Oh. I Forgot To Tell You This.

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.