Blog #24 – Evaluate the learning process
You have finally completed the journey – you have chosen a colony (no, actually picked it out of a hat), completed three weeks of online, book and oral research (that’s if you interviewed someone about your colony), and then wrote a script and put together story boards for the film. Then you shot the film.
Some of you chose interior locations – homes, local restaurants – or outside locations – back yards, local parks, and a colonial living history center – and you made your film. You gathered your props and costumes and actors (including a dog) and set out to make a masterpiece.
We laughed, we learned, I cringed (and cried inside -JK!) when Lenny/Ort jumped over the fire pit.
So, how much would you say that you have learned on this quest?
1. What did you learn about researching your colony compared to more contemporary topics, like the wikis last year? Discuss the types of sources that you found or didn’t find compared to the contemporary project.
2. What did you learn about filmmaking and all of its unforeseen speedbumps?
3. If you could fix/tweek/redo this project, what would you do differently and why? Think about all aspects of the project including filming, sound, music, location, script, pacing of the film, and information.
4. Did the film get a better or worse reaction from your classmates than you expected? Explain your answer.
5. Assess how valuable this experience was – from the research to the team work to the video production process – as a whole and explain whether or not you felt that next year’s APUSH students could benefit from something similar. Please explain your reasoning.
Please pick four of the five questions to answer and have it done by Friday, Oct. 7 before class. 300 word minimum for the total blog answer.
1. The research for this project was much easier than the research for last year’s project. Less has been written about the fixed World Series than has been written about a 100 year span in the history of Maryland. Also, the variety of resources with this project was greater. With last year’s project we used mainly books about baseball. For this project we found books that were written entirely about our colony and we also were able to find more resources on the internet than we did last year.
2. I personally did not learn anything new about the filmmaking process. This project did reaffirm, however, my dislike for using cookie cutter video editing programs like camtasia or imovie for projects since they will rarely ever do what you want them to and you are forced to compromise in order to get the job done.
3. I would defintely have not made the sound on our video an incomprehensibly deep narration. At the very least we could have autotuned our song. I would have rather stuck to our original interview idea and simply removed all the grandma inappropriate language and references that had been included in the original script.
5. I didn’t like this project. In my eyes this was just an excuse to include “21th century learning” in our curriculum. The idea of forcing people to use technology to learn is not what education should be. I didn’t gain anything from this experience nor did I become more skilled at using technology. To be honest I’m not a fan of projects in general since they aren’t as much about showing what students have learned but rather become a time consuming inconvenience that disallows students from succeeding in the other aspects of the class as well as their other classes.
2. I learned that filmmaking is a long process, from writing the script to filming over and over again to editing. I wasn’t expecting the film process to take as long as it did. To be honest, I was planning on finishing filming the video during class time, however, my group ended up having to stay after school for a couple hours. In order to get the most preferred video clip, it takes a lot of different tries. First, you need to do a practice try so that you get all the words correct and know what to say. Then, you have to film it until it is perfect. I was surprised at how many times my group had to keep redoing the takes. Also, although I didn’t edit the video, editing is a very long process, as you have to choose which clips you are going to use and then cut the clips to specific areas. Overall, I learned that the filmmaking is an extensive practice, but I was happy with the way our video turned out.
3. If I could fix this project, my group wouldn’t be reading from a script. It is a lot more effective if you are talking directly to the audience instead of looking down at a piece of paper. Also, I might have wanted to use more props and dress like they did back in the 1600s.
4. I think that the film got a better reaction from the students than I had expected because I didn’t think our video was going to be as interesting as the other videos, but we received good compliments and were told that we provided a lot of information. Since the class learned from our video, the purpose of making the video was accomplished, thus making our video successful.
5. I think I learned a lot about my colony through this experience because instead of writing down notes and being tested on it, I actually acted it out and learned from my experiences. For the future, I would suggest that the students are given less time to complete the project because my group didn’t use the full three weeks to complete it.
1. It was much harder to find information about our colonies than it was to find information about my wiki last year, regardless of the type of source. For my wiki (triangle shirtwaist factory fire), Sarah and I were able to find more information than we ever were able to get through in all forms of media (books, magazines, videos, websites), but I felt like my group really struggled to find information about our colony, even online
2. I don’t think I really learned anything particularly important about filmmaking, at least certainly on the professional level. I have an even higher level of respect for home videos people make, but I didn’t see learning about filmmaking as the most important part of the project.
3. I would have spent longer on the script and tried to put more information into it. I also think I would have added maps with voice over or something, if we had been able to find them.
5. Even though I believe the group work was valuable, I didn’t get very much out of this project. As a general rule, I really dislike video projects, because of the massive headache caused by figuring out all of the logistics of filming and dealing with frustrating movie software and other technological difficulties. I understand that part of this project was to encourage problem solving, but I feel that there is a certain point where the frustrations grow to outweigh and educational experience of dealing with problems. In terms of learning about colonies, I feel like the only colony I learned anything about was my own colony. Even though I took notes during other videos, for everything I wrote down, I missed 3 or 4 other important facts. If a video project is assigned again in the future, I think each group should be required to write an overview of their project (important dates, people, etc.), that is handed out to everyone. Also, we only got to see the colonies that had group members in our class, so we missed about half of the information we were supposed to learn.
1. I learned about the economy of New Jersey and more about the founders, slavery and religion than we ever learned in class about any of the colonies. In class we only talked about a few colonies and never very in depth. The video gave us a chance to learn a lot about a colony but watching other peoples video didn’t help as much as I would have thought.
2. In our group we didn’t really have any unforeseen speed bumps while filming or editing. Everything was fairly smooth sailing and we worked well together. Throughout the filming process we easily found places to film, information and it all just fell into place. Other than the unforeseen event that we need to re-film certain parts of our video I would say it was an overall success.
3. If I could fix, tweak, or redo this project I would have gotten more feedback from people to see if someone found it offensive. The people we asked thought it was good but obviously we needed to get opinions from more people. Other than that I would pick a spot where there was less glare and wind for certain parts of the video. It made it hard to hear and see from the camera so it made the video look unprofessional.
4. I got a reaction to the video that I didn’t expect. Depending on whom I asked they either said it was their favorite video or they said “how could you think that it was ok to do that”. Majority agreed with the first person but it is all personal preference. Personally I thought it was very funny but when I watch it now do see how some people could feel differently or be offended by it. So I can’t say if it was a better or worse reaction because the reactions were all over the place.
2. It doesn’t particularly help when you’ve forgotten how ridiculously hilarious your video (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nZxrB6kWgVM) script is, and what excellent actors your group members are. Just look at those bloopers at the end of our Extended Cut. *shameless self-advertising* It does well, however, to have your script memorized! Seeing videos where the actors are CLEARLY looking at a script as they film makes me cringe.
3. One of our earlier ideas in the planning stages was for me and Sarah to bring a video camera (along with other necessary props) for the weekend that we went up to Camp Copneconic for orchestra camp, and for us to film part of the explorers segment actually IN a canoe, ON the lake. I think that that would have been really cool to actually do. In my opinion, our filming locations could have used a bit of variation as well–the entire thing was filmed in and around Jenny’s house, which isn’t a completely bad thing, but more locations could have made it more interesting. (I also might have picked different music for the John Mason scene. It was slightly disturbing, even for us.)
