Hero Tales: Collaborative Story and Movie Creation – 8082

Beth Berry and Jen Perego, Deep Run High School

Summary

Students in English class research a “hometown hero” story and rewrite that story in “code hero” fashion. The students use Google Docs to collaborate with students in Computer Programming class who use the story to create a short film using Alice software. Ultimately, both classes share the final products with an elementary school. English students share about the attributes of code heroes and their process of research and story writing. Programming students present on their processes of adapting a story into a storyboard, and translating a storyboard into a program.

Teachers’ Reflections

English Teacher: I liked how the lesson allowed my students to apply thematic elements of a classic piece of literature to real-world heroes. Since my students are members of the Center for Information Technology, many of them were very excited about the collaboration with the programming class. Students also learned valuable lessons about working in groups, collaborating using Google Drive, and presenting to a specific audience.

When the students presented to the students at Twin Hickory Elementary School, the elementary school students at first did not understand the concept of computer programming. However, as a result of our students’ presentations, their conversations with the younger kids, and our question/answer segment, by the end of the presentation the elementary school students expressed their desire to start programming using Alice or Scratch. They seemed genuinely excited about our presentations and ready to try it on their own!

Programming teacher: I liked how this lesson enabled my programming students to be creative with their story adaptations, while still working under constrictions of time and the input from their English groups. Since this project was extensive and time-consuming, programming student groups had to apply their knowledge of object oriented programming in order to divide the tasks up so that each group member could effectively work together and create a well-made final program. I am proud that my students were able to collaborate using multiple media, and also incite an interest in programming among the elementary school students.

TIPC Ratings

In their English groups, each student had to research a local “hometown” hero who exhibited the traits of a code hero. Students had to select the most appropriate information sources and then organize their ideas about how the local hero fit the code hero traits. Students accomplished this task by saving the web-based article as a PDF, uploading it into a shared Google Drive folder, and then annotating the text (by adding comments) for its connections to the Hemingway code hero. Students then were able to read the annotations of their group members to select the best article to use for their creative hero tale.

Collaboration was a focus of this lesson. Programming students used the storyboard that they created in order to divide the programming tasks up according to scenes in the story. Some students wrote the code for characters, while other students wrote the code for the interaction of characters in the story. In order to create the final movie product, students had to evaluate each other’s programming work and make minor changes in order to create a uniform story. Students were asked not only to work in small groups to prepare their stories and programs, but they also were required to effectively use Google Docs as a way of communicating with students in the other class. Students also had the opportunity for reflection on their collaboration, by accepting input on their adaptation and presenting the final product to their English groups.
Finally, students brought their projects to Twin Hickory in order to teach students about their creative process as well as share their creations.

In English class, students had to annotate their source documents to align the documents with the hero themes of the Old Man and the Sea. Next, these English students had to give feedback to the Programming students through commenting on the storyboards using GoogleDocs. The programming students had to use the tools of Alice to bring the English story to life. In order to do this, students had to apply their understanding of program organization with methods, code the actions of characters, as well as program the actions and events of the story environment.

In their English class, students had to create meaningful stories based on research and applications to a novel read in class. They had to make sure their stories would appeal to elementary school students, yet still modeled the Hemingway code hero traits. Lastly, they had to make sure the story could be mapped on a storyboard for the programming classes to effectively create their project.

Students in the programming classes had to work within the confines of their assigned story and time limitations to create an original work. Students needed to divide the task appropriately between their group members, considering their particular programming strengths as well as use the concepts of code-reuse and code organization to create a program that modeled their assigned story.