Instead of the standard introduction essay that I assign to all of my students in all of my classes, the ENG 102 Honor iPad Pilot class was asked to describe themselves with three brief paragraphs answering three questions: 1) Who are you culturally? (Think: Race/Ethnicity, Religion, Socio-Economic class etc.); 2) Who are you subculturally? (Think: Hobbies/Interests, Extracurricular Activities, Music/Artisitcs Tastes etc); and, 3) Who are you professionally/academically? (Think: Major/Class Interests and Career Aspirations).
Once students drafted the paragraphs they were asked to sign-up for an Animoto.com free account as well as a Youtube account using their maricopa.edu email addresses. After a some instruction on how to work with the Animoto program as well as a demo of my own Animoto video, students were asked to create a 30 second video that used a mixture their personal pictures and some flash art that visually represented their three paragraphs. By the next class, each student was to stand in front of the class and discuss their three "Who Am I?" paragraphs, then show their 30 second video on their iPad (using either their Animoto or Youtube accounts)
Wow! What a success!
It was great to see them so enthusiastic at the beginning of the semester. The students really enjoyed working with the simple but effective functions of Animoto as well as the challenge of trying to fit everything they wanted to represent about themselves in a very efficient and concise video. There was 100% agreement that this was an enjoyable and stealthily challenging assignment.
One student even asked, "Can we make a video for all of our writing assignments this semester?"
No comments:
Post a Comment