4. My only expectation from the audience was for them to, while learning, laugh hard and laugh often. In this endeavor, I’d say our video was quite successful. Except I can’t be completely sure about the learning part; I’m not a mind reader. Learning directly varies with how much one pays attention, and some people are just bad at paying attention sometimes.
5. While we were researching facts for the video, we learned quite a lot. Not all of this information made it into the script, obviously, but I digress. Not only that, but it was just an overall fun project to work on. Should you use this project for your future APUSH classes? Definitely. (I disagree with Mallory, though. Keep the three week time slot; our group was working until the night before.)
1. I found that researching our colonies was actually a lot harder because there are so few firsthand accounts and it’s harder to be sure of your sources. Also, Teddy Roosevelt was a topic with enormous amounts of information, but New Hampshire is a very obscure, weird colony which made it harder to get lots of good information. For some reason it was never mentioned much in books or the internet but eventually online databases were effective.
2. I already knew that filmmaking is a delicate process that often results in goofing off, temporary loss of equipment and that heart attack moment where you think your camera may have managed to delete the things you just filmed and really didn’t want to film again because it was freezing outside. Another difficulty is that the more people you have, the harder it gets to keep everyone unified and on task.
4. Our film got a better reaction than I expected because I was half cringing in terror with the thought that our video was absolutely ridiculous and half laughing along at our own jokes. I felt a little better about our video when I saw Lenny jumping over a fire pit. It made things like the elevator music, devil worshiper, and a tree-fearing Sarah seem not so bad.
5. On the whole I felt that this was an OK project but it wasn’t paired with the right unit or something. I feel like I learned a fair amount about my own colony because I researched it, but not much about the others because it was hard to pick out important information in a student-made video. I think that stricter rules and guidelines for the project would have kept everyone a bit more in line and helped make them more informational. Also, I hate to say it, but for the question Eli Sherman brought up a few solid points that I agree with, such as the fact that it is time-consuming and there are more useful things that we could be doing with our class and after school time.
2. I learned many things about filmmaking during this project. For one, it takes a lot of work to make a video. First my group had to get all of our research which didn’t take that long when we got to work at getting information, but then we had to write the script and decide how we wanted to organize how we were putting all our ideas. Since I didn’t do the editing of my group’s video, I can only imagine how much more time it took to get everything organized and in the right sequence, but after not doing that much stuff involving videotaping before, I learned a decent amount with this project.
3. If I were to redo this project some things that I would have done differently would be first to use the time in class wisely. We thought that having a script was necessary to start filming, but really we could have just filmed without making a complete script and just going off of information that we had. This way we could have probably finished our whole project almost during the 3 class periods we had instead of having to stay after school some days. Also I think we could have done more research at home individually to save more time. Another thing that could have gone differently is more organization with the script instead of random information mixed together.
4. I think the film got a better reaction than I expected, we worked hard on it and I didn’t think that compared to the other videos we would have been as interesting, but we got told that we included a lot of information that was straight and to the point so I’m glad that we got to teach the class some stuff about our colony.
5. I think this experience was very valuable in my opinion. I’m not the best test taker because of stress and this was a way to make the learning experience more fun. It was fun to watch the other videos and I actually could take in and remember the information by watching something visually and entertaining, instead of reading black and white in a book. I think the next year APUSH kids could benefit and they’d have a fun time doing it too!
2. I learned that filmmaking is a difficult process, because anything unexpected can happen. For example, when we all got together to film, we found that the camera we were going to use was about to die. This delayed us in our work because another group member had to go back to their house to pick up their camera and bring it so we could use it. Filmmaking is also difficult when you have to work with people like me who couldn’t stop laughing during shooting, so we took a million takes, which also delayed us in our work.
3. If I could redo this project I would have worked more diligently on finding the facts, because it took us forever to get all the information. I also would’ve tried not to laugh during filming, so we could’ve finished earlier. I think we should’ve gotten more props, just to make it seem more authentic. We also should’ve spell checked our credits and shouldn’t have read off of a script.
4. I think our video got a better reaction from my classmates than I expected, because people laughed and learned something out of it. They said we had good information and it was audible. The whole point of making this video was so that others could learn something about Pennsylvania in a fun and educational way. Considering that we had good remarks from my classmates, I’d say that my group accomplished this task.
5. I think that this project was valuable because researching the material on our own made us more independent; Mr. Wickersham didn’t have to spoon feed us the information. We learned to have patience with each other during the filming, because some of us couldn’t correctly say our lines right away, which led to multiple takes. I liked this better than taking a test on the 13 colonies. This video allowed me to act out what I learned, and watch other people act out what they learned. Next year’s APUSH students could benefit from something similar because they would learn about team work and it’s an easy way to teach this topic.
1. Compared to the wikis, researching the video project was pretty easy. It was a presentation of facts to our classmates in the simplest way we knew how. For some of us, it was rapping, and for others, it was going down to the local KFC and buying up a lot of chicken. To research the video, our group started on Wikipedia and from the linked sources, we were able to find a plethora of information to put into our video. Since everything about the video was digital, I thought it quite time-consuming to spend time researching the colony in a book when better information was available with the click of a mouse. We, of course, had to be weary of the sources we used for the video.
2. I have been filmmaker for as long as I remember. There’s always been at least one video camera in the Ayres house. With that being said, I want you to fail me, sir. I feel that the project was not up to my normal par and the video itself was horrid. I need a Mac, too. I think that’s what I learned most of all. You simply can’t depend on Windows and their damned PCs. In the future, I’ll buy a Mac and get the majority of the filming done for the task at hand ASAP.
3. I would go out and buy a Mac. I’m not even joking. The PC I used to edit the video sucks major a-word. With the Mac, I would edit the video, which I believe was pretty good, albeit the quality sucked, with iMovie or maybe even Final Cut and then present to the world a masterpiece. Children everywhere would gasp with excitement at all the cool knowledge they learned about the colony of Maryland.
4. I expected the class to love it. They, for the most part, did. My rapping was unintelligible, though, and I doubt anyone learned anything. Damn Camtasia!
1. I liked researching the colony this year better than the wikis last year. For one, the wikis were so boring. i knew that once i finished searching for information to use on them, i would just be putting it on a website that no body would ever look back at or remember. WHile i was reading the question i had to think a minute about what the wikis were, thats how memorable that project was! I learned that it was way cooler to go and ask my siblings what they knew (or thought they knew!) about Georgia, so i could use that in my video. Also, just knowing that in the end we would get to be filming our findings made me like the project even more. With all the people in our class, i was sure it was going to turn out so funny, and it totally did.
2.oh gosh, the filmaking was actually hell. We sat and worked for a huge amount of hours and got 1 minute of footage! and there were all sorts of problems with the camera. At one point we had to use ophelies mac and you can tell how different the quality is when you use an actual camera as opposed to a computer. When we were figuring out a way to send it all, the USB was like not cooperating. Good thing it all worked out in the end!
