Technically Invisible

Have you heard?  ASCD’s Empower18 national conference is being held in Boston this year! That means that thousands of educators from around the world will descend upon Beantown at the end of March, ready to soak up learning during pre-conference days, learning labs, reflection pools, student panels, EdCamp programming, keynotes and over 300 concurrent sessions!  Whew!!!

As President-Elect for the Massachusetts affiliate for ASCD, I get to work with both our Massachusetts team and the folks from ASCD to plan several events during the conference.  This collaboration has been a great opportunity to think about ways to showcase students and educators in our Commonwealth.

One particularly fun brainstorming session led to an amazing project featuring 3rd grade students from Mashpee on Cape Cod. In fact, if you are among the lucky attendees to wait in the “Freedom Trail” registration line at Empower18, keep your eyes peeled for this project on television monitors along the way….  These experts are excited to welcome you to Boston!!

Before our project got underway at school, Mr. Brooks and I headed to Boston to take pictures of the Freedom Trail.  It was Veteran’s Day – and VERY cold – but I was able to capture some fun images along the way.  May of the images have been altered to look more like paintings…

In January, our collaborative project began during library classes with all 3rd graders over three sessions. Each class was divided into two groups, with each group being assigned one stop on the Freedom Trail. Because Massachusetts history is a topic of study in Grade 3, it was a great way to activate student learning.  Two class sessions were spent with our fabulous librarian researching the sites on the Freedom Trail, discovering the location, fun facts, famous names in history associated with the stop as well as its historical significance.

Using that information, students spent one library class session in smaller groups writing scripts in shorter scenes (each “stop” on the Freedom Trail had 3 scenes).

At this point, students were becoming experts on their particular stop and were getting excited about the Green Screen studio we had set up.

A 4th session was held in the classroom with the classroom teacher, where students practiced their scenes over and over and over (and over!) again as well as performing for each other.  Costumes were planned and some students explored their deeply-hidden English accents. 😉

Our final session was held in the studio with classroom teachers in attendance.  Students were not only the actors in the scenes, they were also the crew!!  Whether running a camera, adjusting lighting, capturing photos behind the scenes or supporting cast members with a teleprompter, every student had a hand in the production of the videos.   What might have seemed a bit frantic to an outsider was actually a well oiled machine fueled by 3rd grade excitement.

This gallery gives you a glimpse from a student perspective, as the following photos were captured only by 3rd graders:

Check out our finished videos!  The six short videos will play on TV monitors at Empower, while the longer video (at the end) was shared with our school community.

You’ll notice the same music playing in all of our videos. The artist is David Coffin, who I have known for a long time. He used to perform for our third grade students when I was a teacher in Falmouth, and I own several of his CD’s.

One song in particular seemed to fit our theme:  Spered Holvedel. I have always taught my students that permission matters when it comes to using the work of others. So, I wrote to Mr. Coffin to ask him if we could use his song in our video with permission, and he said yes!  We think his song is just perfect for our project.  Thank you, David!!

If you plan to be at ASCD’s Empower18, stop by the MASCD booth and say hi.  Or leave a comment here for our hard working Mashpee students and teachers who stepped outside of their comfort zones to take on such a big project.   I am so proud of them!!!

UPDATE!!!!

I am returned to Mashpee after a whirlwind learning journey at #Empower18.  I so wish the kids from Mashpee were there to see the effect of their hard work.

I snapped some pictures on Friday before the conference really began so students could see just how they were all set up:

I had MANY opportunities to speak about the work the students did – to educators from all over the world. One speech was to hundreds of attendees who were gathered for the Empower18 welcome ceremony, then again at my own session to a crowd of nearly 75, and later on at a reception for Massachusetts educators and leaders. But the most fun was sharing during a video interview with Mark Barnes from Hack Learning:

Here you can get a sense of the excitement that morning – there were bagpipes playing as folks made their way to the Registration area. You can see the TV monitors in the sea of people, which are showing the kids’ videos:

Mashpee students were larger than life!  I spoke to many people who were watching the videos and they were impressed by all the hard work that went into them.  They loved how well spoken our students were and they made many suggestions about what else to do with these videos – like posting them in subway stations ;).  I even spoke to a food service worker who was finishing her shift.  She said she knew it was an education conference but she wasn’t expecting to learn anything.  After we chatted, she said she learned more about Boston and WAY more about what students are doing in Massachusetts schools! How cool is THAT??

Last Video to watch – our videos were featured in the Day One overview video put out by ASCD:

Speak Life,