Stumbling Block: Student Apathy

Have you ever seen the Far Side comic strip where the student in class is saying "Mr. Osborne - may I be excused? My brain is full." Well, that's how I'm feeling right about now. My brain is overloaded, and I am feeling overwhelmed. I knew it would happen - it always does in these classes. There are so many amazing tools out there to use with my students, and I can't wrap my brain around where to start. Each one seems to require so much upfront work that I can't even begin to imagine finding the time to get it all figured out. But I am doing my students a major injustice if I don't get them using these tools. I am in such a unique position of having computers for my students to use every day ... I know a lot of teachers who would love that opportunity. In addition, my integration with Social Studies and Language Arts provides a natural tie-in with the use of blogs, wikis, online photosharing, and everything else we've been exploring. So, why don't I just get off my bottom and get started??

If I am to be completely honest, the hold up is that I am freaked out by the whole idea of turning my students loose to publish on the Internet. I think that I could wrap my brain around everything and fight to make it happen if I felt that my students would rise to the occasion. But the bottom line is that I don't think they will ... how sad is it that I don't have faith in them? When I look at the things they write and the amount of effort that they put into their work, I am dismayed and embarrassed. As an example, we have the students do final projects instead of taking a final exam. They typically have two weeks to create these projects. This year, in our group of 45 sophomores, we only had 27 actually turn in a project. The rest just didn't do it for one reason or another. This is the equivalent of not showing up to take your final exam! The juniors were slightly better, with about 70% turning in a final (even if it wasn't finished) and the seniors had about 80%. After 8 years of teaching the level of apathy in our students continues to shock me.

Of the final projects that were turned in, there were not too many that I would want to publish for the world to see. My students are masters of "copy and paste", even though I have told them over and over again that it is illegal and I don't give them credit when they do it. No matter what I say or do, I still get web pages that they have created with the content taken straight from Wikipedia, or some other site. Why? I have done lesson after lesson about how to read information, pull out the important pieces, and then write it in your own words. They do a great job on that lesson, and then seem to forget about it the next time they have an assignment.

So, as excited as I am by the ideas of these new Web 2.0 tools, I am extremely hesitant to use them with my students. When it comes down to it, I don't have faith that the majority of them will care enough to do a decent job and use the tools in a productive manner. When I read the chapter on wikis and the suggestion that students could monitor the class wiki for inappropriateness, I thought of my sophomores and how many of them would find it hilarious to post profanity. It makes me sad to think that I can't trust them with this great stuff! Maybe I could start with my seniors ... they are more mature (usually) and have been with us for three years. For the most part they want to make me proud and they try harder than anyone else.

Now, where to start? I really like some of the ideas for using Flickr, especially to annotate an image or to create a digital image version of a story or poem. One assignment that many of the English classes do at the beginning of the year is to have the students write an "I am From" Poem. This would be a good poem for them to use, in conjuction with Flickr, to create a digital version.

I think at this point I am overloaded, overwhelmed, and extremely discouraged about the apathy of my students. When I read all these blogs and articles about how fabulous these tools are, nobody ever seems to mention struggling with apathy of students. I can't imagine that it's because Web 2.0 tools are the panacea for student apathy. The cynical side of me thinks that the people who write about their students being energized and engaged by the tools are teaching in districts where the kids are just all-around better students. In reality, I know that is not always the case. So what is it then? What makes some students care and some not? How's that for a loaded question??

Multimedia?

When I first read that we needed to embed a piece of multimedia that we created ourselves, I instantly thought of using Windows Movie Maker to create a video clip. Then I read a little further and went to look at some of the Web 2.0 applications that were provided on the sites listed in our learning contract. Then I became confused. Given the examples that were provided I began to wonder if my understanding of the term multimedia was incorrect. I had never thought about it too much before, and I certainly never looked at a definition. It seemed intuitive to me that multimedia would mean a format that provided more than one type of media, such as a video clip with audio included. So, I went to good old dictionary.com and found a several different definitions:

• the combined use of several media, as sound and full-motion video in computer applications.
• Computer Science Of or relating to an application that can combine text, graphics, full-motion video, and sound into an intergrated package.
• Human-computer interaction involving text, graphics, voice and video. Often also includes concepts from hypertext.

Aha! Although I was technically correct in my understanding of the term, I was missing one or two points as well. However, I was still correct in my assumption that a video made in Windows Movie Maker would count as an example of multimedia. Phew!

Windows Movie Maker is a program that comes free with Windows XP. I am not going to profess that it is a perfect program, but it does the job that we need it to do. One downside is that it can be slow, especially when running over a wireless network, and has a tendency to lock up the computers. However, my kids are pretty resilient when it comes to these things - when they spend their days in a wireless lab they tend to get used to slowness and freezing, unfortunately - so they just sigh, swear under their breath and keep plugging along.

I utilize Movie Maker in two ways in my classes. There are times when I create a video for my students to watch, usually to introduce a topic to them through a series of images. It is a fairly simple way to take a collection of images and video clips, put them together with snazzy special transitions and effects, and include text and music if you want. This is an example I created to use with an upcoming unit on wartime propaganda with our US History class.

Propaganda

I also have my students create videos on various topics that we are studying. For example, when doing a unit on Island Cultures, we watched the movie Whale Rider (fabulous movie by the way) and then they did some research on the Maori culture. As part of their research, they created a video which had images and video depicting various aspects of the Maori culture. They also included text to explain what each image represented. For the most part the students really enjoy using Movie Maker. It provides them with an interactive way to work with digital images and video clips, and they get to create something that they are proud of and want to show off.

I'm including two different examples of videos my students made. The first one is from a project they did when we were studying Greek Mythology. The second one is from the introductory lesson for Digital Photography. For this project, they went around the school and took pictures representing the numbers 1 through 12. This is a FABULOUS way to get kids of any age using digital cameras. They have so much fun with it! For my high school students, I just turn them loose on the school (and outside) with a pass and tell them they cannot interrupt any classes. It is usually their favorite project.

Greek Mythology




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