3. if i could do it differently, especially after i saw everybody elses stuff, i would definitly put in more information. i feel like we just didnt have enough in and we put in only the bare minimum. Also, ours was a lot shorter than everyone elses so i would definitly add more to the time. OTher than that, i think our location was pretty and our script was decently funny
4. Well, we never got to watch our film so i have no idea what my classmates would have thought. Like i said, ours was pretty short. Also, i thought everyone in the class had really funny, creative videos, and if i had to compare ours to any of theirs, ours is definitly the worst one. Sad, but true.
1. I found that the research phase of this project was much easier than for the contemporary project last year. There were many more paper sources for this project than there were for the contemporary project, it was easier to find books and encyclopedias for this project.
2. I learned that when you’re making a film, sometimes you have to film a scene over and over. And over. AND OVER. And you still don’t get what you want from the scene so you either scrap the scene or leave it in and leave the scene crappy. Film craft is frustrating.
3. I would love to be able to redo this movie, because if I could I would change everything. I would make the script longer, the sound would have been louder because you can’t hear some of our group members, the location would have been more natural, the script would have been longer, the film would have been paced a little faster, and there could have been a lot more information than there was.
4. I haven’t presented my project to the class yet, but I think that it will get a generally negative response because we could have spent a lot more time on this project as a group than we did.
5. This question is my favorite. I thought that this project lacked educational value because I felt everything that I learned in the 8+ hours of working on this project I could have learned by reading articles on the history of Georgia or reading a book or doing assignments. This project was stressful and I learned very little. I think that the APUSH students next year should at least have the option of doing a conventional poster board presentation, if the project isn’t eliminated entirely, because I feel their time would be better spent in an alternative learning experience.
1. The substances I used for this project were very similar then that of my Henry Ford Wiki, except in that my group had intended on interviewing a professor of Native American’s in the Rhode Island area but he never emailed us back. I hope his sump-pump breaks. But we did find lots of good websites and online journals that provided more information than we needed.
2. I learned that filmmaking is much easier thanks to photo booth and my Mac. However I also learned mom has not given up her dreams on being an actress and insisted upon holding the afghan (I later fired her for her inability to remain quiet during filming) I also learned that Lizze is a great movie maker and knows much more about YouTube and film editing than I probably ever will know (not that that is saying much).
3If I could change something about the film I would get a better camera and lighting system for all of us. I would also speak a little slower in my segments of the video I thought that for a movie where none of us filmed at the same time EVER we did all right, it was a shining example of improvise, adapt, over come. And also I would change our state to Vermont so I could talk about Ben and Jerry’s Ice cream… ☺
The response of our class mates was much better received then I thought. In 9th grade I did I really bad video on the digestive system where literally nobody laughed. So I was expecting the worse. But thankfully our group got a few chuckles and you seemed to enjoy it. It wasn’t as funny as Sarah and jenny’s video though. If I posted it onto rotten tomatoes id probably give our movie a 87%.
1. Finding information about the colonies was very different from researching about the early 20th century. One reason was that there are probably people alive who lived during the early 20th century or they are one generation away from people today. Colonial times on the other hand felt somewhat interpretive because people look at records and written experiences when finding information. I had more trouble relating to the experiences that I read about.
2. Our group had about 20 minutes of film. We had a lot of fun filming so we really wanted to make it good while keeping it interesting and mixing it up. We drove all over to create scenes to places like forests, fields, churches and lakes to make the video more realistic and one day we even worked for four 3.5 hours. I learned that filming is as good as you make it so we had to work hard if we wanted a good video. One thing that made this process a lot easier was Willie’s amazing editing skills he took a class for it once and made our video one of the smoothest and most effect-filled ones.
3. One problem was that for some groups an attempt to be funny got in the way of actually giving information. Sometimes you couldn’t hear or people were reading off scripts. One thing I would change is that we only watched half of the videos so we didn’t learn that much overall about the colonies.
4. Our film got a little bit worse reaction than we anticipated because we didn’t realize that our film would be offensive. We knew slavery was a touchy topic but we just never realized that our video would be offensive. I think people thought it was funny and we were happy that Willy’s editing impressed everyone. Finally we hoped people appreciated our lack of scripts but it was unclear if they did.
1. The research from last year went a lot smoother. I liked the wikis a lot better because you could get a ton of info done very quickly. It took a lot less time and looked organized in the end. This was just a mess. We took forever to get the info that we didn’t use, then took a couple days to film. It probably took 3-4 times as long and got extremely stressful. It was satisfying in the end, but probably wasn’t worth the stress
2. I learned that filmmaking is fun. In very small amounts. I’m a terrible actor so I always screw up the scenes about halfway through and take about 10 takes on one scene. After about half a day’s work I’m worn out and need sleep or just to get out of there. Also, I learned that I’m an extremely controlling person. As soon as I get the camera, I force my ideas in on my group whether they like it or not. This delayed the filmmaking process and it took a couple of days to finish our film.
3. If I could redo the project I’d add a lot more info. I had no idea coming into to the script about how much all the other groups would have. I figured, hey, I’ve got all his necessary junk and 2 or 3 interesting facts, that should be enough. All in all we had about a minute of info and 4 minutes of bull. Also I’d pace the film better. Instead of writing the script as I went, we should have had it planned out and it would have gone a lot smoother.
5. Yes, next years apush students should have to go through this too. It’s a lot easier for you to grade, plus we got to learn teamwork(?). I learned how awesome a director I am.
2. I learned that when we made the film it actually took a long time and A LOT of collaboration. We had to make sure we had a camera, and we had to make sure with all our combined belongings that we had even a few whole costumes. We should have made props we had to make sooner to take up less time. But I also learned that with the right program, work ethic, and people, you can get a lot done really fast in a really fun way.
3. I would probably time the script more times than we did so we didn’t have to edit it as much, and probably make a conscious effort not to write so much, so we don’t have to edit out some of our favorite parts later. We probably would have used a more remote location (one that included water) if the day we chose to film turned out nicer, so all in all, choose a better day to film. (CHECK THE WEATHER!!) But really it turned out amazing in the end.
4. I though it actually turned out better. I mean it seemed like a lot of people actually really liked it, even though it was a little silly. (And by silly I mean incredibly awesome.)
5. With all the silliness and goofing around, I actually learned a lot about New Hampshire when I originally knew NOTHING and I mean nothing. Seriously. Not only was this project more fun than any other school project I’ve ever done. I had fun with my team mates while we were productive and had some fun with it. I would highly recommend this being a future project for the incoming APUSH kids. It was productive, fun, and I learned a ton. I think that everyone would have a lot of fun with this like we did and retain the info easier.
1. The research with the wikis last year was way better I think. We could plot it our own way and everyone in the group could actually put what they wanted in the wiki without worrying because in any case it was just more info and there was no limit. While on the videos we were four to agree on a scenario and on the information to incorporate. All it did was create tension in our group and the will to learn just went down. I know I got frustrated with them way too many times. I regret it very much. Last year I turned in the wiki proud. My video not so much.
2. I enjoyed filming at first. It was new and it was fun. But after the tenth shot of the first scene, I was getting a little annoyed. It was my first time using the Imovie application on my computer so it was hard to get around. I needed time, but the group and I were tired and it stressed us. Then our camera died. So we had to quickly find another way to shoot it.
