Mr. Higgins’ Blog

As a teacher, expectations for group projects are difficult to define when it is the first time the project is being attempted.  Using the work of Darren Kuropatwa as a guide, my classes were able to create humorous, educational, and revolutionary videos which are now posted on YouTube under my playlists.  I am very proud of the students work ethic and they really strived to make a final product that was understandable.  While not every group followed all of the guidelines I set, they still created entertaining videos.

Project Guidelines: http://apps.mrhiggins.net/student-video-focus

Project Discussion on my blog: http://www.mrhiggins.net/blog/2009/01/19/updates-for-high-school-math-and-web-20/

 

Not Everyone Watching Will Get It

One problem with some of the projects is that their are inside jokes that deal with my quirks or other students quirks.  Is this really a problem?  Not in my book.  However, a parent watching at home or anyone on the net may not understand some of the inside information.  The picture at the top of this blog is a caricature of me.  These are the parts of the videos that really make this project special.

Final Grading Thoughts

The project was graded with two categories in mind, the video product and the group interaction.

Final Video Product – A grade out of 70 points based on the initial expectations and guidelines posted on my school website

Group Interaction – I had each of the group members evaluate the others on a scale of 30 points which was split into three small categories: Video Footage Participation out of 10, Video Creation Participation out of 10, and Overall out of 10.

This created a grade out of 100 total points.  In the future, I will continue to use this type of grading scale; however, I will have to make some tweaks.

Creating Memories

When learning to become a teacher, they talk about impactful moments.  This was the impactful moment for many of the students.  Some of them will never forget the project.

Viewing “Party”

We took an entire class period to watch all 19 videos created by Period 1 Pre-Calculus, Period 4 Honors Algebra II, and Period 7 Pre-Calculus.  It was a lot of fun.  By the way, I call it a Viewing “Party” because it was all business.  We did not turn it into a food gathering event.

Days taken out of class time

In the future, I will take fewer days out of our class time because it is important to remain on task the entire school year.  Here is the breakdown this year.

Introduction of the Project – 1/2 Period (I fit this in conveniently)

Introduction to Movie Maker – 2 Periods (With support from the technology coordinator)

Continue working and finalizing the project in Movie Maker – 2 Periods  (This worked perfect because I was at the 2009 Ohio eTech Conference anyhow)

Viewing “Party” – 1 Period  (This was a lot of fun and many of the students were PUMPED)

 

Where do we go now?

 

Only time will tell as we continue down the path of learning and molding minds.