This week has been one of the worst weeks I have experienced from a personal perspective. I wish that I worked in a supportive atmosphere with administrators who cared about my ideas. With that said, I can say the the videos this week have been especially inspiring. Even in an unsupportive environment I am hopeful to have my students working in groups solving problems in my morning enrichment ELA class. So far my plan is to have my students read a book of their choice and creative multimedia book reports. i am hoping that they will open their minds to the possibilities through this assignment.
After watching the videos, especially the Big Thinkers video with Sasha Barab (Edutopia, nd), I really began to think. He talks about engaging student in technological media that inspires the students to think and write persuasively about whether or not a character should be allowed to pursue a particular path. He also talks about fan fiction about their favorite characters in literature, which gave me the idea for my follow up multimedia group assignment after the book report. I plan to have students work in small groups to develop a character or choose one from literature and then develop a story-line or scenario for that character.
I have to give it more thought but they might choose a character from one genre and combine it with a setting from another genre and then figure out how that character will interact in that situation. Maybe I could use Twain's Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court as an introduction.
Another option could be that each person on the team could develop ideas for a different aspect of the story before the team even talks to each other. I could divide the class up into groups. Group one would develop main characters, group two would develop supporting characters, group three develops the time and setting, and group four would develop basic ideas and problems that could take place in the story. Once those groups finish at least one person from each of those four groups would come together form the groups that would figure out how to put it all together and what media they will use to create their solutions.
Whether or not I will be allowed to make this happen remains to be seen, but it could be a lot of fun. That video really got me thinking.
Edutopia.org. (nd). Big Thinkers: Sasha Barab on New-Media Engagement. Retrieved from http://www.edutopia.org/digital-generation-sasha-barab-video
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