Technology, Creativity and Critical Thinking

My students will need to have the background knowledge of filming, editing, and posting of videos in order to be successful with this project.  From Tim van Gelder’s article on critical thinking he describes, “Critical thinking is one of education’s most central goals and one if its most valued outcomes,” however, Einstein states, “Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I’m not sure about the former.”  While satire in nature, Einstein does enlighten a path that our schools are not focusing enough on thinking skills rather they focus on memorization of facts.  The work will be guided because I will have a rubric that lays out what is expected from my students and a demonstration video will also be used.  I can also scaffold the work by assigning students to a specific group where certain groups could have a more difficult idea to explain.  Students will also receive feedback from me on their video from their score on the rubric.

 

Social and Ethical Uses of Technology

    I will have to remind my students to be aware of copyright and to only use images that they have the right to use. I will also have to make sure that students will share their work with others which will require their videos to be posted online which could cause some privacy issues if the parents wish not to have the video of their child posted.

 

Technology in Professional Development and Leadership

    Teachers can use this project as a tool for professional development by making a short video of a task that they are proficient in and then share that with the staff.  That way staff can be involved with the watching of the video rather than the note taking process because they will have access to the video after the professional development.

 

Developing Information Literacy, Technology Skills

    My plan follows the steps of successfully integrating information literacy by having a clear definition of what they are trying to show.  Access to material and tools along with a rubric with an explicit definition for each category. Then they will have time to edit and revise their video footage before they make their final video and present it to the class.

 

Universal Designs for Learning

    Students are going to have multiple ways of representing their real world connections and hopefully find that these lessons are more engaging than previous lessons of taking notes.  They will have multiple ways they can create their videos as well which allows flexibility for the students.