Writing Project Status

I just returned from visiting my daughter, Stephanie, in Prague over Thanksgiving break.  It was a great trip and it made me rethink my project.  I am now going to make my project about my trip to Prague.  I am planning on using imovie or movie maker.  I borrowed the schools Flipcamera to take on my trip.  I have a lot of footage and also still photos. I have downloaded the pictures and video on to my computer--which took me several hours since it was all new to me and I had to finally get help from the media people yesterday.  I am not very far along.  I will now try to imbed an image or video into this blog.  It worked!   

This fall has been my first introduction to posting blogs.  I have not taken full advantage of the possibilities mainly because I just feel too busy to take the time to do much reflection. My blogs are pretty much the same--a comment and a link.  I don't think anyone of them stands out from the others in any of the categories: professionalism, design, or creativity. I hate to be so noncommittal, but I really think they are all pretty much the same in quality. Here is a website that I should read that  may help me when trying to blog.  

I have never set up a Wiki, but after reading these two chapters I feel like I should.  I think that a Wiki could be very beneficial for my environmental studies class.  We do not have a text and I like the idea of creating a Wiki text.  Two of the topics that we cover would lend themselves very well to a class Wiki text.  The two topics are biodiversity and energy resources.  These are two topics where a multimedia text could add so much to the students understanding of the topics.  The other advantage to a class Wiki is that these are two moving target topics with new developments constantly making the news.  

In my biology class I would like to set up a Wiki on bioethics.  This is a topic with lots of new developments.  I think students could become very engaged in discussing these controversial topics.  I found this site that allows free Wikis for educators.  The Beech chapter on Wikis suggesed this site.  I may start here and try to set one up.  

Some of the challenges to having students engage in collaborative writing is to get them comfortable with the idea of sharing ideas and doing revisions of their work. I really like the Bledsoe article.  I especially like the way she explained how she modeled the collaborative process with the whole class.  

Digital Storytelling

I enjoyed the multimedia assignment that we did in class last week.  It was fun to collaborate on the assignment.  I feel that I am more creative when I interact and work on a project in a group.  I also enjoyed seeing the other groups contributions to the final product.  

After having read Lisa Miller's chapter on Digital Storytelling, I am feeling better about my daughter's major in visual media and communication.  Stephanie is studying film making in Prague this semester and is learning many of the skills that Miller talks about in the chapter.  I can see now how valuable these skills can be in the work place.  I am excited to think about making my own digital story.  I am just worried that I lack the technical skills to pull off a good product.  I am going to put a link here to the site I  read about on Mary's blog.  Daniel Meadow's site has some great examples of digital storytelling.         

I did not do a story board for my 9 Mile Creek voice thread, but I should have.  I just ad-lib ed as I put the pictures up.  I took these pictures last year and could not remember all the names so I made them on the spot.  Obviously if I wanted to show this to students or parents I would make sure that I had the names right.  I think it would be great to have students add their own commentary.  I am sure that they could make the slide show more fun.  I definitely could see having students create the voice thread as a culminating project for our water quality unit.  

I just worked on my Voice Thread about Nine Mile Creek Macroinvertebrate Sampling.   

It was much easier to do than I thought.  I will probably go back and make some changes, but I wanted to make sure I had something up tonight.  The rest of the week looks very busy. 

The learning potentials that I see for this medium are in exploring the ethical issues involved in biological research.  The list of  topics with ethical issues that could be explored in this medium are endless. Some of the topics are stem cell research, cloning, genetically modified foods, biodiversity, and climate change.  A role playing exercise could be set up to explore these issues from different points of view.  I think students would enjoy and benefit from this type of exploration of the topic.  A  good source for issues and discussion is the site Access Excellence.