Summary
The month of February is Black History Month. Each year students are asked to conduct research and create an artifact which recognizes the accomplishments and contributions of African Americans to American culture. Students tend to gravitate to figures that are frequently seen on television or the subjects of previous research projects. This year students will be asked to select a figure from Black History who is not regularly seen on television or unknown to the class. Students will complete research to create a thirty second video that provides a brief overview of a lesser known African American who has through his/her accomplishments and contributions impacted American culture.
TIPC Ratings
Students generated a list of African Americans who they were unaware of the contributions they made to questions to drive their research. . Students evaluated Web 2.0 tools to select a tool that would allow them to communicate their list with each other. They developed a storyboards to help them organize and tell their story and after evaluating Jam Studio, they decided that creating music from that site would be too time-consuming in the creation of their movie. They decided to use the music that was provided on Vimeo instead.
As a class, students discussed the historical figures they researched to determine which individual they wanted to include in their final product. Once they established which individual they would include, researched that individual using the questions they formulated. The students established small teams to complete music production and create the movie production using the information that had been researched. Students assessed the individual products using peer reviews throughout the movie production process and created revisions based on peer reviews. The finished product was sent to VREC to be viewed by the elementary and middle school classes. After the VREC classes viewed the movie, they evaluated the movie using a Google form to help the history class assess their production.Y.
Students evaluated the ease of use, good features and bad in a variety of software programs they could use to produce their independent and joint movie(s). While evaluating the Web 2.0 tools, students discovered that Jam Studio was much too timely to using and finish the production in the allotted time. They identified the music in Vimeo to combine with their video images in the construction of their final product. Students worked together to develop a list of possible questions and then determined which questions would be used for student movies. Students gathered possible subjects and justified the merits of each subject to determine which subjects would work for the movie. After peer reviews, students determined which suggestions to incorporate into the final product of the movie.
Students generated questions to guide the research process. Students examined software to determine what would be the effective way to produce their movie. They also had to explore pictures that would give the audience a glimpse of their researched subject’s life. Students worked independently to create a thirty second movie about their subject . Students evaluated the movies they created and had to defend their selection. Students worked in a small team to build the final movie.
