Resiliency

So I got an exciting opportunity recently.  I made contact through Edmodo (in the Project Based Learning community) with an Australian English teacher, Bianca Hewes, who runs this blog.  Like me, she's been teaching for eight years.  Also like me, she's having her students use technology in meaningful, real-world ways. 

For their unit on Catcher in the Rye, she is having them think about the theme of resilience.  She had them make a video in response to some questions about resiliency and how teens become resilient. 

Here's the video her students made:

My students were really excited about making a response video.  The first class to be filmed was 5th period.  Here is their response video (edited through YouTube's video editor).  The sound isn't great, but I did put in a subtitle track to help you when the volume was really bad.  It doesn't work that well for the part where it's really needed, but if you listen with headphones on full volume, you can JUST ABOUT make out what is being said.

Anyway, check it out:

Here is the video first period made:

Here is the video that same class made to explain some of the slang

Here is the 6th period video

I'm pretty proud of them for what they've done thus far.

I have two more classes to compile before we can do the next step, but this part was so much fun that it makes me wonder why I haven't had students make video before.  I mean, with my iPhone and iPad, taking the video was super easy, and then uploading it to YouTube was literally only a click away.

I can't wait to start the next part!  Ms. Hewes has agreed to have her students make another video in response to ours this week.  Then we'll be writing short stories and essays about resilience and our students will edit/review each others' work.  This takes project-based learning to a new level and it is one of the coolest things I've ever done in my career.

You can follow the project on Twitter at #resilience12, or you can read about it here or on Bianca Hewes' blog.