceted Refractions

I enjoy the times when our AP US History Teacher, Kevin Randolph, and I sit down to talk about embedding new ways of learning and new tools to accomplish the learning goals he wants to achieve within his classroom. On Wednesday, asked him to help me brainstorm about what to present at our end of the year Upper School faculty meeting. I have been give the last time slot of the last meeting of the year, with a special luncheon right after my presentation. I have to make the presentation short, sweet, and to the point while planting seeds that hopefully germinate as my colleagues begin to unwind over the summer.

I know that I want to show some highlights of the 13 Days that Changed America project, because I feel that the process that we are all going through on this project, Kevin, the student, and I, is an excellent model of what we should be aiming for. This is a collaborative project, with individual elements, that allow the students to first begin to answer an excellent question, research the event, analyze the significance of the event, and presenting their findings to a global audience, so that they can get feedback from others. There are creative uses of new technologies (wikis, VoiceThread, and Digital Story Telling software) for them to craft their message. This is truly a collaboration, with teachers serving as guides and mentors to the students on this project, as equals, not as dispensers of knowledge.

Kevin suggested that in the faculty meeting, that a podcast consisting of the reflections of the students to this project would be a valuable and be a more authentic voice to share with the faculty. Agreeing with Kevin, I began to think about how we would go about and complete this. While thinking, I had an “aha” moment, why not use the tools and technology to enable this.

Enter Gabcast, a service that allows for someone to call into a phone (land line or cell phone) into a toll-free number, and with a channel number and PIN, record their message. I first found out about this service while “attending” a session at the K12 Online Conference last October and I have been seeking the right project to incorporate this. I shared this option with Kevin, who was very excited about allowing students to use their phones and cell phones as an experiment to record their reflections.

In five minutes, we came up with the following questions we are asking the students to share their thoughts about this project. They are:

• Did the elements of the project(research, analysis, collaborative learning) reflect the nature of the course?
• How is the creation of a digital movie an effective way to present an argument as opposed to writing a paper?
• What is the benefit of working collaboratively as opposed to working independently on a project such as this?
• Was this an effective wrap up project for this AP US History course?
• What are the benefit of using new technologies (PhotoStory, VoiceThread, Gabcast) on a project such as this?
• How you change the project?

I am anxious to hear their thoughts and will mash up them up in a podcast that I will share via this space. Now, I have to finish up my segment, which I will try to share my reflections on the process over the weekend.

Let’s face it, I have been busy over the last few weeks. I have been working with multiple student groups on a variety of different projects, doing a variety of household projects, both inside and outside, and finishing going through my mother’s and father’s possessions. Over the weekend, I saw all kinds of traffic about the new video, Learning to Change. Knowing I had some down time on Tuesday morning, I set it aside.

When I went back to view it, I found out that it had been taken down. I wonder why? I couldn’t find an explanation. I had been hoping to assess whether or not it would be appropriate for the end of the year professional development experiences we have scheduled.

In our high school, I have a 60 minute slot to fill near the end of the meetings for the year. I am trying to come up with something fun and also will stretch thinking. So back to the drawing board.

 The Progess of the Group

Today was the start of each of us started working on creating their 4-5 minute story about the day we selected or were assigned. The class spent the first part of the class trying to determine what standards were needed for consistency and how to organize the days, either chronologically, relative importance, or thematic group. The group seemed disinterested in some of these details, wanting to dig into their own project. I had other items to attend to so I did not find out what the final decision was. I know that I will find out when I need to know.

My segment – the process

Wanting to deliver a project worthy of the work that they students will create, I spent 35 minutes this afternoon and about an hour this evening working on my segment, the woman’s suffrage movement. Unlike the students, who are fresh off their examination of the subject area, it has been thirty years since I have found myself in a United States History classroom and when I was in school, our examination ended at the Civil War and Reconstruction. I think that we may have covered the World Wars in seven days at the end of the year, but I really don’t remember it at all.

My knowledge of the woman’s suffrage movement is limited. Yes, I remember from my constitution exam all those years ago that it wasn’t until the 19th Amendment that women got the right to vote and that the first election that they were granted these privileges was the 1920 election. I know that Susan B. Anthony was involved, since she was selected to be minted on the one dollar coin. I know that there were a few Chicagoans,  Jane Adams and Ida B. Wells who may have been involved in the movement.  So I needed to delve into the subject and research the subject.