3. I would for sure add more information if I could do it again. We never made an initial script and we just added on as we went making our information sound completely useless. I am shamed of how little the information is. We just put the bare minimum in.
5. I am not sure if you should make your next years students to do it. I understand that its a fun way to learn for others. But the process of it was rough. My team work was pathetic and we didn’t even collect god information. I am so disappointed that I do not recommend it. It is nothing against you. I think it was a great idea. But I think the result of it was not very good.
1. I learned that researching for a colony was a little more difficult than a person. I was able to find plenty of information on modern day Pennsylvania, but when it came to looking up what its early economy was like or how it got started was a bit more challenging especially compared to looking up when a person was born and what they did throughout their life. I found a lot more information on early Pennsylvania in books specifically about colonial America instead of the internet. While there were some helpful websites they did not really seem that trustworthy and usually did not provide that detailed of information. When we researched the people for the wikis, though, it was really easy to type in their name and find two or three reliable sources on the internet, as well as looking them up in books.
2. I did not think it would have been so hard to speak in front of the camera. The problem was mainly trying not to laugh and staying concentrated and what you were going to say or do. It was hard to stay focused all the time and when it was time to get really serious it was hard to stay that way. It took a few takes just to get one scene just the way you wanted it and it took quite a bit of time.
3. If I could fix/tweek/redo this project I probably would have tried to actually memorize my lines. The day of filming I just went through the information a few times and then sort of winged it in front of the camera, but then I got nervous so I fumbled with what I was going to say. Overall though I think we did a good and organized job on it.
5. I thought you learned a lot about your colony, but not necessarily the others. There was a lot of research and time involved and this project forced you to really read about your colony since you had to record the information on film and overall I thought everyone did a good job, but there were parts where it was hard to understand the information or even what was going on in the film at all. Mainly the issues were just sound like wind interference or the microphone not picking up what they were saying. But overall I thought this was a pretty interesting experience.
1. One interesting resource we used was actually Brown University’s website (recommended by Wickersham himself). It gave a lot of information on slavery during the time of the colony, but I never would of thought to check there. I found a professor who specialized in colonial and Native American history, and he would have been interesting to talk to, but he never responded to my e-mail. Other than that, the sources were all pretty much similar. “Rhode Island Firsts, Facts, and Trivia” was my favorite because it was just a list, so easy to read, and it really did have fun facts you wouldn’t find in a textbook.
2. When we first made our script, I looked at it and thought it must of only been two minutes long, but it was actually three times that. It had to be cut back a little bit and changed to keep under time, but with all the information still included. That cut out some of the funny parts, but the information was more important.
3. I would want to make it a little more interesting with more acting and a better location and music. After seeing other groups, ours wasn’t as entertaining, but I think we did a really good job of providing the class with information with a little entertainment. It’s hard to find a mix of funny and informative in under 5 minutes. Jenny’s group did a great job of that, and I’d definitely keep theirs in mind when doing it again.
5. I learned a lot about my colony, but others, not so much. Some of the videos were more funny than informative, and it was hard to catch all the information. Maybe if instead of us taking notes on the video, each group wrote an important note sheet to hand out to everyone. The team work didn’t go as well as I would of liked. I’m not really sure if there was a miscommunication or what, but things happen and we got through it. Something that did work really well was each filming our parts separate. It was so easy to get it done whenever we had free time, then put it all together. I don’t think we needed that much time in the lab either. One solid day in the lab would have been good, then another free day to go film throughout the school or something.
1. Last year for the wiki project I think that I learned less because we just had to put the information down on the page and be done with it. With the video we had to think about a way to visually show the information, and we had to talk and memorize the information too. Also when you’re editing a video you have to listen to things a lot of times to make sure that things make sense and flow.
2. Well we learned first that you need to make sure that you charge the camera so that you don’t have to wait for someone to go home and get their camera. Then I would have printed out the right set of notes so that we didn’t have to spend a ton of time trying to write notes down. . Also, when working with a bunch of friends it can be hard to stay on task. We spent a lot longer on this project than we intended to because we had a hard time getting started.
3. For the research I think that we should have used out time more wisely. For the video I think that I would break up the long interview with Elizabeth, or find another way to integrate some of the information because that part seemed really long. I think that I would also try to make it more interesting. And I wouldn’t have made a spelling error in the credits.
5. I think that this was very beneficial because it helped to learn the information better from both our own video and our classmates. I think that having people act things out help you to remember the information better because you can remember things that made you laugh or that were creatively presented.
1. I think the wiki research last year was a lot more helpful, although it was more work. First of all, I liked that we could pick our own topic for the wiki, because we picked an enjoyable topic so the work seemed easier. Secondly, the wikis made the project seem much more worthwhile; in this one it seemed like the one thing I was most stressed about was cutting the video to fit the time limit. Also, now I remember a lot of random facts about my wiki topic, while, no offense to South Carolina, I’m probably only going to remember the word “Smashing” when I think of it.
2. I liked filming, since I was the one doing it and I really really really like the process of cinematography, although I don’t really like the programs we had to use. Really the one major speedbump was figuring out how to improve sound quality but that’s easily fixable with a better quality camera.
4. Our film got a better responce than I expected, because while I really thought our video was informative and relatively creative I didn’t really think it was all that funny, like pretty much the majority of the other videos so getting some laughs out of people was nice to hear.
5. I think the APUSH students next year would benefit from a video like this but not necesarily at the expense of some other projects (i.e. the wikis, those were awesome) because I think this project, while less informative, instills a lot of good habits like working together as a team, and being able to work around a topic that wasn’t necesarrily your first choice. The other thing I like was the required “creativity factor” because I know that while some groups may have gone all out, I probably wouldn’t have put as much effort into the costumes/set/props/etc. and that would have made it much much much less interesting to watch.
1. I felt that the researching in the wiki was not as beneficial concerning the AP exam but I learned more when I did the wiki than when I did this project. There was more information to find for the research of this project than for the wiki and there were more sources for this one too. I found a lot of internet sources for my wiki and a descent amount of books but there were more sources of everything, books, websites and people for the colonies.
2. Film making was hard. I did not do a lot of editing, Nathan did all of that but it looked really complicated. I filmed the scenes and it was hard remembering lines and what to do and stuff like that. Thank goodness we had good weather the day we were filming and we could do it all at school which worked out well.
3. If I were to tweak the project I would put the due date at a better time so that it could help us more with a test, I would give more time for working on it in school, I would not separate the groups between the two classes because getting India involved was difficult and I would have the students turn in something after they watch the videos so they learn more about the other colonies, even if we did notes they were not to beneficial.
4. The film got a better reaction than I expected in class. Everyone really liked it and Nathan did a really good job with the editing. Not everyone thought the thing with Stephanie was funny but she is okay now, she was a little upset but it is resolved.
5. I think it was cool to do a video project because I have never actually done one before but I don’t feel I learned as much as I could have with a project like the wikis and a follow up blog. I also do not think that it was good timing for the unit because we already had the test.
