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Brandon Johnson
09
Project
Summary
WWII Teach-In Day
1. General Overview of the Proposed
Project:
Students will interview people who lived
through WWII. They will then create video documentaries based on
these interviews. Students will
also create a Wiki detailing the information that they have gotten
about the individuals that they have interviewed. The videos
created will be uploaded, with permission, to YouTube and be
embedded into the Wiki.
2. Clear Purpose and Objective:
The purpose of this project is for students
to gain first hand, an understanding of WWII from the people who
lived it, as well as to document and preserve the stories of this
generation of people for future generations.
3. Stakeholders: grade level, who will
benefit, who will participate in this project.
This project will involve 8th
grade students, people who lived through World War II, as well as
the Wings of Eagles Discovery Center. Students will benefit by
learning good interviewing skills as well as background info on
WWII, as well as using technology to enhance their learning.
Interviewees will benefit from the social experience of seeing their
peers all together in one place.
4. U.S. History Content Area
World War II
5. Outline Describing Content
This will vary depending on which person
is interviewed by a team of students. Past participants have been
Holocaust survivors, Members of the US Armed Forces, Hitler Youth
and Luftwaffe, as well as civilians from the US, Japan, Italy, and
Germany.
6. Software to be used, internet
materials, contacts, etc.
Windows Movie Maker, Microsoft Photo Story,
PowerPoint, Video Recording devices, Microphones, Document
Projector, Digital Cameras,
Outside Wiki server.
7. Level of Student Involvement
Students will work in teams of 4-5, assigned a
presenter by their teacher. From that point on, students will
develop interview questions, conduct the interview in a professional
manner, create an essay describing their interviewee’s experiences,
and develop a video documentary of the day.
Students will also work to create the
Wiki of their presenter, complete with proper Wiki formatting (i.e.
table of contents, etc.) and peer editing of other's wikis.
8. Evaluation process (include students
when possible)
Students will be evaluated by their
presenters through a feedback form. Their essay and documentary
will be graded on a rubric. Students will peer edit both the rough
drafts of the essays as well as the interview questions prior to the
interview date. Students will also write a reflection piece on what
they took from the experience.
9. Timeline: how you envision the
project being carried out between start up and conclusion
Interviews are scheduled for March 31,
2009. We would begin recruiting
participants in January, and students would begin preparing in late
February. Video editing will take place throughout April, with a
tentative completion date in mid
April.
10. Comments or Questions:
Due to the massive undertaking this project
entails, Jason Schrage and Brandon Johnson would work on this
project together.
Introduction/Summary of
overall project:
On March 31, 2009 100
people who lived through WWII were interviewed by over 300 8th grade
students at the
Wings of Eagles Discovery Center. This is
the 6th year that Horseheads Middle School has held the event. For
a complete description of the event please visit the project summary
here.
In addition to holding the
event, creating a memory book, and making
Microsoft PhotoStories, this year we
created a
Wiki and conducted a
live stream of the event in order to
preserve and share the stories with a larger audience. Many of the
seventh grade students were able to watch portions of the Teach-In
Day in their class, and we also received great feedback from people
around the world.
Keep a Journal:
A number of the things that we conducted this year were the same as
last year's project. Information pertaining to what we kept the
same can be seen
here. One of the components we
added to this year's project was the creation of a wiki for the
event. Each group was responsible for making a wiki page for their
presenter, complete with a streaming version of their
PhotoStory. We got the student's
acquainted with using PhotoStory by having them create a PhotoStory
presentation for a unit prior to World War II. Mr. Schrage's
students created a presentation for the Immigration Unit and Mr.
Johnson's students created one for the Great Depression.
As with all things
technology related, there were a few technical issues. On the day
of the interviews, Mr. Johnson's students could not access the wiki
pages as they had been created by Mr. Schrage and weren't set up to
be shared with Mr. Johnson's students yet. As a result, students
had to work offline in Microsoft Word and upload their information
at a later time.
What did we learn?
While the students had some
familiarity with working with wikis, it might be beneficial to spend
a lesson or two on the aesthetics of web design, in the future.
While the information the kids came up with was, for the most part,
very good, the aesthetics of their web pages tended to leave
something to be desired.
One of the possible things we
may consider for next year is changing the write up that the
students have to complete for this project. It is great having the
students work together in groups, but the essays often end up being
very choppy and disjointed when the kids do each of their own
parts. We have also explored the idea of asking our Language Arts
Department to oversee the written reports to make sure the mechanics
of good writing are met.
This is a very involved project. In order to develop quality
reports, PhotoStories and Wiki Pages students need to be exposed to
these skills throughout the school year.
Students also need instruction in how to take quality pictures.
It might be a good idea to give the kids a list of pictures they
should take.
What would we do again?
Live stream the event but with a different add free service. Some
of the ads on the free U Stream service are not appropriate for
school. We have also discussed with a a teacher from BOCES about
possibly having high school students come over to to commentate the
event for our live stream and having roving cameras.
What would we NOT do
again? Switch Wiki formats - This
year we started using Wikis using PB Wiki. About one month prior to
the WWII Teach-In Day a brand new wiki feature was added to ToolBox
Pro. We thought this would be ideal since everything is stored
locally and there is zero cost. The problem is that there were many
bugs to fix and the students needed to learn a whole new Wiki
platform slowing the process down.
How did the students
respond? Overall the students
enjoyed the project. They took extreme pride in developing their
essays and creating Photostories. The really made a connection with
their presenters and took ownership in the project.
How did this project
change instruction? This project
allowed students to apply the skills and content learned in the
traditional classroom setting and apply them to a real world service
learning project.
How will this project
contribute to academic achievement?
In addition to the content knowledge and skills that was learned
through this massive undertaking students realized that history has
a purpose beyond memorizing facts and dates. This projected sparked
their interest in learning which will hopefully lead to better
achievement in all of their courses over the course of their
learning career.
Personal Narrative:
I have worked
on this project with Jason Schrage for the past 3 years. Over that
time, it has greatly evolved into something quite extraordinary. We
have gone from having students interview people from WW2 and writing
an essay to creating Photostories, wikis, and the like. We’ve also
had an increase in presenters throughout, something we never would
have expected.
Regardless of
the academic outcomes, what the participants take away from this is
a better understanding of what it was actually like to endure a
difficult time in our nation’s history. They realize that
historical events are living, breathing, real things, and not just
stodgy information from a textbook or video. It’s how people felt
and what they thought and how they dealt that matters. Facts,
dates, and statistics are largely irrelevant in this day and age of
the Internet. Kids can find out any fact they need in under a
minute. What they can’t find out is how a woman felt when she was a
girl and her brother was stationed at Pearl Harbor the day of the
attack. They can’t Google what it was like to spend two years in a
concentration camp. These are some of the things our students were
able to learn about.
Overall, I
can’t imagine that there will be a time when we won’t be able to do
this project, but I know that it is coming someday. Until that day
comes, I hope to have as many of my students as possible experience
the words and wisdom of the greatest generation.
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