World Studies Video Project Collaboration

To follow up on last week’s post about Going Beyond the Essay, here is an overview of the collaborative process Jay, Lara, and I went through to develop and facilitate the video project on Japanese Imperialism in Grade 10 World Studies.

First, Jay and I discussed the possibility of doing a video project for this unit. He had limited time, but wanted the students to have the opportunity to create something more substantial with the knowledge and understandings they would learn. Knowing that video creation and editing can take a while (1 minute of video can equal 1 hour of editing), the key to fitting the process into the available timeline was limiting the length of the video. We decided to limit the video length to 2-3 minutes. This would also force the students to be concise and get right to their key points and arguments, which was an additional skill they would be developing in this project.

The next step was to put together the assignment overview and rubric. Jay developed most of the assignment overview, and then I added in additional technical and media research detail. For the rubric, a generic video project rubric was found that we then adapted for this project. Jay and I worked together to decide which content and technical elements to keep. Once we made those decisions, he focused on rewriting the content-related descriptors on the rubric while I worked on the technical-related descriptors. Content-wise, we made sure the students had to go beyond presenting a series of events or “facts” related to their topic. Critical thinking skills were emphasized for this project. Jay made sure this was clear in the rubric and to the students at the beginning and during the research and script writing process (Jay would give substantial feedback about this on their scripts once they got to that point). We did most of this work on the rubric during a lull at Parent-Teacher conferences a couple of weeks ago!

We also enlisted Lara to collaborate on the project. Jay arranged with her to facilitate a lesson on some additional content research skills prior to the video making process. Jay had given the students a chunk of resources that allowed them to get a good start on their topic. Laura then showed them some databases to which we subscribe to help them get additional content and fill in holes in their research. She also got them logged into and using EasyBib EDU to create their MLA citations and build their bibliography. Laura and I worked together prior to her lesson, as well, to update the Library High School Catalog to include links to websites where students can find legally reusable media.

The technology tools that were used to facilitate the research, writing, and media finding process were:

• Google Docs (for writing, submitting, and getting teacher feedback on the script);
• research databases to which SSIS subscribes on the Internet;
• EasyBib EDU online (for building a MLA bibliography);
• and websites that help students find legally reusable media for their video.

The apps used to build the final product were Garageband and iMovie. Garageband was used to record the voice-over narration for the video. iMovie was used to create the actual video.

I took two half periods to facilitate the technical components of completing the project. The first lesson focused on using GarageBand to create the narration track and the process of finding legally reusable images and video. The second lesson focused on building the video in iMovie and finding legally reusable music to use in the video. Chunking these processes into two lessons worked well. If I tried to do it all in one lesson, it would have been information overload for the students, and they wouldn’t have been able to work during the class period to practice the skills just taught and ask questions while they worked. I also created a sample video that students could reference for the technical expectations in their video.

Lastly, Jay and I collaboratively assessed the students’ videos. Jay focused on the content elements; I focused on the technical elements. We did most of our assessment when the students played and shared their videos in class. This saved quite a bit of time outside of class to complete the grading.

The creativity, research, and ethical media use skills developed in doing a project like this are incredibly important and valuable for students. When you considered the revised Bloom’s Taxonomy, you can see they covered the range of taxonomies in this project. They developed traditional research skills in this project, but experienced a deeper learning process because of the additional elements and technical processes they had to think through and create because of the video creation component. The collaborative process between the teacher, tech coach, and librarian was extremely effective, as well, creating a win-win situation for all, especially the students.

Here are some of the student videos.