The following
is the second installment of a three part story that tells
the tale of what happened when, last spring, I took a shot
at teaching forty-four fifth graders iPhoto and Keynote on
the eve of their big end-of-the-year field trip, and then took
the technology with us on the trip so that the kids could create
for themselves a souvenir that would last forever. If you missed
part one, you can find it
here. And later
this week I'll share part three, at the end of which you'll
have the opportunity to watch the final product yourself. Feel
free to contact
me if you have any questions or if you're
looking for advice on how to make something like this a reality
in your own school. In any case, I
present to you "Part two: three days on a tour bus." Hope
you enjoy reading about it as much as the kids and I enjoyed
living it:
Fifth
Graders Living the iLife, Part 2: three
days on a tour bus
[originally
posted to billpalmer.net on May 23rd, 2003]
Two weeks ago, I stepped onto a tour bus with four iBooks, four
digital cameras, forty-four fifth graders who had just spent
the past two days learning how to use iPhoto 2 and Keynote, and
high hopes. I've worked without a net before, but this time I
felt like I was working without even a rope. Would the students
be willing to participate in a technology project during their
three-day trip, or would the equipment just sit on the bus? Had
they learned enough about the hardware and software in such a
short time that they would be able to put it to good use? Would
my hotel room have enough electrical outlets to charge all these
batteries? Did I remember to shave? I passed out a laptop and
a camera to each adult chaperone, all of whom had agreed to help
make this 'great experiment' possible. When I looked over a few
minutes later to find one of the students showing her chaperone
how Keynote works, I got that good feeling I'd been waiting for.
I figured this just might work after all.
The students did a fantastic job of sharing the equipment. One
of the few things that they didn't instinctively do right was
that they were so fond of taking close-range pictures of each
other against meaningless backdrops. Once they were reminded
that they were going to need to turn their pictures into a presentable
project, they began to find more worthy items to photograph.
Because our trip had multiple destinations each day, having the
iBooks with us on the bus (something that I had debated up until
the last minute) worked out quite well. Students who were sitting
with each other generally worked in pairs to upload photos, edit
them, move them into Keynote, and create slides that contained
meaningful information about each photo. Because we only had
one iBook for each eleven students, this was not easy to orchestrate.
Each pair of students was given only fifteen minutes of bus time
with the iBook. The lesson learned here was to bring more iBooks,
something we'll be able to do next year.
Then there
was the issue of the lone digital camcorder that became a last-minute
addition to our arsenal. I was concerned going in, due to the
fact that none of the students had been trained on how to use
it. When we entered Sea World, I pulled one student aside,
taught him how to use it, and allowed him to film for a bit.
I told him that it was time to give the camcorder to the next
student, and my fears about training vanished when he promptly
took it over to her and taught her how to use it. Is there any
well-designed technology that these kids can't eat up? But even
so, the camcorder didn't make its way around to every student,
so while it was a nice addition, it wasn't going to be the heart
of the project.
I'm not sure whether it was the time spent in close quarters
with so many children, or the fact that I was in the Magic Kingdom,
but by the third day of the trip, I was feeling childish enough
to pull out the camcorder on Thunder Mountain and film the ride.
I share this only because the footage, which I had expected to
watch once and delete, came in handy later. What was more exciting
was the long bus ride home at the end of the trip. It was after
dark, and the bus driver had turned off the lights. The only
lights that could be seen were the glow of the four iBooks, which
slowly made their way around the bus. By all rights, they should
have been asleep by now, after three exhausting days away from
home, but no one wanted to doze off and miss their chance with
the laptop. So much for the fear that the kids wouldn't want
to be bothered with the technology.
While I was
pleased with the results, not everything went right. I made
a conscious decision to break one of my own rules, which is
to never, ever pull brand new equipment out of the box and
immediately try to put it to meaningful use, without first
becoming completely familiar with it (don't ever, ever, ever
buy digital cameras that only use AA batteries), and we ran
into some issues as a result. Such things were to be expected
with such an experimental project that had been assembled in
such a short time. In addition, I failed to give the other
adults on the trip adequate training with the equipment beforehand.
This was entirely my fault, not theirs, and something that
can easily be corrected next time around. The final pitfall
was that looking back on the Keynote slides that the students
had created while en route, a few slides were so irrelevant
to the trip, that they warranted deletion. However, the students
did an excellent job of adhering to our one hard and fast rule
that every single slide had to have perfect spelling, capitalization,
punctuation, and grammar.
Once we got home, there was plenty more work to be done on the
project. The teachers had agreed ahead of time to allow me to
take the participating students in small groups the following
week so that they would be able to complete their slides. Upon
returning to work the following Monday morning, I became so stunningly
busy with my other job duties that it would be a full week before
I would get the chance to come back and work with the fifth graders.
I feared that they would lose interest before I could get to
them, and wouldn't want to put in the hard work this late in
their last year of elementary school. But these fears were also
erased as students asked me when we were going to work on the
project every time I passed them in the hallway. The final results,
which I'll write about in Part 3, were certainly worth waiting
for. In fact, they were better than I ever could have imagined.
Part Three
of "Fifth Graders Living the iLife,"
which tells the story of what happened when we got back to
school and just how forty-four kids all managed to contribute
to the finished product, will appear here later this week.
See you in Part Three.
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