Instructional
Technology Portfolio University Of West Georgia College of Education April, 2011 Barry D. Thibault |
Home | Resume | Field Experiences |Final Portfolio| Matrix | Resources
Integrating Technology into the Douglass High School Theater Curriculum and the impact on student learning!
Technology Impacts
the Student's Learning at Douglass High School
The impact on students learning in my
classroom has improved while developing and integrating the ideas,
concepts and projects I have learned throughout my course of study at
UWG. The technology concepts developed have allowed me the opportunity
to teach my students while keeping my classroom engaging and fun
with the result of improving my student's learning. With the MEDT
courses I have designed and developed lesson plans and projects
models integrating technology that have become of great value to to my
students and my classroom. Instruction has become exciting for all when
combined with web 2.0 tools in my class and I look forward to
implementing more projects in my future theater lessons.
Implemented Assignments/Projects into the Douglass High School Theater Curriculum
Psychology in Learning and Instruction Schema
My Theater class has been used as the inspiration for this Schema Project, for CEPD 6101 .This project allowed me the opportunity to learn a great deal about my students and their learning habits.
As an educator, it is important to foster my students' growth and development. I have worked on these qualities with my students while learning to work on other important strengths:
A fundamental sense of how learning unfolds in the theater class
Building an extensive repertoire of instructional techniques and approaches based on sound evidence.
The capacity to stimulate thought, engagement while addressing diversity in the theater classroom
The competence to analyze/create, or choose tasks/texts, and tests that are appropriate for learners and for instructional goals.
Student Created Theater Movie Scenes
The ASSURE
Model for creating a 30 second dialogue/conversation movie using the
XtraNormal Web 2.0 tool
http://www.xtranormal.com/index.php?msg=8
Analyze
learners
General
characteristics – This drama movie dialogue/conversation lesson
plan is used in a general theater class in an inner-city city school.
The students are selected from all grades. 9-12, most students are
eager to learn theater but find it difficult to express creativity in a
structured environment. The class is made up of 26 students in which 20
are girls and six are boys.
Specific entry competencies – No prior experience in theater is
necessary and all students are beginners. Tutorial of XtraNormal is
available on website and through required teacher sample movie clip.
Learning styles – Students are hands on and kinesthetic learners.
Students are eager to use the technology to produce fun projects. In
addition, all are eager to work in teams and groups.
State
objectives
Beginning theater students (Audience) will be able to create a
Conversation/Dialogue Theater Movie using the web 2.0 tool XtraNormal
with partners or groups(Behavior) based on a 30 second written
dialogue(Condition). Final Movie must contain (Degree):
• A
character that looks most similar to you.
• A
minimum of 2 characters for your dialogue. No monologues!
• At
least 2 different animations and/or expressions.
• A
change in the scene to something interesting!
Conversation should be no more than 30 seconds
long.
Select
instructional methods, media, and materials
Group written
(30second) script
XtraNormal
website http://www.xtranormal.com/index.php?msg=8
Attached
Lesson Form
Sample Video-
Barry and Dr. Bray
Utilize
media and materials
Utilize the
Sample Video (Barry and Dr. Bray) to create a 30 second scene that
represents group dialogue/discussion work.
Website for
XtraNormal utilization:
http://www.xtranormal.com/index.php?msg=8
Require
learner participation
All students
will be responsible for working with a partner to create their dialogue
script. The movie will be graded with a participation rubric utilizing
all (degree) observations. This is a fun activity for all students and
creates a class feeling of pride in togetherness and working with
groups.
Evaluate and
revise
Revisions
will be made in the class theater by reviewing the movies and
evaluating each groups projects that they will present.. Class
discussion on What could have been done to make movie more interesting?
What was good about choices in their movie? How does creating dialogue
affect the setting and character choice of a stage production?
PBL Immigration: Coming to America
Follow this link to my
project Social Studies/Theater lesson on:
Immigration: Coming To America
http://stu.westga.edu/~bthibau1/
The Project Based Learning project was an invaluable tool in the classroom for improving not only student achievement, but creating engagement in production as well. The projects that students created during this initiative integrated multiple content areas while maximizing instructional time. Project Based Learning helps students develop higher-order thinking skills and technological awareness that will benefit them as students and as future adults. At the conclusion of these activities, my students aquired an understanding of United States history, which was enhanced by their consideration of history from the perspective of those involved in it. Students also developed their writing skills and technological competence.
In this particular lesson, students wrote scenes for a class play about immigration based on the book, “What if your name was changed at Ellis Island” and wrote scripted monologues in the voices of their immigrant characters from their group selected countries. Each group of 4 re-wrote a scene for the overall play of the story including each member of the group writing his/her own theater monologue about the reactions of coming to America based on the books characters.
This project allowed the children to: exercise their Language Art skills, demonstrate their knowledge gained from a social studies unit on immigrants and Ellis Island, interpret the book, present what they had learned about theater monologues and developing characters in theater, while practicing working in groups to accomplish a final goal. The theater students concluded the project by creating a Microsoft Movie Maker Scrapbook of their character displaying technology skills introduced through the class with scripted monologue created using Microsoft Word.
Blogging in Theater Class
Immigration: Coming To America
http://stu.westga.edu/~bthibau1/
The Project Based Learning project was an invaluable tool in the classroom for improving not only student achievement, but creating engagement in production as well. The projects that students created during this initiative integrated multiple content areas while maximizing instructional time. Project Based Learning helps students develop higher-order thinking skills and technological awareness that will benefit them as students and as future adults. At the conclusion of these activities, my students aquired an understanding of United States history, which was enhanced by their consideration of history from the perspective of those involved in it. Students also developed their writing skills and technological competence.