1. I think that from doing this video project we all learned a lot about each of our individual colonies, but not as much as could have been learned from other projects such as the wikis last year. From this project I wasn’t able to find as many sources as I was able to for other projects like the wikis last year. This year my group got most of it’s information from a single source whereas last year we had several sources, each giving a different type of information that all contributed to the overall project.
2. I learned that it is generally quite difficult to film when you are a 10 hour car drive away from the rest of your group and all filming equipment. I learned that it is necessary to expect there to be times when not everyone is available and to take advantage of the times when everyone is. I also learned that it is sometimes difficult to oversee what actually goes on in filming and editing when you are physically unable to be there to look over the shoulder of your group members and assist them directly in that way.
3. If I could redo this project I would make sure to be available for all parts of the filming process and make sure that I know exactly what is going to happen in every part of the video rather than to end up coming home to find something other than you had hoped to be included in the video. I would also make sure to make the actual information a priority before getting fancy with the things that will make our video more entertaining to watch.
5. I feel that this project, although it did teach us much about our own topic, did not help everyone else in the class learn each others’ topic. I do not think that next year’s apush students should do something similar because I think that this video project did not do as much as other project forms could have accomplished.
2. Filmmaking is a lot harder than it seems. Especially since you have to work on it outside of school, it’s hard to all get together, and make sure everyone is included in the process of filming. Although it was better than a written report, because we were able to express ourselves on how we interpreted the information from each colony.
3. If I could redo this video, I would have put a ton of more effort and time into the project than I did the first time around. I would have gotten into character, and get dressed up, and went into locations so the audience could see and experience what we were trying to teach them. I feel like script writing is good in the sense that you’re acting it out, not just cold hard giving the facts. On the other hand, acting it out does make it hard to learn the facts.
4. I didn’t really expect a positive reaction from my classmates at all. The only funny part was when one of our group members got dressed up and it was funny because she had got into character. My video wasn’t really funny or creative, it was just cold hard facts, so you could learn the information, but it lacked creativity.
5. Personally, I didn’t think for our group that this project worked out because someone in our group didn’t even does any work, and it was hard to get all the info into a 5 minute long video. It was difficult trying to figure out who would do what, and when we would shoot because it was in class/out of class and it’s always hard to work outside of class.
1. This video project was both easier and more difficult, in some aspects, than other projects we did, including the Wiki. There were plenty sources of information, though some topics were problematic in terms of finding factual, matching evidence. We used our textbook and reliable internet sources, mostly; shady information avenues like Yahoo! Answers were used sparingly. I thought the idea for a strictly video-based project was really good, but it was tricky trying to make everything entertaining – or not direly boring, at the very least – so that people would actually pay attention to the video and learn something.
2. Filmmaking is so much harder than it looks or sounds; we didn’t have the most advanced recording devices in the world, either, so that accounted for anything that was hard to see or hear. We learned that anything even remotely funny near the desired filming destination was a no-no, and it only took us four hours to figure that out. It also wouldn’t hurt to know your script mostly by heart or plan exactly what the scene will contain, as that would save time. I also would have charged my camera ahead of time instead of banking on it lasting through filming.
3. If I could fix or tweak our project, I’d suggest that we not film at 5:30 at night, where it was kind of dark both inside and outside. We probably could have switched up the format of the video, too, and maybe added some relevant clips in addition to our scenes and pictures. The one thing I’d really like to change about it was the narration; it was quite long at some points, giving the audience only a picture to look at during the talking. I couldn’t think of another way to present the information, since a good portion of it was sort of dry in the first place.
4. I thought our video was borderline good until we showed it to the class. Especially after watching everyone else’s, I started to see the little things that could have been improved upon and how unbelievably creative some people were with their colonies. We thought we were being really funny with the campfire songs, but it wasn’t as hilarious when you couldn’t see us in the video. Maybe next time we’ll make lighting one of our areas to work on.
There was less information, since it happened earlier in history. Most of the websites I used for my research for this project basically restated the same thing over again but in different words. It’s as if every article about it got its information from the same source. However, this made it straightforward and easy to do. The wikis had much more information and books because it happened later in history. There was so much information to include and so many different sources that it was harder to put together.
Film making was harder than I thought. It involved lots of memorization in short periods of time and improvisation to avoid having to rerecord the whole clip. We also had more footage recorded than we needed, so we needed to cut and edit the video segments in order for it to be length appropriate. Also the sound effects and putting rerecording short clips that needed to be fixed or that we messed up on was more time consuming than I thought. I thought we did a good job though: we didn’t have any sound problems (too quiet or too loud) and the lighting in all the scenes was fine.
I think that I would have changed my video to make it more class appropriate and creative. We would have spent more time on video production and acting out more scenes to make it more realistic instead of having some parts where we would face the camera and recite facts. We could have also used more props.
I think that this project was fun and was worth it. Our group had great times thinking of things to do for our video and fooling around, while getting the job done at the same time. I think that this would be a great project for the APUSH students to do next year.
1. The wiki project last year was easier to research because the information we needed was more recent and more relevant. No one cares about Delaware. We spent tons of time searching through huge reference books full of information about everything but our poor unloved colony. Researching more contemporary topics is easy because we can just use the internet. Pretty much all of the websites we looked at gave us the same information. There wasn’t a lot.
2. Filmmaking is straightforward enough, but I learned that having a video camera set up and recording can be very distracting. I was fine when we practiced what we were about to record, but as soon as we did it for real I would have a giggling fit. I am not meant to be an actress.
3. If I could redo this project, I would make a lot of changes. We would have shot some scenes outside and in different places, done more research, added music, and made it look nicer. There would have been more information in the video and I would have worked longer on the script. I also would have chosen to have this project during a time when I and the people in my group aren’t incredibly busy.
5. I really don’t like video projects. Technology confuses me and what the project ends up looking like never lives up to my expectations.
Everyone in my group has a hectic schedule. Figuring out a time when all four of us were free was almost impossible. In the end, we only had time to get together for filming once. It probably wasn’t enough time to get everything right or look professional. Having more time to work on the project would not have helped.
I learned a lot about Delaware during the research, but not a lot about the other colonies. I loved the other group’s videos, but it was hard for me to gather lots of information from them or take notes. If I wrote one thing down, I missed a lot of other relevant facts. I did learn a little about other people’s colonies, but mostly I remember the funny parts.
I’m not sure if next year’s APUSH students could benefit from something similar; I didn’t learn that much about the other colonies and it was sort of a stressful project.
1. I thought it was a lot easier to find information about more contemporary topics just because i feel like there was more out there on the internet and even books too. We didn’t find too much information in books and some of the info we found online was interesting but not what we were looking for compared the the wikis we did last year. I mean overall, it was fine and we did what we had to do but I think I liked doing the wiki’s better.
2. I learned that filmmaking definitely takes time and lots of planning. It’s not really something you can just jump right into without planning because then it’s just really disorganized and takes ten times longer than it should. Also, I learned that memorizing your lines is really hard and i really give credit to everyone in tv shows and especially plays now.
3. If i could change my video i’d have the script memorized and we’d do it in a different location. Unfortunately, location wasn’t really an option because we all happened to be busy and none of us could match up our schedules to do something outside of school. If we had spent more time at home memorizing the script i think that could have been changed so i guess we know for next time now!
