Learning as a Way of Teaching

In an effort to practice what I preach, I am co-teaching a unit on the Industrial Revolution with one of our 8th grade history teachers.  She is the content expert and I am the media expert.  Students are working together to present the IR with multimedia.  Most groups chose to make a 3 minute video and one project will be in the form of a podcast.

Things that I have learned about the facilitating of this project, but it was too late:

1.  Students focus so much on the medium they are using, they are forgetting the content.  They need to be handed the content until they are fluent in the creative process.

2.  They need better developed parameters.  I should not have used the phrase, “Do whatever you can think of.”  The time and resources we have for this endeavor greatly diminishes their creativity.  I need to reign them in just a little bit so we can get the project done in a timely manner.

3.  I need to provide better examples of what I am looking for in their final productions.

I have to remind myself that this is the first time any of us have tried student created video in the classroom.  We have learned a lot about how to facilitate this project and will do better next time.

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