Final project description and reflection

Digital literacies are important. More than important, they are essential. Essential for our students to recognize the skills they are developing through the communication mediums they are choosing, essential for teachers to genuinely understand how to incorporate these tools to maximize our students' capacity to develop meaningful skills and powerful critical thinking tools. At LearningWorks we have really tried to develop ways to use technology to reach our students and our teachers.

For this past semester, we created a interdisciplinary unit for our Social Studies and English academic enrichment course. Focusing on Social Movements chosen by three different teams of teachers, the drive behind this unit was to have students work on writing skills, research skills, analytical thinking, and point-of-view/perspective. My teaching teams chose the 1992 LA Riots, the Stonewall Riots, and Hate Crimes.

The first section of the unit involved students examining media representations of the different Social Movements (SM) at exploration stations. There was music, video, news, journals, etc. for the students to look through together to try to determine what the SM was about - where it occurred, who was affected, why it happened/is happening, etc. Students had to think critically about who was communicating the the message and the validity of the information they were receiving so they could construct an objective narrative. Students then came back together to combine their narratives and understand what the SM is/was about. Originally they did this on the board as a class - I have modified the lesson so they will be doing this "group definition" via Google docs, with each small group filling in information to get a total picture of what the group knows about the SM.

The next section takes the knowledge students have gained about the basics of the SM an has them work on developing a sense of how different people would have experienced the SM differently - working on writing from different POV. They are given a photo from the SM and asked to examine what is going on in the photo, listing factual information and things they can directly observe. After, they describe the photo, in writing, from the POV of each person in the photo using "I" statements and incorporating the knowledge they have gained about the movement to support their writing.

Next, the students each choose a photo they find from the SM they would like to use to research more about the experience of a different person/group of people in order to create a VoiceThread with the photo. Once the photo is chose, the group conducts research from the "Guided Research" links on the wiki. This allows students to evaluate a number of different sites without having to try to find reliable sources - the teacher has chosen these to drive the questions on the research worksheet. This part of the lesson helps students learn how to critique information on the web by figuring out who is responsible for the content and what bias may be involved in the information they are sharing. As a result, the students have an opportunity to really understand how different POVs can communicate a SM in many different ways, highlighting the voice of some while eliminating the voices of others.

The final stage of this project involves creating a VoiceThread project using the photo the students chose earlier (there is an alternative choice of creating your own photo, if students wish). After working in small groups to analyze the experience of each person in the photo, the students participate in an activity called "Museum Hot Seat" in which they become a human model of the picture - in front of the class. One person, performing as a "museum curator" leads a "museum visitor" into the model picture and the "visitor" is able to tap alive people in the photo to ask them what their experience is in the scene, etc. This activity really gives students a chance to step into the experience of the person in the photo and develop their understanding of POV.

Following this, students work in small groups to write a dialogue that gives voice to the POV/perspective of each person in the photo. This leads to the creation of the final VoiceThread project, where they upload their photos and add their voices. The students and teachers really enjoyed this lesson and it was impressive to see the different skills students displayed in the final VoiceThreads. Right below this blog post are some of the VoiceThreads students created.

If we were to extend the unit further, I would have students continue with a video making project in which they made Public Service Announcements in relation to their SM. Students would continue to work on writing skills, speaking skills, dialogue writing, historical perspective, persuasion, etc. They would use storyboarding to create their movies, ultimately learning about setting, message, and audience.

Overall, the project went really well. The first group of students who created VoiceThreads made it very clear that EXPLICIT instructions were needed in order to complete decent VoiceThreads. Additionally, the first round of students to complete VTs did not do the Museum Hot Seat activity. As a result, the results of the first round mostly included VT projects with voice recordings that started with "I am the guy in the white shirt" or similar statements. The second round of VTs went much better after we developed a detailed checklist for students to work with as they completed their projects and added in the Museum activity so students could practice POV and receive student and teacher feedback. We will certainly be using VT for projects in the future!!