Walden Classmates, it's time for some action. Reviewing, my GAME plan revolved around two parts, having my students create a video book / author brag and also for myself to use emails and Twitter more to better communicate with the parents of my students.
For the video book brag, I have spoke with the studio / TV production teacher and asked him if I could spend some time in his room during my planning period brushing up on iMovie. I am very rusty with this and feel that I need a refresh here if I am going to work with students doing this in my class. He gave me a green light, but he wants to run it by our administrator before I actually start, I also spoke with my school's Media Specialist / Librarian to share my project idea and also to see if she might know of any worksheet / rubric / assessment thing the students could use when researching their book possibilities. I'm probably going to have to wait until after the Thanksgiving break to get an answer on this. If she doesn't have one / can't find one, I'll have to make my own. Finally, I plan to send an email out to our district's Reading Department's email conference asking if any one out there may have done a similar type of project in the past. I am going to wait until after the Thanksgiving break to do this so that it doesn't get pushed down the list of current emails and become forgotten. Also, my entire district is off all of next week due to budget cuts and I want my email to be on top when we all return to work on Monday, November 28th.
For my improved communication goal, I have compiled all of the email addresses for my parents into a folder that I can now drop into my 'send to' box on my emails with just a click. I actually have a bulk email going out tomorrow as 1st Marking Period Report Cards go home tomorrow afternoon. Also, I added my Twitter address to the signature of my school email account and wrote it on the board below the class website address. Hopefully, with this added exposure, I will pick up a few more followers.
That's it so far, I hope you are all doing well implementing some of your ideas into action. Have a good week.
Wayne
I love being able to send out bulk emails to parents. It saves so much time and I have found that they really appreciate it. You might show the students some of the book trailers for various books available on youtube to make them familiar with the project. You can do a search of various books and see what other students have done. Some are very good and some are not, but that is all to be expected in authentic work assignments. I am impressed with your efforts to reach out to all of the resources available to you, not only in your own school, but also in your district. Even though you feel rusty, I keep finding that if I step out and try new technology, even when I am not 100% sure and comfortable with my skills, the students step up and we learn together. This strengthens all of our skills and increases our competence. It also begins to affect the perspective of our class as being very technology-based. Students appreciate that, and parents do too.
ReplyDelete@ Brenda
ReplyDeleteI hadn't thought about the YouTube angle. That's a great idea and I will give that a shot. Thanks. Have a good Thanksgiving week.
Wayne