Starting with Wikipedia, to get an overview, I began to gather a set of facts. I started finding out the many different women and men who were involved in the process. I read about the Seneca Falls Convention and the other progressive movements. I found out other prominent Chicagoans, including Francis Willard, who was involved in the Women’s Christian Temperance Union was involved in the process. I choose Wikipedia as the first pass because it was easy to find and begin to spread out and web through the subject. But being a good researcher, I need to find more primary source information. This led me to the American Treasures Collection at the Library of Congress. Not only did they have a number of primary sources, they were images which I could use to create my digital story. They Library of Congress also has other digital resources available in their collections which will be of use.

Further research also led me to the National Women’s History Museum web site. They have assembled a vast number of resources, including a cyber-exhibit on Rights for Women: The Suffrage Movement and Its Leaders. They also have an extensive collection of biographies of the key players complete with links to other resources available online.

So I think that I am set in terms of having the details of the events and artifacts, portraits, pictures, cartoons that will be necessary to create the digital story.

My current dilemma -  How to make my segment sticky?

It is one thing to collect a number of facts, pictures, and background music to create a digital story. It is an entirely different process to assemble the various pieces in such a way as to make it sticky, to make it so that others will remember it. How does one create a story which will be memorable?

A variety of storytellers do it in different ways. Ken Burns and others who have followed, choose to tell the story via personal narrative. This is an extremely powerful way to tell the story, through the eyes and words of someone involved. This is a tact I am going to try to take, using the biographies and resources I found at the National Women’s History Museum and at the Library of Congress. I am hopeful that I will be able to find the words from various primary sources, notes, letters, annotations on bibles, to construct this piece. I do know that I am going to open with Hillary Clinton and Geraldine Ferraro. The ability for these women to run for the Presidency and Vice Presidency is a direct outcome of women gaining political power. I know that I want to somehow wrap Title IX, which opened educational opportunities without regard to gender into the story near the end.

But, I know that several of you have some great ideas and feedback that you may want to share. Please do so, I would appreciate it.

On Saturday, May 17th, for a group of our seniors, a dream became a reality. The embarked on a journey that began in Chicago and was going to take them to Moshe, Tanzania, where they are going to be able experience first hand the growth of a school which they raised funds for.

Last year, as juniors, they began the year by reading Three Cups of Tea. I have written many posts about the experiences that we have had, both the students and myself. They are documenting their experience via a TravelBlog.  I hope you take some time to read about their journeys and reflections over these upcoming two weeks. I know I am looking forward to following their journey.

From Kevin Randolph, who is currently not blogging, but hopefully will join the list soon:

Historically the Advanced Placement US History test is given during the first ten days of May and that leaves almost three full weeks of class before our school year ends. I think every AP teacher faces the same dilemma; what to do with the time?

For over fifteen years I have ended my classes with some sort of project. I have elected to do that for a variety of reasons. First, my students were tired of the grind and the information glut that is an AP US history class and wanted something different; second, the students at my school have a significant range of talents and the school has subscribed to using multiple modalities in teaching since its inception as a progressive school in 1919; finally, I needed an instrument that allowed me to evaluate the class and the skills my students had really learned. I wanted to know what they could do with the information they had learned.

The final project has taken many different forms over the years from found poetry, to multimedia art, but I have moved increasingly in the last ten years to technology based projects. I have opted for that approach because I have seen how technology projects allow for a balance between individual creativity and group collaboration while maintaining a level of accountability.

I have seen these projects demonstrate the critical skills of my discipline: inquiry, research, analysis and revision, all within a framework that emphasizes process as well as product. I have settled on these types of projects because it allows me to take the proper role in my classroom as a supporter and facilitator; not a director and controller of information.

Vinnie’s description of the list building exercise was exactly right. It was genuinely exciting to see students engaged in honest dialogue over the importance of historical events, creating criteria for measurement and thinking broadly about cause and effect.

I am delighted with the project and how it is shaping up and look forward to the next phase (the creation of individual films). I am happy to answer any questions that anyone has about this project or any of the others I have done including last year’s project which was a series of films about US History each set to a different John Mellencamp song.

krandolph@nscds.org