4. This video got about the reaction i would have expected. I mean, I don’t think our video was anything super special, it was just pretty average you know. Like we gave our information and that was that but i also don’t think it was bad so i was expecting a pretty normal reaction which is i think about what we got. I don’t think our video was particularly funny so I wasn’t really expecting much of a reaction at all. I really liked Nathan’s video and Herman’s!!
1. I wouldn’t exactly call our wiki projects contemporary. Sure they were more recent than our colony projects, but they weren’t contemporary in my book. The difference this time was that there were less primary sources of any kind of information. The primary sources that we did find were in such old English that we could not understand it. It made it harder to find reliable sources because we weren’t overwhelmingly positive as to where it came from. The “contemporary” project had more recent sources that we could read and understand. It gave the wiki more authenticity.
2. I think the biggest thing is we learned is that you end up with a lot of bloopers. It can be so easy to mess up, and I have no idea how newscasters make it look so effortless to give live news with hardly any errors. We let Allison handle all of the technical editing and she did a very good job. We would have been totally lost without her because none of us knew how to do what Allison was doing. I can imagine it would have been rather stressful trying to find out where exactly to cut and paste our numerous takes of video.
3. If I could tweak our project, just a little, I would have changed the location. Granted, it was raining that day, but I think it would have been nice to shoot some of it outside. We filmed everything in the same room, just at different angels, and it became sort of monotonous. Going “on site” could have spiced up our video a little, and made it a little more pleasing to watch.
4. I think our video got the reaction I had expected from our classmates. They all had the same “are we done watching colony videos yet” look on their faces. There was nothing super fancy about our video, so it didn’t get a standing ovation, but it was so bad that we got put down in front of the class. It was just average.
2. I learned that filming a video takes a lot more time then you think it would. To make a simple 8 minute clip it took around 3 hours of filming. This just shows how much work it takes to make something simple and short. It is also very hard and takes skill to due. It is hard to get the right angle distance and all of that just to get a single clip. It makes me feel a huge amount of respect for the video filmers out there because i can see how much time and work it takes to make something so short.
3. In my opinion i think my project had a very good handle on the amount of information given and needed. The only issue is during our interviews it was hard to hear. This was because we did not mics and this severely hurt us. It made it fuzzy and hard to understand the key information that gives you a clue as to what is happening. Also our issue was that certain parts were to long while others were to short, and we have to fix it. We need to divide it up better, and more evenly so the video could have flowed better.
4. I believe our video got a better reaction then i expected. Not only did mr.wickersham (seemed) to like it and other people said it was well made. i also think people liked the transition in an out of real clips from the movie the new world and i think this made people like our project more. Overall i am very happy with the reaction, because i was expecting an omg that is so stupid you fail.
5. I believe that this was a very good project for a lot of reasons. Number one it helped me learn my material very well. Not only did i write it down but i had to act it out over and over which helped solidify the knowledge. It also taught us how hard filming was and that was cool too. I believe next years students should do this project because it mixes learning and work into a fun situation. This was a lot better than a wiki or notes because it is active and enjoyable and i had a great time.
I think this project was a lot easier to complete, and I learned about the same amount compared to the wiki. The wiki to me was very stressful, where this was fun, but I was still able to learn the same stuff. As far as where I got my info, the internet, that was the same. As far as the filming process went I wasn’t very involved. But I did most of the editing and putting the project together. I ran into some issues that I hadn’t expected. I had to extend clips so that the transitions didn’t overlap with the words. It was also frustrating to get the audio to line up with the pictures so the whole project would transition smoothly. The main thing I would tweak is video quality. I would make sure to film when it was quite outside. I would also make sure to use better lighting, and if available, a nicer camera. I would also make sure to include time at the beginning and end of the clips for editing purposes. I would also include a few more facts, and higher quality pictures. I think our film got about the reaction I was expecting. It wasn’t mean to be funny, or to be very creative. I expected people to enjoy the LEGO stop motion, which they did. I also thought people would pay attention closely, and be interested in the video, because it had a lot of facts in it. For the most part my classmates seemed to enjoy the video, and thought it was good. As a whole this experience was a good one for me. Though it started out a little rough because I wasn’t being very helpful with the research our finished project turned out great. I got to spend a decent amount of time editing and working on my mom’s Mac which was a lot of fun, and in the process I also learned a lot about early Connecticut. I think this would be a good project for next year’s kids. The only thing would be is to make sure they take it seriously, and don’t do what Herman’s group did. 🙂
1. For the wiki project last year, I used books more than websites. For this video project, I used websites more than books. It caught my attention early on that colonial New Jersey hasn’t been documented as well as other colonies in New England, or in the rest of the US for that matter. I found myself using wikipedia more for the info, and just double checking it with another website, even if the exact same info wasn’t there.
2. I learned that filmaking can be an enjoyable experience as long as you have everything planned out. It’s easier to get all the ideas out early on and decide on a theme, rather than getting out to the place your going to shoot and having each member of the group wanting to do a different thing.
3. If I could redo this project, I would add more narration scenes, as you can get more information out of the way if you just read it off a paper. I thought overall our project was great, even if some people over-analyzed a simple bit of humor and found something that was completely unintentional and assumed it was intentional. I would also add a bit more background music to the video, because after seeing some of the other groups videos, the background music does make the video alot better, if the music is appropriate.
4. I thought the film got the reaction I thought it would. The class laughed a few times, and I thought the information was clearly portrayed. However, I think that the classes opinion of our video was changed once they allowed someone elses opinion to influence theirs. Watching the video/listening to the video in the classroom was a different experience than watching it on my computer, because the speakers were not as loud as I thought they were going to be.
1 I liked the wiki’s last year better than I liked the film making. The film making didn’t help me learn anybody else’s colony except for my own. For my wiki I chose to research the mobster Al Capone. To me his research was easier than North Carolina because I could search three different website on his life and would get the same response for all three. But for North Carolina when I was looking up its early history, the dates of when it was founded were mixed up and most of the time the websites gave me a lot of useless history.
2 I didn’t do any of the filming, I only sent some notes. Nathan did all of the editing and did a voice over, Riley did the filming and also had some parts, and Stephanie had some lines.
3 If I could do anything differently I would make sure my partners were in the same class as me because trying to meet up with people you never see is really hard. If my classmates were in my class I think I would have helped film a lot more.
5 I don’t think I would give the next APUSH class this assignment. I would not give them this assignment because doing the videos were a good thing to say they tried, but not good to learn from them. Because the videos were somewhat difficult to make, due to the time slot the videos were not good quality and hard for you to get information from. The wiki’s were a project that got right to the chase and was easy for everyone to understand, because all they had to do was read them. The topics to choose from were also very easy to look up. So no I don’t think the APUSH students should do this again.
2. I learned the filming was a chore in every sense of the term. Getting the lines just right was the least of our problems. The bulk of it was trying to keep unwanted things out of the shot, e.g. Couples breaking up in the background f our shots. On top of that, even if we did review the footage it would take another 20 minutes to redo the take.
