We made a movie! Part One.

Back in April the 100 years since the launch and sinking of the Titanic was commemmorated.  The news media, social media and popular culture was saturated with all things Titanic.  And my students came back to school in the second term full of enthusiasm for all things Titanic.

They wanted to do a play about the Titanic.

They wanted to build a Titanic.

I said:  Sure you can write a play and build a Titanic.  But you can use the time before and after school, in breaks and when you have finished all your other work.  I've already got a full term of work planned out.

They did a great job of building the Titanic.  One of the dads went to town and got a big fridge box from an appliance store and helped the kids shape it.  That child then brought his drill to school to make holes in it.  I gave them straws, bottle tops, medicine bottles, skewers, wool, tubes, lots of hot glue gun plugs..... and they made a Titanic.

The writing of the play however was not so flash.  It started with a hiss and a roar.  But when I finally looked at it, it had three scenes each with two lines of dialogue.  I could see we were going to need some work on this.

Term 3 went by in a flash, and then I went to ULearn12 with an idea about how we were going to do the Titanic as a movie instead.  I went to see great keynotes and breakouts with Jason Ohler and Kevin Honeycutt who gave me the following great inspirations:

• getting the kids to record their ideas on video.
• fake it till you make it.
• collaborative writing, sharing that writing, reworking that writing.
• do it even if the budget is zero.
• don't wait till conditions are perfect, just do it.
• you'll never be great at something unless you have a go at doing it.
• make your students famous.

For more specifics about what Jason Ohler and Kevin Honeycutt said and inspired, see the blogs about them I did after ULearn12.

I have to say I was also somewhat inspired by the Manaiakalani Cluster and their annual movie awards too.  The Two Helens (see another blog from after ULearn12) talked with passion about the learning their students got from making their movies.

So I came back to school in early Term 4 and went to the ALL meeting (Accellerated Literacy) and said my class would be writing a script for a movie and making a movie.  They looked at me like I was mad.  Time was to prove them right, but we have made a movie.

Look out for further installments of our movie making journey and eat your heart out James Cameron!!

Making it work in your classroom - the two Helens

This is another installment of my reflections from ULearn12.  Welcome to my reflections on breakout #4:

This breakout was hosted by the two Helens:  Helen King and Helen Squires.  They teach at Point England School which is a member of the Manaiakalani Trust Project.

Point England School is in east Auckland, Tamaki.  The school is in a coastal area, well resourced with good technology and vibrant environments and teachers, where kids have a dream.  The school does a survey every 6 months about how the children are enjoying learning, using their netbooks, and how they learn.

The kids like using the netbooks as they are in control; they like having their blogs to share their work and have an audience that will comment.

How do they learn at Point England School?
Learn, create, share -  is the model used at Point England School.

'Four Pou' to hold up the 'whare':

• values based culture  -  teach behaviour explicitly in term 1 each year
• content knowledge  -  teachers have to be clever and be able to find out for themselves
• pedagogical knowlendge  -  know how to teach
• evaluative capacity  -  using a variety of assessments and analysing

Underneath the 'Four Pou' is:
Learn:  Google dogs, netbooks, hands on things/doing stuff
Create:  Make stuff, write stories, tell stories, claymation...
Share:  Podcast channel, school news channel produced by Y7&8 and presented by Y5&6, share normally, blogs, Google-docs/sites

How do teachers deliver: 
Google sites are used by the teachers to enable children to do their learning at their own pace.  The Google sites provide information for the kids, sites to use, activities you want them to complete.  Teachers no longer have planning folders and folders of resources - everything is instead online, public on the sites.  Consequently they really have to have the ideas behind the planning, teaching and learning solid.  Kids are always aware of what they are learning.  Google sites have become essential to Helen #1.

The children find the activities they are required to do on the site.  The children make movies to show their learning.  The movies help their learning, particularly when they got stuck one time, a movie enabled discussion to happen and move the learning on.  Get kids to make movies about how they learn, the process of making - do as an interview.

Point England School developed a CyberSmart curriculum -  they looked at the positive side, what the children should be doing rather than what they shouldn't.  Kids made movies about this.  If the kids find something online that they are not happy about about them, they screen shot it and sent it to the teacher to enable a discussion to happen.

Using multimedia in Helen's class changed the way the children interacted with the media and each other.  In Helen's class the tables move frequently, no set place to sit, no set place to learn or teach.  The movie making has improved the kids key competencies.  They choose to work collaboratively because they know they get a better result.

Helen's big tip for getting started using Google Docs:
Don't use a template.

I'm looking forward to trying this out!!!