That's a Wrap!

As June approaches and summer weather settles in, my students are diligently working away on their final pieces for our SET-BC Synergy project on the Somenos Marsh.  Their spoken word poetry is being recorded, final video and pictures are being taken and all big ideas and student work are being synthesized to create meaningful products that can be shared both with other classes and educators, as well as on the Somenos Marsh Wildlife Society's website.

Since my last post, we as a class settled on video as the format in which we would share our learning.  We have a few students that are keen on making videos and felt that this would be a great visual way to share both our learning process as well as our newfound knowledge and appreciation of the Somenos Marsh.  Initially, as seen in the picture below, we had come up with three video ideas that the class felt would cover all of our objectives. 

Final video ideas for sharing our Somenos Marsh learning

In my last post, I had shared the frustrating experience of using Adobe Premiere pro as a video editing platform and the subsequent switch to iMovie.  This time around, a few of my students were keen to once again give Adobe Premiere Pro a try.  What we have discovered is that while this is amazing software for video editing, it is VERY time consuming.  Additionally, finishing our marsh poetry has taken longer than expected so we have now reconfigured our plans once again and will be submitting two final videos to summarize our project; one video on the learning process (which can be seen below) and one video that highlights the importance of the Somenos Marsh (still in progress).

Overall, I am very impressed by the commitment my students have made to working away on this project over a number of months (see video below for a full explanation).  The process has not always been easy and there have certainly been moments of frustration as well as unexpected setbacks that have slowed down our progress.  Despite all of this, I think that place-based learning is an incredible way to inspire students and deepen their connections to their community as well as to the curriculum covered, as illustrated in the above video artifact.  Furthermore, the addition of professional-grade "cool" technology such as the GoPros provided for us by SET-BC has allowed my students to create videos that they are extremely proud of and has helped to engage students that otherwise struggle to connect with curriculum and traditional classroom learning.