What Does It Mean to be Engaged?

iMovie Video Responses by 6th Graders

I had the opportunity to work with a 6th grade class on Friday, Sept. 12th. Prior to Friday, the teacher had showed the students the video on our wiki page theengagedclassroom.wikispaces.com called A Vision of K-12 Students Today. The teacher thought it would be fun for the students to make a video response to this video by answering the question What does it mean to be engaged? The six one minute videos will be compiled into a one six minute video response.

Before I came to work with the class, the students had been divided into 6 groups. They had then written down what they were going to do for their responses. (Like what they needed for props, signs, pictures, and technology equipment needed for their groups.)
On Friday, I met with each of the groups. I was really impressed with the students and their creativity using Web 2.0 tools. These are some of the tools that were used and integrated into their video responses.

• Pics4learning.com
  
• USB drive to transfer their pictures to another laptop.
  
• Soundzabound from Pioneer library
  
• iTunes
  
• Ipod
• Microphone attached to the iPod.
  

The students thought it was really cool that they could actually use an iPod as a recorder. I also had the chance to talk to the class about what it means to work as a team and how everyone can have a role in the project.
My favorite comments came from two of the “harder” kids in the bunch on how much fun they had working on their iMovie projects. They didn't have a clue that while they were having fun, they were also learning. Because everyone was engaged on their projects, there weren’t really any discipline problems to contend with as I worked with them in the classroom. The students were also excited to share their projects with the class and what they had learned that day.



Quote: Do not train children to learning by force and harshness, but direct them to it by what amuses their minds, so that you may be better able to discover with accuracy the peculiar bent of the genius of each.

-- Plato