Generally, I really like thinking of lesson plans. However, I had a very
difficult time thinking of something for this week’s blog. Most of my ideas are class activities or group work. I was
having a hard time thinking of a good assignment that included technology. I am
very open to suggestions on how to improve this idea! I got the idea from an undergraduate education
class I took. In that class we talked a
lot about different learning strategies; this is an important concept that
everyone recognizes as necessary for early childhood education, but for some
reason, starting in high school, we all decide that students suddenly learn
best through lecture and note taking. With
a class like composition that is a requirement, and a very large and abstract
topic, I think approaching it from many different angles and many different
modes is not only important, it is necessary.
Towards the end of the semester, I would like to have to
students make a video. The subject of
the video would be their thoughts on composition and the composition course:
what did they learn, how did their thoughts about composition change, what did
they like about the course, what did they not, etc. The video would need to be 6-10 minutes—I realize
this is not long for a video, but I want them to focus on concision and making choices
about what to include. I would like them
to post this video to a website, like YouTube, this will help them think about
a real audience outside of the class and besides the teacher.
I firmly believe that the students need to have choices
within assignments, so they could bring me alternative topics they wanted to do
a video about as well as the points they will cover. There are many different ways that they could
make a video, they could do a voice over with relevant pictures and notes, they
could do a more casual video discussion, there is even potential for them to be
creative with their video. There is lots
video software out there that can appeal to different learners. I hate the sound of my recorded voice, so when
I did a similar project in my education class I used a website called
animoto. It allowed me to put pictures
and text in a video and have a song playing in the background. After doing this project I use animoto
several different times for different projects.
We want to expose students to different ways of thinking about composition,
but if we can do that and help them find materials they can use to be
successful in other classes, all the better!
Jill, I wrote about a movie project as well. I'm glad to see that someone else thinks it's a good idea! I like your idea of having them do an end of course video explaining their thoughts about the class. I think that doing a video would be really interesting, as it would give students an opportunity to practice an argument in a medium other than the classic essay. Especially if the students do some sort of editing on the video, it would really give them an interesting opportunity to develop an argument.
ReplyDeleteEveryone seems to like the idea of making a video, me included. I really liked your idea of having students do a video of all the things they learned. The time limit would force the students to be extremely deliberate in their choices. Do you think there's an opportunity there to discuss with the student exactly what rhetorical choices they made in the creation of their video so they are more able to understand how rhetorical choices are applied to things other than essays?
ReplyDeleteHave you had a chance to review others' syllabi yet? I'm going to make them available through our class site soon. I wonder if reviewing what your peers have to say about syllabi might be useful for your own thinking, too.
ReplyDelete