I think it’s a little late for me.
The purpose of this study is to document the experience of students in a secondary education classroom fulfilling the national standards of a multimedia Career and Technology Education course infused with a focus away from the technology tools and on the meanings and themes created with technology tools. This study will take place during a six week unit on Keynote and Powerpoint in which students will be taught storytelling principles, be assigned to tell a story using a presentation program, and be assessed on their abilities to tell a story using that tool.
Note: I’m using Keynote and Powerpoint as an example. It could be any number of programs or tools (e.i. editing software, photo manipulation software, a camera)
One aspect that I’m interested in is how little time can be spent on the technical aspect of the tool. If the purpose and some possibilities of the tool is explained and demonstrated, and I get them started, will they be able to move forward easily from there? Will they be motivated to learn the specifics of the tool either on their own, through tutorials, in lab, from peers, or from family members?
If the students are being evaluated on their ability to tell the story then they must be proficient enough with the program to manipulate it into generating the themes and the intended meanings they want.
A lot of this is dependent on the students being intrinsically motivated by their story to not half-heartedly fulfill the assignment. If they love the story and want to tell it, then they will make the technology work for them instead of fitting the story into the very basics of the tool.
I spoke with Brother Shumway (a Technology and Engineering Education professor and a member of my thesis committee) and he recommended I look at the standards for courses in the theatre department because they may have standards for storytelling and it may give more validity to my project to use standards that already exist as tried and trusted.
He also recommended that I observe Chris Andrews to see how he teaches his technology classes and to see to what extent what I’m suggesting is already happening.
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2 comments:
One aspect that I’m interested in is how little time can be spent on the technical aspect of the tool.
I think that's one of the hardest aspects of teaching, finding a workable balance between teaching systems/tools and teaching ideas and content.
I bet watching Chris would be really interesting. I remember being really impressed with his group of HOC teachers. They seemed to have a really good balance between teaching the students how to use the tools of imovie and how to tell a story. Of course, that was a group effort but still I think that's a really good idea. I should show you the computer tech packets from my school, I know they're designed to help students pass the state comp. tech test and I think they are suuuuuuuper boring.
Chris would be a really really great person to observe. If you need his contact information, I think I've got it.
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