Projects
Statue of Liberty Webquest
Yuri Kochiyama Video Podcast
History of Surfing -TedEd Lesson
“The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge, but to invent the possibilities for the child to invent and discover, to create men (and women) who are capable of doing new things"
-Jean Piaget
In my Statue of Liberty webquest, I attempted to offer participating students a wide variety of resources to help them understand the essence of the historical monument. I believe that using a video to get children interested is an effective way to introduce material. I provided a link to a short, grade appropriate video to spark interest in the more information dense material presented in the articles. The articles are from credible resources to exemplify what credible material looks like. I avoided resources that were too similar as I wanted to make sure students found the materials they were exploring engaging as well as informational. My personal favorite is the interactive People located on the National Park Service website. In terms of the activity, I wanted there to be an element of humor and fun while still maintaining rigor (this lesson was designed for upper elementary school to middle school students). I feel the activity is authentic and can be differentiated to a wide variety of student needs. The rubric is clear and concise and should be easy to follow for any teacher hoping to implement the activity into their unit. This was my first experience creating a website. I am proud of the outcome as I know it has potential in my own classroom someday.
In our social justice inspired video podcast, research and production partner Megan Togami and I explored the life and legacy of Yuri Kochiyama. I was fascinated by the life of the social justice warrior from her time of imprisonment in Japanese-American Interment Camps to her involvement in the Japanese-American Movement for Redress. Inspiration from this project lead me to create a social studies unit plan centered around the Redress Movement. Regarding the video podcast, before initializing production, I analyzed professional podcasts on a variety of subjects. I tried to emulate the dynamics that I found appealing in my favorite podcasts. I also had the opportunity to explore another passion of mine: music. I wrote and performed three different musical compositions on my acoustic guitar; inspired by the content and written specifically for the this video podcast. Needless to say, I was thrilled to be able to include my love for music on this project. Another great aspect of the process was working and collaborating with my research and production partner. We both came into the project with slightly different ideas of what the end result would look and sound like. But once we had finished - after hours of writing, recording and editing - we both felt that we created a product that exemplified both our personalities and ideas.
For my technology exploration project I chose to work with TedEd; a program where a lesson plan can be made based around a TedTalk or YouTube video. I chose to do my lesson on the history of surfing, as surfing is a beloved hobby of mine. The video I chose was titled the Complex History of Surfing. From this video I used the lesson creator to create multiple choice and essay response questions pertaining to the video. I was also able to provide some additional resources on the the Go Deeper portion of the the lesson. In my concluding section, I was able to type out a closing statement for viewers and test-takers to read. While creating my lesson, I was pleased with the simplicity of the process. Overall, it did not take very long to create a lesson that my middle school students could engage in for an entire class period. The only issue I had/have is with the publishing. The first time I created the lesson, I was able to publish seamlessly. After reviewing my work a couple of days later, I noticed an error in spelling and returned to the editor to correct it. After attempting to publish my lesson a second time, I was told there was an error in the process and that my lesson was to be reviewed. This was frustrating as it took me some time to get in contact with human resources. In the end I was satisfied with their response as they reported that there had been a "bug". Within 24 hours of my email, the staff at TedEd had republished my lesson.