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Jason Schrage
09
Project
Summary
WWII Teach-In Day
1. General Overview of the Proposed
Project:
Students will interview people who lived
through WWII. They will then create video documentaries based on
these interviews. Students will
also create a Wiki detailing the information that they have gotten
about the individuals that they have interviewed. The videos
created will be uploaded, with permission, to YouTube and be
embedded into the Wiki.
2. Clear Purpose and Objective:
The purpose of this project is for students
to gain first hand, an understanding of WWII from the people who
lived it, as well as to document and preserve the stories of this
generation of people for future generations.
3. Stakeholders: grade level, who will
benefit, who will participate in this project.
This project will involve 8th
grade students, people who lived through World War II, as well as
the Wings of Eagles Discovery Center. Students will benefit by
learning good interviewing skills as well as background info on
WWII, as well as using technology to enhance their learning.
Interviewees will benefit from the social experience of seeing their
peers all together in one place.
4. U.S. History Content Area
World War II
5. Outline Describing Content
This will vary depending on which person
is interviewed by a team of students. Past participants have been
Holocaust survivors, Members of the US Armed Forces, Hitler Youth
and Luftwaffe, as well as civilians from the US, Japan, Italy, and
Germany.
6. Software to be used, internet
materials, contacts, etc.
Windows Movie Maker, Microsoft Photo Story,
PowerPoint, Video Recording devices, Microphones, Document
Projector, Digital Cameras,
Outside Wiki server.
7. Level of Student Involvement
Students will work in teams of 4-5, assigned a
presenter by their teacher. From that point on, students will
develop interview questions, conduct the interview in a professional
manner, create an essay describing their interviewee’s experiences,
and develop a video documentary of the day.
Students will also work to create the
Wiki of their presenter, complete with proper Wiki formatting (i.e.
table of contents, etc.) and peer editing of other's wikis.
8. Evaluation process (include students
when possible)
Students will be evaluated by their
presenters through a feedback form. Their essay and documentary
will be graded on a rubric. Students will peer edit both the rough
drafts of the essays as well as the interview questions prior to the
interview date. Students will also write a reflection piece on what
they took from the experience.
9. Timeline: how you envision the
project being carried out between start up and conclusion
Interviews are scheduled for March 31,
2009. We would begin recruiting
participants in January, and students would begin preparing in late
February. Video editing will take place throughout April, with a
tentative completion date in mid
April.
10. Comments or Questions:
Due to the massive undertaking this project
entails, Jason Schrage and Brandon Johnson would work on this
project together.
Introduction/Summary of
overall project:
On March 31, 2009 100
people who lived through WWII were interviewed by over 300 8th grade
students at the
Wings of Eagles Discovery Center. This is
the 6th year that Horseheads Middle School has held the event. For
a complete description of the event please visit the project summary
here.
In addition to holding the
event, creating a memory book, and making
Microsoft PhotoStories, this year we
created a
Wiki and conducted a
live stream of the event in order to
preserve and share the stories with a larger audience. Many of the
seventh grade students were able to watch portions of the Teach-In
Day in their class, and we also received great feedback from people
around the world.
Keep a Journal:
A number of the things that we conducted this year were the same as
last year's project. Information pertaining to what we kept the
same can be seen
here. One of the components we
added to this year's project was the creation of a wiki for the
event. Each group was responsible for making a wiki page for their
presenter, complete with a streaming version of their
PhotoStory. We got the student's
acquainted with using PhotoStory by having them create a PhotoStory
presentation for a unit prior to World War II. Mr. Schrage's
students created a presentation for the Immigration Unit and Mr.
Johnson's students created one for the Great Depression.
As with all things
technology related, there were a few technical issues. On the day
of the interviews, Mr. Johnson's students could not access the wiki
pages as they had been created by Mr. Schrage and weren't set up to
be shared with Mr. Johnson's students yet. As a result, students
had to work offline in Microsoft Word and upload their information
at a later time.
What did we learn?
While the students had some
familiarity with working with wikis, it might be beneficial to spend
a lesson or two on the aesthetics of web design, in the future.
While the information the kids came up with was, for the most part,
very good, the aesthetics of their web pages tended to leave
something to be desired.
One of the possible things we
may consider for next year is changing the write up that the
students have to complete for this project. It is great having the
students work together in groups, but the essays often end up being
very choppy and disjointed when the kids do each of their own
parts. We have also explored the idea of asking our Language Arts
Department to oversee the written reports to make sure the mechanics
of good writing are met.
This is a very involved project. In order to develop quality
reports, PhotoStories and Wiki Pages students need to be exposed to
these skills throughout the school year.
Students also need instruction in how to take quality pictures.
It might be a good idea to give the kids a list of pictures they
should take.
What would we do again?
Live stream the event but with a different add free service. Some
of the ads on the free U Stream service are not appropriate for
school. We have also discussed with a a teacher from BOCES about
possibly having high school students come over to to commentate the
event for our live stream and having roving cameras.
What would we NOT do
again? Switch Wiki formats - This
year we started using Wikis using PB Wiki. About one month prior to
the WWII Teach-In Day a brand new wiki feature was added to ToolBox
Pro. We thought this would be ideal since everything is stored
locally and there is zero cost. The problem is that there were many
bugs to fix and the students needed to learn a whole new Wiki
platform slowing the process down.
How did the students
respond? Overall the students
enjoyed the project. They took extreme pride in developing their
essays and creating Photostories. The really made a connection with
their presenters and took ownership in the project.
How did this project
change instruction? This project
allowed students to apply the skills and content learned in the
traditional classroom setting and apply them to a real world service
learning project.
How will this project
contribute to academic achievement?
In addition to the content knowledge and skills that was learned
through this massive undertaking students realized that history has
a purpose beyond memorizing facts and dates. This projected sparked
their interest in learning which will hopefully lead to better
achievement in all of their courses over the course of their
learning career.
Personal Narrative:
Since this project first
started it has grown every year. At first it was just 1 teacher
then it became the entire 8th grade. We used to have only 1 final
project - the memory book. Now we create memory books, Photostories
and wikis. In addition the project has been "Twittered" and
streamed live on the internet. So many people are involved to make
this happen.
This project has been such a
huge success in so many ways. First, educationally students learn
many historical details that are often left out of the history
books. Second, they make positive connections with an older
generation that help to break down stereotypes. Third they
learn/reinforce interviewing skills and finally this project is
about caring. Essentially this is one huge service learning project
where the goal is to document and record the stories of WWII before
they fade away to be lost forever. So many presenters have called
and written and thanked us for doing this. In fact there was a
letter from the daughter of a WWII presenter thanking us because her
father never talked of the war until the Teach-In Day.
It is my hope that we can keep
this project going throughout my entire career as a teacher. I
realize that the WWII generation will in the near future not be a
possibility but hopefully we can shift the focus to History Teach-In
Day. This way we can open up the event to include people who lived
through all periods of recent history. Students could interview a
Korean War Vet, someone who remembers the day Kennedy was
assassinated and even someone who witnessed the fall of the Berlin
Wall - the possibilities are endless.
This project teaches students
respect and caring. Every year I'm amazed at the passion and
enthusiasm that results from the interviews. We worked for 2 weeks
after the teach-in day this year and our students took their work
seriously as they want to honor and thank their presenter by doing
the best job that they can.
Over the years I run into
former students outside of school and more often and not the one
thing they remember about 8th grade social studies with Mr. Schrage
is the WWII Teach-In Day. For me hearing that is a bigger
compliment then being their favorite teacher or having fun in
class. Hopefully through this project we can help our kids become
educated and caring citizens not just people who memorize lifeless
facts.
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