Our Film Studies 101 project was a major bust. My AVID students, as motivated as they should be, were very unmotivated. They didn't complete assignments outside of class so they were rarely prepared for what we were going to do inside of class. That wasn't the real problem though. I think the Apple Curriculum would have worked well if our school was a little farther from the ice age where technology is concerned. Our project may have gone a lot better if we had about 4 video cameras for the student-groups to use. That way they could all film at the same time. Then, if we had at least 4 powerbooks, all of the groups could have edited at the same time. This would have left very few students idle and it would have kept me from having to do so much work to fill in the gaps. Be careful though. The Apple Curriculum is designed for use as a semester long class so you have to trim it way down.
Lessons to be learned from this: 1) Make sure to choose a topic that you know well or that is easy to learn quickly, 2) make sure that you have sound and adequate technology, 3) be sure to choose a topic that requires a lot of rigor, preferably something that requires a midterm exam, a final exam, and a term paper, and 4) find a way to get a lot of buy in from your students. Having your students participate in a mock college class shouldn't be more work for you than it is for them.
Tuesday, May 12, 2009
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Film Studies 101 - An AVID Mock College Class
This has been an interesting venture so far. I've done this before, but this time I wanted to do something a little different ... something fun. The first time I created a mock college course for my AVID students, it was to help my students understand the type of behavior that would be demanded at the post secondary level. The students were a little unruly and I wanted to change their behavior. This time I chose to use Apple's Movie Making Curriculum as the basis for my course.
My first step was to decide how to complete the activities in the 12 weeks that we have left. Needless to say, we aren't doing every activity. Next I created a letter to send home to parents in order to let them know what we were doing, why, and that if their student was ejected from the class then he/she would be out for good (just like college) and would flunk the project. The project is worth 25% of each student's grade. The students and I had a little discussion about the difference between being in a college class vs being in a high school class. I let them know that they would be treated like college students. This means that I will allow little things like eating in class (within reason) and that students needing to use the restroom will be allowed to just get up and go (without a pass! oh my!). I then went to surveymonkey.com and created a fake registration form for the students to use in order to register for the class. It was interesting to see that little things, like making the amount of units enrolled in match the number of classes signed up for, were not obvious to them. I also found a worksheet online that is normally used for teaching students how to write checks. Once registered, each student received a set of 3 checks to be used to pay their registration fee and purchase their text (A Student Guide provided with the Apple Curriculum). I charged each student $971 for taking 6-9 units, $1400 for taking 10-15 units, a $50 late fee if their permission slips were turned in late, and $85 + tax for the text. Each student also received a course syllabus which they are expected to follow.
I've found that I have to do a little improvising to make the course flow a little better. The curriculum doesn't give much information about movie making basics so I used information I learned from reading Making Real Life Videos by Matthew Williams. I also showed the students a couple of videos on filmmaking techniques that I found on YouTube.
It's been a challenge so far just to keep the students busy enough during the class sessions. They are already learning the hard lesson of what happens when you don't take the time outside of class to do assignments. I want them to learn now that the reaction of a college professor will be much different than that of a high school teacher.
By the way, the instructor for this course is Dr. Stephanie Grebleips (hmmm!). I won't answer to any other name during the "college" class sessions nor will I answer any questions that pertain to our regular class. Some of the students are really getting into it too. When a student told me that she needed to pay her fees, I told her that she needed to go to Villero Hall (I named all of our buildings after their other teachers). When she asked me where that was (she had no idea what I was talking about), her classmate played along telling her "Go down that street about 3 blocks. If you get to the stop sign, you've gone too far."
Check out our class website.
My first step was to decide how to complete the activities in the 12 weeks that we have left. Needless to say, we aren't doing every activity. Next I created a letter to send home to parents in order to let them know what we were doing, why, and that if their student was ejected from the class then he/she would be out for good (just like college) and would flunk the project. The project is worth 25% of each student's grade. The students and I had a little discussion about the difference between being in a college class vs being in a high school class. I let them know that they would be treated like college students. This means that I will allow little things like eating in class (within reason) and that students needing to use the restroom will be allowed to just get up and go (without a pass! oh my!). I then went to surveymonkey.com and created a fake registration form for the students to use in order to register for the class. It was interesting to see that little things, like making the amount of units enrolled in match the number of classes signed up for, were not obvious to them. I also found a worksheet online that is normally used for teaching students how to write checks. Once registered, each student received a set of 3 checks to be used to pay their registration fee and purchase their text (A Student Guide provided with the Apple Curriculum). I charged each student $971 for taking 6-9 units, $1400 for taking 10-15 units, a $50 late fee if their permission slips were turned in late, and $85 + tax for the text. Each student also received a course syllabus which they are expected to follow.
I've found that I have to do a little improvising to make the course flow a little better. The curriculum doesn't give much information about movie making basics so I used information I learned from reading Making Real Life Videos by Matthew Williams. I also showed the students a couple of videos on filmmaking techniques that I found on YouTube.
It's been a challenge so far just to keep the students busy enough during the class sessions. They are already learning the hard lesson of what happens when you don't take the time outside of class to do assignments. I want them to learn now that the reaction of a college professor will be much different than that of a high school teacher.
By the way, the instructor for this course is Dr. Stephanie Grebleips (hmmm!). I won't answer to any other name during the "college" class sessions nor will I answer any questions that pertain to our regular class. Some of the students are really getting into it too. When a student told me that she needed to pay her fees, I told her that she needed to go to Villero Hall (I named all of our buildings after their other teachers). When she asked me where that was (she had no idea what I was talking about), her classmate played along telling her "Go down that street about 3 blocks. If you get to the stop sign, you've gone too far."
Check out our class website.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)