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Heather Mitchell-Buck

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technology

April 12, 2022 by Heather Mitchell-Buck Leave a Comment

the beauty of short video projects

a movie clap board
by Jakob Owens on Unsplash

why videos?

I’ve long been an advocate for using something OTHER than an exam as the cumulative assessment at the end of a semester. For me, the end of a course is when students should be working at the top of Bloom’s Taxonomy: analyzing, evaluating, and creating. There are all kinds of different projects that help students practice those skills, but one of my favorites is asking students to create a short, YouTube-friendly video.

Being able to effectively present material to others is something every student needs, regardless of their chosen career path. I want students to be able to distill down complex ideas and present them in a concise, direct, personable way. A short video is perfect for that, and in the era of smartphones and Zoom, anyone can make a half-decent video (obvs I don’t teach video production, ha!).

So what kind of content do my students present in these videos? It depends on the class! The sky’s the limit in terms of options: I’ve had students make “explainer” videos, “day in the life” videos, and more, all of which can easily be adapted to fit the needs of all kinds of courses. For example, in my gen ed class on King Arthur, I ask students to dream up an idea for a new version of King Arthur; figure out how to develop that idea as a movie, book, TV show, video game, comic book, etc; and pitch it to the execs with the power to decide whether or not their project gets a green light. This requires them to think about all the previous versions of the Round Table we’ve read and watched, think about what made them appealing to their audiences, and decide what audiences today need from the “Once and Future King.” In my “Exploring Utopia” class, which is an upper-level class for English majors and honors students, I ask students to design their own utopia and create a PR campaign video to encourage others to give their utopia a try (either as a short-term visit or a long-term lifestyle). After spending a semester thinking about how utopias as varied as Plato’s Republic and Andrew Niccol’s GATTACA work to balance the elements of justice, happiness, individuality and community, I can’t think of a better way to think about all of those elements of society than to try out that balancing act for yourself.

a few logistics:

  • This can easily be done as an individual or group project
  • Videos should be short: about 5 minutes is usually ideal
  • They can be as simple as the student talking to the camera, or can include images, slides, music, etc. (I always remind students to prioritize content over production value, and often the “cheesiest” videos end up the most successful!)
  • Finished videos are uploaded to the cloud storage of the student’s choice (Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive, etc) or as an unlisted (not private!) YouTube video
  • I often also have a written component, which requires students to go into greater depth -this helps them recognize what the MOST important details are (the “elevator pitch,” so to speak) and use them in their video

I really enjoy watching these videos at the end of the semester – it’s fun to see my students get creative and figure out new ways to approach the material we’ve been thinking about all semester, while ALSO building real-world skills they can use in their life after college! (And yes, it’s way, way more fun that reading – or taking – exams!)

Filed Under: digital storytelling, teaching Tagged With: assignments, projects, technology, video

August 16, 2021 by Heather Mitchell-Buck 1 Comment

keeping the backchannel going!

How is it time for the Fall 2021 semester already?

Isn’t it still, like, June 2020 or something?

“on your left” meme posted by @Rachael_Conrad on Twitter (8 Aug 2021)

There are many reasons to be excited about being back in the classroom with our students after months of living that Zoom life (and of course some apprehensions too, given the spread of the Delta variant throughout our communities!). But if you’re anything like me and the students I’ve been teaching recently, there is one thing that you’re probably sad to leave behind on Zoom: the CHAT!

In my classes, Zoom chat was a gift: it allowed many students the space to contribute to our large conversations who had previously felt uncomfortable speaking up. It helped us to build community by giving us a way to share little jokes and have side conversations without stopping the flow of our “on task” discussion. It allowed us to support each other by sharing links, resources, quotes, shared docs, and more. It’s a space that I want to try and preserve as we return to our classrooms – especially since we’ll be wearing masks that may make vocal discussions more challenging, if not totally inaccessible to some students.

So here are a few options I’ve found that will allow us to keep the backchannel open and help us include as many voices as possible in our conversations. Hopefully you can find one that will work well for you and your students!

Padlet

Most people who know me know I love to use Padlet. Their “stream” template is great for backchannel convos and allows students to like each other’s questions and comments and reply to each other. Users can be logged in or anonymous as needed and it’s easy to share links and media. The main downside of this platform is that you can only have a limited number of Padlets with a free account, but since you don’t really need to “archive” your chats in most cases, it may still work well for you!

