Now They're Animated!

Why would 14 year old freshmen care about 17th century American colonial geography and culture?

Well... they wouldn't, really.

But with an opportunity to created something animated and set to music, they just might perk up.

After learning about how my colleague, Annemarie Cory has been using Animoto to teach MacBeth...
...I was inspired. I could make a dry lesson really engaging if students had an opportunity to make tourism commercials for one of the first 13 American colonies!

(Disclaimer: Yes, I know a television-style commercial for a time and place in 17th century is anachronistic, but my students know that too.  They know the colonists didn't have TV, but they also now know why each of them was founded and how people lived day-to-day if they settled there.)

What Does a Good Tourism Commercial Look Like?

First, students watch a couple of recent commercials from YouTube.  One for Massachusetts and one for California.  I asked them to jot down a list of strategies used in the commercials to make the locations look like a place the viewer would like to go.  Answers included:

  • exciting music
  • celebrities
  • fun activities
  • colorful
  • fast moving
Soon enough they figured out they would be making tourism commercials too, but when I revealed they would be doing it for parts of America as they were 300 years ago, they were intrigued.

Setting Up the Assignment - History First

For their advertisements, it wasn't just about enticing people to visit.  They needed to convince their target audience to come and settle permanently.  They needed to research their assigned colonies.  I provided them with some general summaries from U.S. History.org about the 13 colonies when they were first settled by the English.  They had to find out and take notes on:

  • reasons for settlement
  • leaders
  • attitudes and laws regarding religion, slavery, and women
  • economy (agriculture, imports and exports, sources of labor)

Creating the Animoto - Demonstrating Learning With Technology


Students had to find images that represented the information they discovered about their assigned colony.  They had to plan how they might use the information to make it look like a great place to settle if an Englishmen were looking for a new opportunity.  After finding and citing their images and crafting their persuasive approach, they watched a tutorial on how to use Animoto. Animoto is available via free mobile app or on any computer web browser.
Click here to see the tutorial on YouTube.
Then they got to creating!  It took most groups about 3 class periods to learn the history, organize their images and their marketing approach, and create their commercial in Animoto.

Sharing Their Success

They tried to use the strategies we discussed at the beginning of the lesson.  Founders like James Oglethorpe and William Penn were cast as celebrities.  They chose fitting music and engaging images with minimal text.  Viewers were enticed by growing economies, job opportunities, and a beautiful countryside.  They seemed to understand the importance of offering travelers choices and options.  

Students showed their commercials to one another.  Then they asked their audience what the commercial reveals about the 17th century American colonies.  Here are a few samples:
Click here to see the commercial for New York.
Click here to see a commercial for Pennsylvania.
Click here to see a commercial for Georgia.
Of course, sharing with one another in the classroom is great, but sharing with the world online is better.  Students reported about what they learned from one another on their blogs.  First we mapped out what should be included in their posts.  This way they had some ownership in how they would demonstrate their learning.

Here are some sample posts that resulted:

Megan explained what she learned about colonial New York.

Adam wrote about colonial Delaware.

Shannon's post explained what she liked about the process and some information about New Jersey.

Animoto was easy to learn.  My students were reading, researching, and citing.  All the while they were engaged and excited about the goal they were working toward and they were proud to share their results.  The technology made it fun, but the learning was focused on the history.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Three Social Media Starter Tips

Image
Note: This post was recently  published on the St. John's Prep GOOD to Go blog . Chad Konecky interviewed me and wrote the post based on our discussion. Demonstrating and reinforcing common-sense social media engagement is important, especially when it comes to adolescents and teens. Kerry Gallagher, St. John’s assistant principal for teaching and learning, is leading the Prep’s emphasis on developing best practices when using social media. “Mentoring healthy guidelines like ‘Think before you post,’ ‘be kind and respectful’ and ‘be mindful of who you friend’ are key, but we need to foster—and the boys need to hone—an even keener sense of their life online.” Interestingly, the challenges of building an online identity can become even more difficult if students and their parents choose not to use social media, explains Gallagher. Alternatively, when students do create an online presence, it can become an opportunity to learn how to act appropriately and with accountability.
Read more

Teaching 19th Century Ideologies with 21st Century Technologies

Image
Some concepts are just hard.  They're hard to teach and hard to learn.  Every year that I've taught the History 10 curriculum to sophomores, one of those concepts has been 19th century European political ideologies.  Conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism have never really been pulled together into a lesson that excited me or my students.  We would work through it and we'd both be OK, but never enthralled.  This year I wanted to change that. Part 1: What Do They Already Know? I asked students to define and give examples of each term: conservatism, liberalism, and nationalism.  They used their understandings from a modern American perspective.  We talked it out and they wrote their examples on the Smart Board. Part 2: How Was 19th Century Europe Different? It was REALLY different.  Before going there, though, I wanted them to know what an ideology is. The next step was to help them understand what these ideologies mean to 19th century Europeans.  I found a great
Read more

App-Smashing: A Revolutionary Way to Learn About Revolutions

Image
App-smashing, according to Greg Kulowiec , is: I'm just starting to venture into app smashing as my high school students become more familiar with a variety of iPad apps.  I don't think app-smashing is something that I could have feasibly done much before this point in the year because I needed to familiarize my students with a foundational list of the apps that we will use all year long. Once they have that knowledge base and experience, they can create all kinds of products! The Topic This past week my sophomores created videos about the European Revolutions of 1830 and 1848 .  I wanted to do more than teach them the history; I wanted them to investigate a complex question. We talked about what makes a revolution a success or a failure.  As a class, we agreed on how to design a scale of success and failure for political revolution.  You'll see these scales later in their final products. Getting Started First, they accessed the event summaries and
Read more