Not digital geography at all – but I thought I’d publish these song lyrics by two Year 8 students. The work is one of the outcomes from the choose your own assessment activity from a few weeks ago and reveals a great many of the ideas from the preceding lessons.
Volcanoes,
With the magma chamber underneath,
The magma flows up through the layers of ash,
And lava,
But people died cuz,
Of the poisonous gases,
And the pyroclastic flows of pressured hot ash,
And tar,
I-I don’t know,
Why they live in danger zones,
They live by volcanoes cuz of tourists and farmland,
What about earthquakes?
How do people live there?
They build strong buildings, it’s cuz of tectonic plates.
(Chorus)
Tectonic plates are moving,
All of the countries used,
To be all together,
All together,
Don’t trust the zones,
Never trust the zones,
Don’t trust the zones,
Won’t trust zones,
Tectonic plates are moving,
All of the countries used,
To be all together,
All together,
Don’t trust the zones.
Never trust the zones
Don’t trust the zones
Won’t trust zones,
Earthquakes,
All around the world,
You never get a warning, there is no way to tell,
And buildings,
Collapse and fall down,
Bits inside break off and liquifaction occurs,
Liqui-liquifaction,
Is when buildings,
Turn to liquid,
What about tsunamis?
Tsunamis?
Earthquakes under the sea,
Produce big waves which get bigger by the shore.
(Chorus)
Move guys!
Move right now!
I know you have a reason for living there,
I said move guys!
Move right now!
I know you have a reason for living there,
I said move guys,
Move right now!
I know you have a reason but I don’t really care,
I said move guys !!!!!
Move right now,
I know you have a reason for living there.
My Year 8 project Wellington Stories aims to create a series of geo-located, short stories, poems and videos; and is reaching maturity. The students have created a really interesting series of short pieces that explore their relationship with place. These have all been mapped and the real-world locations tagged with QR codes. The final stage of the project is to publish a photographic record of the QR codes, and to contact the local press with details of the project. Thanks to all those who’ve commented on the work so far.
For those who haven’t seen “Wellington Stories” yet – here’s a short sample:
There’s some new additions to Wellington Stories see map
Several students have opted for poetry as a way to express their opinions about the local area. I particularly liked the video poem about the local cinema.
One of the most thought-provoking discussions (for me anyway) from the Education 2020 unconference was the idea that assessment should allow students to show what they have have learned, rather than what they can memorize. Traditional assessment practice is far too inflexible given the personalization agenda. How for example, can a young film maker or talented DJ demonstrate their achievements, in comparison to a gifted mathematician sitting an A level?
Grasping a somewhat rudimentary appreciation of the various arguments developed at the unconference, I unleashed the question “How would you like to be assessed?” on a Year 8 class that had just completed a long and detailed unit of work on Tectonics. I started by reminding them of key ideas from the unit and asked them to consider how they could show how much they’d learned, one option of course, being a formal test. I was suprised by the range of ideas. Within 10 minutes the class had made 20 suggestions. One student acted as secretary, typing up the ideas on a Power Point slide. Next I invited the class to discuss the merits of each idea, focussing on the need to show a broad and deep understanding of the topic, rather than a specific idea. Votes were cast for each idea. Here is the list with the votes cast (out of 27)
Interpretive dance - a popular and long running joke amongst the students, though a good case was made! (12)
A quiz/game show - possibilities include teacher or students setting questions (5)
Make up a song - song lyrics were considered to be a good way of demonstrating learning (15)
A performance – some kind of play that explores volcanoes and earthquakes (13)
Lego man movie - several of the students are interested in lego movies (15)
Poems – very popular with a few of the most literate students (6)
Radio show - possibility of producing a podcast with lots of appropriate sound effects (13)
Volcano’s got talent – Britian’s Got Talent is already fading from the collective Year 8 memories, so an unpopular idea (3)
Do a biography/story - popular among the same students that enjoy poems (5)
Cloverfield style film - the favourite idea and a possibility with Flip videos. Students felt it suited the topic very well. (16)
Make powerpoints - The idea is that these would be for an external audience and shared on Slideshare (7)
Write a textbook -Â Idea is that students would write for a real audience publishing on a wiki (9)
QR code- a combination of QR codes and display, though most couldn’t see any learning benefits (4)
Depicting artwork - idea is to create a complex instructional artwork in a Where’s Wally? style (15)
Model volcano - idea rejected by most because of limited potential to demonstrate learning (3)
Chatterbox – this idea transpired to be an origami project and was then vetoed by the rest of the class! (2)
Human volcano - Influenced by BGT winners Diversity – a street dance with a narration. Very popular, esp with interpretive dance enthusiasts (15)
Big volcano Split it in half - a suggestion to create a huge wall display to show a cross-section through a volcano (15)
Formal test - a good justification made for a traditonal test by some of the class, but quite unpopular with most (5)
Presentation with different media - idea for a structured presentation of at least 5 minutes using various media to develop speaking skills (6)
Ideas with less than 5 votes were dismissed and the discussion turned to whether or not students wanted to work in groups. Most wished to be part of a team, though several students proposed that groups should be able to exercise the right to fire members not pulling their weight. The class decided that they didn’t want to work on the same task – several “Cloverfield” style films for example, would be boring to watch.
It was a very interesting experiment to try. The debate was rigorous and remained focussed on the key idea of demonstrating learning. The message is that most (but not all) students want to work in a collaborative environment, and they also want to demonstrate their learning by creating, rather than recalling. I’m quite happy with that, though I doubt that the exam boards will be featuring interpretative dance as an option any time soon. What’s important now is to get the students to agree on the criteria for a really good piece of work before they embark on their assesment next week.