GoSoapBox

With smaller classes (no more than 30 students), this option is free and includes a LOT of cool features like polling, quizzes, and the ability to turn off screen names when you want your students to be free to answer anonymously. Definitely worth exploring if you also used the “poll” feature of Zoom regularly!

Chatzy

This one’s pretty simple and hearkens back to online chat rooms of the early internet days (ahhhh nostalgia, amirite, my fellow GenXers?). You can set up a virtual room and all students need to do to join is click a link. Easy peasy!

Slack

I’m a big fan of Slack, but it (and the next option below) is more than just a chat platform. This means it needs a bit of commitment and setup time to get you and your community rolling. If you’re just looking for a quick and easy way for your students to use their voices, this isn’t the right choice for you! But if you’re looking for a a solution that can be a chat platform, file sharing space, and discussion board all rolled into one, Slack is a workhorse!

Google Classroom

Much like Slack, this is much more than a chat platform, and it may be more of a fancy SUV when all you may be looking for is a 10-speed bicycle. But if the various features in Google Classroom are useful for you, the “stream” in the homepage can be great for a classroom backchannel!

photo by Adam Solomon on Unsplash

so … how will this work in a classroom?

One of the things that made chat SO AWESOME on Zoom is that everyone was already there! We were looking at a screen to engage with each other, so hopping into the chat was easy. But when we’re in a classroom, how can we effectively use chat without sacrificing the meaningful face-to-face (or mask-to-mask) interactions that happen in our classrooms?

As someone who asks and encourages students to have devices with them in every class meeting, I’m less worried about this than some of my colleagues might be, since I’m used to navigating a balance between screen time and people time (and I’m happy to talk about strategies for this if you’d like). But I’m thinking that in general, I’ll keep the backchannel up on the screen at the front of the room. That way, everyone can see it without having to stare at their own devices at all times. It should be easy enough to have that chat window there alongside whatever else we need to look at together (images, quotes, discussion questions, etc). And then students can just check their own device when they want to weigh in on something happening in the chat.

I definitely look forward to trying it out and I hope that some of y’all will be keeping the backchannel flag flying as well! 🙂

Best wishes for a safe, healthy, and productive semester!

Filed Under: teaching Tagged With: backchannel, chat, discussions, learning, teaching, technology

August 2, 2018 by Heather Mitchell-Buck Leave a Comment

DPL, meet Xia

I set myself an ambitious day today: I was trying to finish two different digital story projects. (And participate in some discussions. And help out some of my fellow DPL folks. And attend a workshop!)

Well, so it turns out that I only finished one project. The other is still in progress, and even though it won’t be done til after I’m home from Digital Pedagogy Lab, I do want to finish it and share it here!

But without further ado, here’s the challenge project I chose:

And you can find my finished project  here

A special shout-out to Nefarei on deviantart for the awesome artwork I used for Xia’s profile pic, and of course huge thanks to Jim Henson and Brian Froud. You’ll see why once you read the story. 😉

Filed Under: digital storytelling Tagged With: conferences, DPL2018, learning, technology

August 1, 2018 by Heather Mitchell-Buck Leave a Comment

London soundscape

My favorite part of today’s Media Exploration Day in Digital Storytelling at DPL 2018 was this project.

I did a slightly modified version of a prompt asking us to record sounds from a particular space and create a 5 minute soundscape of that space. But here’s the thing: for storytelling to feel real and important to me, it has to be rooted in a place (or issue, memory, etc) that’s meaningful to me. Even though I’m having a great time at this conference, I don’t have enough of a connection to the University of Mary Washington to feel like crafting a soundscape here would be an authentic thing for me to do. I needed to find a different place, and I chose London.

A little online research brought me to the London Sound Survey and their Creative Commons-licensed collection on archive.org.

I’m pretty happy with the results – I’ve never really done much audio work, and haven’t touched Audacity in years. In the spirit of full disclosure, I spent about 2 hours getting myself oriented in the software, choosing my sound files, and creating the soundscape. I hope that you are able to discover some different aspects of London than you might be expecting, and to experience several different parts of the city all at once – something that can only happen through the magic of digital storytelling.

Filed Under: digital storytelling Tagged With: conferences, DPL2018, learning, technology

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Heather is…

…an Associate Professor of English at Hood College

…an Apple Distinguished Educator

…a humanities advocate

…a taiko player

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