1. How is your AR cycle 1 unfolding for you?
My action research has been very interesting. I have enjoyed my film techie’s class that I have been having once a week. We did stop-motion animation the last two weeks of November. They saw their results from the first try and we made two new groups to try again. Only two of the four group’s first tries actually worked. They were able to see what didn’t work and the second week, they were all involved in some pretty fun car races on chairs. I am still trying to get that uploaded for them to be able to view. I have been extremely busy, it seems.
The other part of my action research has been with our CCTV News crew. It has been going very well. Each week, one of the 5th grade classes sends their crew of about 5-6 students. We write the news for 30 minutes on Thursday, and film it for about an hour on Friday. We have been spotlighting different classes. We did Mrs. Mace’s first grade class showing their books they made about what they are thankful for. We also showed Mrs. Foy’s class singing one of the songs they performed at their Thanksgiving feast. We are spotlighting our school storytelling winners by having their performances on the news. We have been doing one per week. Our December 7th spotlight is Mrs. Smith’s class talking about their service-learning project, “Pennies for Peace.” We have an advertisement about the 4th grade Christmas play as well. I am uploading them to SchoolTube.com/CoralCanyon.
I would like to be able to teach the students editing, but it hasn’t worked out yet. We are supposed to be getting laptop labs in January. I will try at that time. My school did purchase a portable hard drive for me to use, but I’m not able to use it in our regular lab. They don’t let anyone “download” anything in there, and just plugging in a hard drive is not permissible because of that. I am having to do all the editing at home on the weekend, which is not very fun, but I am getting much faster at it. I would like to be able to use my nicer editing program on my PC at home if I can figure out using the portable hard drive for that.
2. What has been a surprise with your results?
I was surprised at the fact that the after school class was not as popular as I thought it would be. Over 90% of our students are bussed, so parents don’t like having to come back to pick up their child. Also, I have been surprised at the spotty attendance. When they are busy, they just can’t stay. I have tried to get an email reminder out each week, but I haven’t gotten it to them early enough in some cases.
The biggest surprise I’ve had was a small tragedy. A group of three boys had a digital still camera on a tripod outside, working on a stop-motion animation, when the wind blew the tripod over. My new $200 camera was toast in 2 seconds flat. My principal is trying to find it in her budget to replace it for me. I hope she’ll be able to. The boys weren’t being negligent, but I should have had all the groups come with me to the gym, so the weather didn’t cause the accident. If I would have been out there with them, I think it could have been prevented, because I would have said, “It’s too windy, let’s stay inside.” I have determined to be more diligent in keeping the groups close by so I can have more supervision over them.
3. What tweaks are you making for your next cycle of research?
I am going to see how many others may want to join Film Techies, and then make a decision on whether the same students can stay in the class for my next cycle. I will probably run it 10 weeks as well. The news crew is a bit different, because they are doing it in school. The teachers and I decided when we started that we may change the students to a different crew in January. We still may, but my desire now is to keep the same students, so we can progress into editing when the labs come in.
4. What is the overall participants’ response?
One of the most fun things that I have heard from a parent was a statement that her son made. He is a quiet, but very intelligent and hard working student. He is in 4th grade. He never would come up with an answer about what he might want to do when he grows up, until Film Techies. Now he tells his parents he wants to be a movie producer! Go for it, Matthew!
The students love creating projects, learning about film composition, and seeing their work. Film Techies have their best work published in a web album, and on my board. The news crews get to see their work in our weekly newscast, and published on SchoolTube.com. They have been for the most part, very well behaved and love to be there. In Film Techies we are working on creating a film project about Tobacco prevention. They are making the creative juices flow, and I have loved seeing them blossom.
