Over the Hill

Early on in the semester I had an idea for another class project, it was to be what Professor O'Malley likes to call an exhibition, a sort of term long project that culminates in a physical presentation. My idea was called "Finding Folklore" and it involved students asking neighbors or relatives for funny stories about their family or community. Legends from the old country, spooky houses and so on. Somewhere along the way this meshed with a daydream project I had for an English class last fall. The class was all about ghost stories and I wanted to write a cycle of supernatural stories based on the park down the street from my house, Peters Hill (aka the Arnold Arboretum). So basically I never throw anything out and sooner or later I find a way to re-purpose most of my ideas. All of that's very well and good for an English lesson, or even a history class but how to compliment it with technology?

It was important to me that the technology not feel tacked on, I wanted it to be baked into the project in a way that complimented the English goals while providing practical computer skills. The obvious approach was to make it multimedia, digital storytelling is engaging and actually fun to make. Our lesson plan proceeds in a series of steps that each involve an technological element paired with a writing skill. The steps build upon one another, the research creates the map, the map leads to the photos and videos which inspire the stories based on the research which goes on the website...The upshot is the students learn more by tackling a single theme from multiple approaches and they produce something they can be proud of, all the while learning skills that will serve them well in their futures.

Creating the Lesson Implementation was a learning experience all by itself. The outline I presented to my group was long on vision but short on specifics and citations. We sort of worked in reverse, matching things we've learned about in the class to ideas already in our outline instead of the other way around. I've never been great with group projects, I tend to have big ideas and run away with them and then get frustrated when other people can't see my vision or share my enthusiasm. I know it's a situation I need to master if I'm going to be part of a school faculty so this has been a good lesson for me in that sense. Just like people have different learning styles they have different ways of creating things. What you can't see on our outline are all of the emails and IMs that went into this project, it was truly an online collaborative effort.

My understanding of technology in the classroom has evolved since the beginning of the semester. I started out thinking it was basically word processing and google based research but now I see a whole range of possibilities. A lot of the ideas aren't exactly new to me but seeing them used in a serious pedagogical framework is and that has been the biggest take away from this course for me.