In this particular lesson, students wrote scenes for a class play about immigration based on the book, “What if your name was changed at Ellis Island” and wrote scripted monologues in the voices of their immigrant characters from their group selected countries. Each group of 4 re-wrote a scene for the overall play of the story including each member of the group writing his/her own theater monologue about the reactions of coming to America based on the books characters.
This project allowed the children to: exercise their Language Art skills, demonstrate their knowledge gained from a social studies unit on immigrants and Ellis Island, interpret the book, present what they had learned about theater monologues and developing characters in theater, while practicing working in groups to accomplish a final goal. The theater students concluded the project by creating a Microsoft Movie Maker Scrapbook of their character displaying technology skills introduced through the class with scripted monologue created using Microsoft Word.
Blogging in Theater Class
The educational value of Blogging in the
classroom was extremely important in teaching technology in my theater
class this year. I believe blogging taught students collaboration and
organization while using the conveniences of technology. This
convenience was important for all students to learn in my classroom
setting. Students learned how to create several blogs depending
on their purpose and goal and decide who to invite to view their
creation.
As a teacher, I suggested ideas on blog topics and helped my
students to be creative in their blogging choices and acted as a guide
which allowed the students to feel more confident in their blogging
creation.
My future plans to continue blogging in the theater classroom include
integrating the blogging features to share ideas with other theater
classrooms in the school or district. With older students, blogging can
eventually became a national or global lesson on collaboration with
others an any given education curriculum.
Using Comic Life software in the classroom!
In my Comic Life example, I decided to create a music themed comic featuring several well-known singers from all types of genres in music. I thought it would be a great way to start off a lesson on local artist to help teach students about the music from the state of Georgia. This sample lesson was used to help students see the creativity and ideas involved in creating their own Comic Life project about new theater shows.
This has been a fun project to work on because it is very easy to understand and the program allows for a student's true creative side to be expressed.
Voicethread projects in the classroom
VoiceThread is a
communication tool that adds excitement and creativity to
presentations. The VoiceThread project makes sideshow presentations
used in the theater classroom an interactive, collaborative, learning
experience for all students involved.
My students were able to use VoiceThread to create a time line of the student's day. Students recorded themselves describing different events of the day. It was a great tool to use as all students found it fairly easy to utilize and most technology was available in the classroom computer lab. The following sample was used for my theater students as a way to explain music as math in the classroom
http://voicethread.com/#u479090
This sample was just an example for students to use while they presented their own creative Voicethread on their daily timeline.
My students were able to use VoiceThread to create a time line of the student's day. Students recorded themselves describing different events of the day. It was a great tool to use as all students found it fairly easy to utilize and most technology was available in the classroom computer lab. The following sample was used for my theater students as a way to explain music as math in the classroom
http://voicethread.com/#u479090
This sample was just an example for students to use while they presented their own creative Voicethread on their daily timeline.
Integrating Technology into the Fine Arts Building
This year our Fine Arts
Dept. including the Douglass High Theater, Band, Orchestra and Chorus
classes have finally received computers after a 4 year fight to include
a computer lab for the students. This lack of computer technology has
made most teachers reluctant to the use of technology in their lesson
plans and unsure of how to use them with the classroom. The only
integration that was being used was the use of their laptops to develop
lesson plans and email communications! Our department did not even have
projectors or screens in most classrooms.
After the initial lab set-up the dept had a meeting about planning and developing an action plan and computer use policy for all students. I was able to share some ideas that I have learned in the past year in my technology courses at West Georgia and developed some ideas for the computer labs.
In our planning, most teachers told me that the wanted to include the use of the lab for research and theory based software for students to increase their class knowledge and supplement learning. This was a good start for a group that has never used computers before but after sharing some other ideas they were shocked and excited about the true capabilities of this new lab.
I was able to show the group a class web site that I created and they were excited about the idea of having the students continue the site and help to develop our first Douglass Fine Arts Web Page that would include some class room instructional ideas and media. This would definitely get the students excited about the learning again in the classroom. I was able to show them some instructional videos that I created with movie/audio producing software and they were now starting to see the true capabilities of a true lab.
As a team, we decided to change some typical, boring general music classes that we all needed to teach for the general school population that needed fine arts credit. The new MUSIC TECHNOLOGY courses will include the use of the lab to develop created music and video segments and web pages for all classes.
Douglass fine Art Grant Application Douglass Fine Art Computer Lab AUP
After the initial lab set-up the dept had a meeting about planning and developing an action plan and computer use policy for all students. I was able to share some ideas that I have learned in the past year in my technology courses at West Georgia and developed some ideas for the computer labs.
In our planning, most teachers told me that the wanted to include the use of the lab for research and theory based software for students to increase their class knowledge and supplement learning. This was a good start for a group that has never used computers before but after sharing some other ideas they were shocked and excited about the true capabilities of this new lab.
I was able to show the group a class web site that I created and they were excited about the idea of having the students continue the site and help to develop our first Douglass Fine Arts Web Page that would include some class room instructional ideas and media. This would definitely get the students excited about the learning again in the classroom. I was able to show them some instructional videos that I created with movie/audio producing software and they were now starting to see the true capabilities of a true lab.
As a team, we decided to change some typical, boring general music classes that we all needed to teach for the general school population that needed fine arts credit. The new MUSIC TECHNOLOGY courses will include the use of the lab to develop created music and video segments and web pages for all classes.
Douglass fine Art Grant Application Douglass Fine Art Computer Lab AUP
| Last Updated By Barry Thibault March 29, 2011 |