3. If I wanted to redo the project, which I definitely do not, I would change a couple of things. First of all would be the framing. If we were doing a shot reading our lines from a script, I would hopefully want the script to be out of frame. Other than that, I was more than pleased with the location and every other aspect of the film.
4. I was fairly surprised with the reception of our video by the class. I guess I assumed that the entire class would pretty much be rolling their eyes past the back of their head (smashing.) The few occasional reactions were more than enough for me, although I could be totally wrong on this answer on account of the fact that my face was buried in my hands the whole time because I hate the sound of my own voice. It is annoying.
5. All in all, the whole process was quite worthwhile. Group collaboration doesn’t happen too much anymore, and I completely think that next year’s APUSH students could benefit from something similar to this. However, I think that this project could be improved by being more flexible. Instead of a video, maybe it could allow for the option to make a non-PowerPoint presentation- a flash video for people with the skill set, a website, a wiki, or even creative use of social networking sites.
2.) filmmaking is a process that can be described as interesting. Making this video was extremely fun for me and my group, me playing ort and all, it was quite the experience. I enjoyed putting myself in front of the camera and being able to express the knowledge I had learned through film. A difficult aspect of the project would have been knowing the lines well enough to recite them without the paper in front of me, also staying consistant with the ever changing accents that I was using.
3.) If I had the ability to go back and change something I did in my project it would probably be within the lines of accents. I would stay consistent with my accents and not change them without my knowledge. I also would reduce the amount of noise in the background when we were filming in KFC, although it was out of my control, I would have made the effort to try to be in a place with less noise.
4.) HAHA, the film got an expected response from the crowd that was watching, I figured it’d be a strange response to the video, after all, it was a strange video. I expected everybody to laugh more, but instead it was more awkward looks at me, I felt a little strange about it to be completely honest. I wanted to get a more positive reaction from everyone, not a weird one.
5.) I think the strong technology aspect of this didn’t help me as much as it was supposed to. I believe that I learn best under the traditional teaching style, yes I’m old school but it just is easier for me. I enjoy doing stuff like this, but I don’t find that I benefitted as much from it as others might have.
1. The research for this project was easier than doing research for a whole wiki page. It was a fun way to be able to present information and try to be creative. However, the wikis are better for the purpose of getting information across. Wikis are hard to keep interesting and labor intensive but I think it’s a good project to continue, maybe just once in sophomore year like we did. In our wiki we used a lot of books and other sources but for this we used the internet basically to find our information.
2. Filming can be a hassle and I know nothing about film editing/making and I feel bad I was no help in that area. Once we got everyone together it was fairly easy to get the scenes done. We followed the lyrics and made scenes that would match what was going on. I’m camera shy and a horrible actress so not a great performance on my part but the guys did good.
3. To improve our project we would fix the audio quality to make it more understandable. It was very hard to make out the words and hard for our classmates to learn about Maryland. I think the lyrics were very good and informational and it would have been informational and enjoyable for our classmates. I don’t know if it was the mic, speakers, computer program etc that should have been changed or if it should just be re recorded.
4. Basically every one complained about the audio, frustrating because we know it didn’t work out but completely understandable. It was hard for them to learn about our colony when they couldn’t understand what was being said. There were pretty high expectations from my group and if people got the read the lyrics Fred wrote up I think they would have liked it a lot more.
1. I learned more about the people and their characters, because we wanted to be more accurate on their personalities and speeches. On the wikis it was more on general topic points in the entire colonies vs the people who made them. The sources that we found in this project was more a picture and speeches research, vs exact dates and numbers on economics and agricutlture, so we used theological websites vs grolier.
2. We learned that in filmmaking that simple yet communicable is the most important, and that little effects are really the most difficult to create. Keepes proved to us the difficulties of making videos when it took him 10 minutes to change the position of a clip and re-add a certain effect we had, which was frustrating for him and for his group members. This is kind of brought the focus on the video and less on effects, so that effects were added if we had time.
3. If we could redo our project we would just reword a few facts and include a fight between the settlers and the indians.’
4. Our film got a better reaction than i expected, because our video had jokes, but was more factual and focused, which usually isnt entertaining. Mr. Wickersham liked it but wasnt dissapproving of our humor, which means we at least got the balance right. Others thought it funny but visually entertaining because our included costumes and props, with skits instead of a newscast.
5. I feel like this video was helpful in understanding the founders, but not helpful in understanding details and geography, because those are two things that are almost impossible to include well into a video. So i would recommend a essay +short video for visuals.
2. I learned that film making is much harder than it looks when you are watching the video. I think this is mainly because when I was filming I would laugh which would then make the camera shake so violently that everything became a blur. Another speed bump was the editing of the clips and getting each person to do their part 97.89% correct. After that, the editing out all the crap was probably very difficult because there was a lot of it. Thank god for David.
3. Unlike Sam Kepes’ video, we aimed for a less boring, less intense fact focus video. I thought it spiced it up. People definitely liked it. Yea, in an ideal world, it would be good if there wasn’t as much background noise at KFC. We didn’t really plan for that but what can you do? Maybe next time we will tell the woman eating next to us to chew with her mouth closed. I thought the information was spot on (at least the info you could hear in between the woman’s loud chews). Yeah, our video was also maybe a little lengthy, but it made the viewers want to watch it because it was entertaining and thus allowed the viewers to forget about the time because they were so busy laughing—unlike at sam kepes’ video which was quite the opposite experience.
4. Personally, I thought the film got a fantastic reaction—despite the length, mainly because of how funny it was and how good the clips were and how well they corresponded to the information that was being given. Yes, sam kepes may not have liked it… however, it really doesn’t bother me, or herman for that matter. I knew all along it would get a fantastic reaction because it was (in my mind) so creative, funny, informational, and semi-realistic to a local network daytime TV interview.
5. I thought this was such a valuable thing to do because instead of just reading about a colony, the student has to get involved with the colony, and their classmates. Yes if the classmates one is working with suck and the video comes out awful (hmmm) then the time you spend won’t be as valuable with those people but the time you spend researching your colony will pay off. I think it is also valuable in life to work with people and be able to collaborate with them and ultimately get along with them. Because of this, I think that next years apush students should definitely do this. If it helped me learn about a colony (shocker), then it will definitely help them as well—plus I had a fantastic time (even in the end watching it in class and writing about it in this blog—even though sam kepes doesn’t think I should have enjoyed myself and would have preferred a more serious video.)
1. I thought that researching a colony was more difficult than the wikis because the colonies were more in the past and so there wasn’t as much information readily available. You had to search more to get the info and you still don’t get as much as we did with the wikis last year. Plus the wikis were easier to use then video so I liked that better.
2. Well Nathan dealt with more the issues with the video since me and Riley isn’t very good with that stuff. And then all the things I had no say in and Nathan and Riley made me do stuff. And all the different takes we had to do. You kind of know that it won’t be don’t on the first try but it I didn’t realize how many we had to take for the few shots we were actually doing.
3. Take out all the parts that Nathan put in of me. And make him show me the video before we see it in class. But every time we tried that the video wasn’t working so I didn’t really have a choice. And don’t let anyone person in group be in charge of editing, but we didn’t have enough time to all be there and do it together. But I think that other than that our video was pretty good since we had both video and audio with pictures.