The personal geographies project outlined in part 1 of this post has now been published.
Setting up the website:
While the students have been busy creating their stories, I’ve been experimenting with the best way of publishing their work, given the constraints of a filtered network and the e-safety imperative. Originally the plan was to publish the stories on Posterous as this site isn’t filtered (yet) and it offers the advantage of overwhelming simplicity. However it didn’t seem to work well in school (an IE6 issue?) and it doesn’t support the embedding of Google Maps. I was also attracted towards Google Sites because many of the students have Google accounts, and it would have been easy for them to contribute and edit their work and manage photos and video from within the Google network. I wanted members of the public to be able to comment on the students work, but niether Posterous nor Google Sites feature comment moderation, so I looked elsewhere for a solution. I’ve settled on a WordPress.com blog – with just one post on the home page and the rest of the content published as pages. It’s not ideal – for example there’s no point in subscribing to the RSS feed, but it’s easy to manage comments and embedded content, and hopefully I’ll be able to give some of the students authoring rights. The project site is located at Wellington Stories.
The stories:
The students are busy creating their stories and many have opted to use photos and video. In order to sustain momentum, I got them to produce a short placeholder story for their individual page. Each story gets it’s own page on the blog, a unique QR code, and a placemark on a Google My Map.
I was delighted with the placeholder stories which are short, funny and completely immersed in local place. Try a sample – the poignant My Story of Woolworths, and a response to antisocial behaviour: A tree caught on fire are good introductions.
Next steps:
During the course of next week students will start tagging the physical locations of the stories with QR codes and we’ll start a photographic record of the project. We’ll also start uploading some of the more detailed multimedia work and the local paper will be contacted in order to encourage people to download a QR code reader.
Here’s the first of a series of posts to document an evolving participatory geography project. Year 8 students will annotate their local area with QR codes that link to web-based work exploring their relationship with place.
The project began with a question for the class “What do you think is meant by the term “Personal Geography?” Having elucidated a number of very interesting and perceptive comments from the students, we settled on the idea that the places in which we grow up shape our values and attitudes, and the way we percieve the wider world.
Fortunately none of the students had seen the clip, and although one or two had heard of the rider Danny MacAskill, nobody knew anything about him. Without giving away any clues, I asked the class to make some inferences about the place where MacAskill had been brought up. The class was almost unamimous in their view that it must have been a rural community. There were many reasons including:
“There can’t have been much to do around his house, so he got into riding”
“He didn’t have many friends when he was growing up”
“It would be too dangerous to learn his skills in city streets”
“He treats the city like a playground”
There are a number of framed pictures of various places on my classroom wall and it didn’t take too long for the class to identify correctly the photograph of the place where Danny MacAskill grew up – the Isle of Skye…
The discussion re-focussed on the idea that many of the objects in our surroundings become familiar, to the point where we cease to notice they exist. However to a skater or bike rider, the same objects become challenges and opportunities. The concept extends to anyone who uses a place for a particular purpose. A dog walker and a surfer arriving at the same beach are focussed on completely different aspects of the environment. Those students who take the bus to school don’t connect with their surroundings in the same way that students who walk to school do. We also discussed ideas of psycho-geography; the way in which places inspire an emotional response.
The aims of the project
I then pitched the idea of the fieldwork project to the class. The aim is to get the students to consider their connections with the immediate environment. They have been challenged to devise a piece of work that will be published on the internet, and connected with the actual location via QR code markers.
Students were given a sheet on which they could sketch out their proposals. I knew that some suggestions might need to be vetoed, or require parental consent. The suggestions were brilliant – in fact I have rarely been quite so excited by the prospect of a fieldwork investigation. Ideas included:
“Cloud 9″ A poem about a favourite shop
“Memories locked inside me” – looking at the places that hold my menmories
“A movie about the parts of the town that make me angry”
“Places to ride and jump on bikes” – the outcome will be a map
“Unique Wellington” – a photo essay looking at the aspects of the local area that are unique
“A map of trees my stepdad has worked on or cut down”
“Improving the local park” – a series of interviews and videos about the problems of the local park
“Secret stories of the squared bench” – an intriguing idea for telling some of the events that have occured at Wellington’s favourite hang-out spot
The various outcomes planned include poems, maps, stories photos and videos. I was struck by how intensely personal some of the planned projects are. The “secret stories” idea is uncannily reminiscent of the opening lines in the seminal Headmap Manifesto (link to archived version) from several years ago that presaged the arrival of location-aware mobile computing devices and the social implications of augmented realities and ubiquitous wireless internet. For the first time the notorious “squared bench” will be able to tell of some of the funny stories to passing adults that regard it as “just a bench”
The students will be working on their projects mainly in their spare time, though I’ll teach them how to create a Google My Map and the other ICT skills that may be needed. The next stage is to spread the word about QR codes via the local paper – since it would be great to engage members of the public into downloading a QR code reader for their phone and maybe even commenting on the students work – which is likely to be uploaded to Posterous.
My Year 8 class have been working on the Google Earth hazard planning activity: San Francisco: visualizing a safer city. I’ve added some of my own feedback to their placemarks, as the activity isn’t quite finished yet.
Basically, the idea of the activity is to locate a safe site for a new hospital, leveraging the full potential of Google Earth Layers, Street View and some custom overlays of various types of data.
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