4. Honestly with what Nathan put in the video at the end the reaction we got was exactly what I thought we would get. But I didn’t know it was just going to be thrown in there at the end so it was a surprise. But we got a good reaction about the rest of our video. Plus we knew we weren’t going to able to keep it together and not laugh so we didn’t film as much which was a good decision.
1. I mostly did the same type of research that I would have done for a standard project. This may not have been the best approach, but it seemed to turn out alright. Our group did the same type of basic research, and then had to interpret it into script material.We used the same sources that we probably would have used for any project.
2. Filming is very time consuming, but I think that our group did a good job managing it. We planned out when we were going to film, and already had the script and props ready. We did a lot of work and practice before we started filming, so we were prepared. We attempted to keep our clips concise and manageable. Even when we made mistakes, we did not have much material to fix.
3. The major things that I would want to change would be to add more material and detail. There were a lot of things that we wanted to add that we simply didn’t have time for. More organization would have been better too.We knew what we wanted to film, and what parts we wanted to include, but we could have done a better job of compiling them into an overall film.
4. I would say that our film got a little better reception from the class than I thought it would. I did not expect my classmates to particularly enjoy or dislike our video, but I thought the overall reaction was positive. It also received more laughs than I had anticipated.
5. First of all, the ultimate judgment of whether this project was useful will come after we gauge how useful they are to study for the AP test. The research was important, but I feel that I didn’t learn as much as I could have. This was probably my fault, but I think that there was no clear direction and that we really only learned sufficiently about the items that we included in our video. Good team work can be difficult, but it is an excellent real world skill to have. The video production obviously takes a long time, and I felt that I spent much more time making the video than actually learning. A group project on the colonies was a good idea, but I think that next year a different format could possibly be used in order for students to get more out of the project.
I learned that when you are making films you have to get people to memorize or summarize what they’re going to say otherwise it doesn’t sound right. I also learned to make sure that people talk loud enough for you to hear them. I also learned that we should have been checking the videos after we made each one to make sure that they were good instead of moving on right away. I think if I redid this project I would present the information in a more organized way. I would also make sure that we didn’t read all of our facts off of the papers and instead would have memorized what we were supposed to say so that the video could flow better. I thought our video got the reaction I expected from my classmates. It wasn’t super funny or anything, but it did have a lot of information so I think the class reacted just how I expected.
I think that I learned a lot about my colony because I had to do the a good amount of the research and also because I was there when the rest of it was being presented in a less fast paced way, like when we were watching the videos. I also liked working in groups that we were able to pick. I think that it was hard to learn stuff from other videos and I don’t think I learned very much. I think that next year’s APUSH students could benefit from something similar, but I think that it would need to be made clear what they should do research on. If we were given guidelines on what sort of information we needed the projects probably would have been more helpful. I think it might have been helpful to be told which important events or people to focus on. This way we it could have better helped us prepare for the test or things that we even needed to know.
1. The contemporary project like the wikis was more informational, as so it needed more research. I know I personally worked alone on my wiki, so this time I was more of a hindrance than the singular driving force behind all of the research. Example: for my wiki I spent who knows how many hours gleaning google and skimming books in the library/trying to find a theme that I was interested in. This time the topic was chosen and I was the one who did so much research that I found an awesome Irish drinking song. Jenny attempted to keep me on task this time and we didn’t do it completely last minute, as are all the things I do, like the wiki (I remember lunch before 4th hour I was adding pics and bibliographing rapidly). The research on the wiki was mostly trying to find sites that I could put in because I had like 2 super sites that had all the info I needed. So those were some big differences between the 2.
2. It may seem that your monologue imbeds itself inside of your brain right before shooting. Turns out you have to actually memorize your lines. Oops. Also, a big problem we had was keeping it at least somewhat close to 5 minutes. We had an incredible amount of awesome stuff, but we had to cut a lot because apparently 25 seconds over the limit was the end of the world. We didn’t have much of a problem with location, the weather was quite cold so that was shiversome, but besides that we didn’t have too many setbacks. At points in time our faces were washed out, but it didn’t take too much away from the awesomeness of the script.
4. I’m not sure what I expected from my classmates, but I was pleased with the reaction. I mean I guess I wasn’t looking for much, I was sort of thinking it would go along the lines of our little group and our friends being the only ones laughing really loudly, but luckily we weren’t the only ones.
5. Personally I had a lot of fun with the project. Of course it may have helped that my group were like the most amazing people in the world and we all have acting experience (well not so much me, but you get the point) so it made it really enjoyable. Our group balanced each other out, and I thought we had a good dynamic. Jenny really stepped up and took charge. Thank goodness I wasn’t the leader; there probably wouldn’t have been anything about New Hampshire at all. Just a bunch of hamsters dancing to Flobots with random references to anything awesome. So in that sense, it was nice to have a group to restrain my general idiocy. I know the class as a whole didn’t have as good as an experience, but since I had a good time, I would recommend it to the next class.
Oops, it’s like 500 something words long, oh well 😛
1. I think researching the early history of New York was about the same challenge level as researching World War 1 propaganda for the wiki last year. We had trouble finding book sources for our video, although we didn’t look to hard because the internet is such an abundant and easy source of information.
2. One of the biggest things we learned about video making was that editing is a pain. We also learned that filming can be a lot of fun. We had a great time filming all of the funny parts of the video (which was hopefully all of them).
3. Some parts of the project I would like to fix would have been removing the song Gay Bar by Electric Six from the video. I would also fix Jacob’s spelling mistakes if we hadn’t been so rushed to edit (I’m looking at you Denny). Also, our filming wasn’t of the highest quality due to our crappy camera.
5. While I learned a lot about my own colony, I learned very little from other people’s videos. Everything came at you so fast it was hard to take notes. If you do this project again, I would recommend the groups producing some sort of outline to go along with their videos that their classmates could keep. This would greatly improve what the students get out of the project. I think the research really helped me learn some new things about New York. Also, while I generally prefer to work alone, I really enjoyed the teamwork for the video project.
1. I would say that I learned a little bit from doing this project, but I felt that I learned more by doing the wiki. For the video project, there was a lot less research that needed to be done, compared to the wiki, and a lot less research needed to be done.
3. If I could redo this project, I would definitely have us use the script less. I would also do a better job editing the video so that the segments were in a more logical order.
4. I got a better reaction than I would have expected. I thought that my video was very jumbled with short segments that were about different topics rather than a video with a clear story line. However, my peers really liked the shorter segments that presented the information in a straightforward manner.
5. I thought that the video project was very fun. It allowed us to be creative and learn something about each individual colony. However, I think that we might have benefited more by doing a wiki. It would have allowed us to go more in-depth about our colonies. There was also the issue that the videos had some silly parts that didn’t exactly pertain to the topic, and other videos were made in a way that prevented us from getting anything out of it. I feel like a wiki would have been more beneficial because it would have allowed us to go more in-depth and present the information in a more straightforward manner.
1. What did you learn about researching your colony compared to more contemporary topics, like the wikis last year? Discuss the types of sources that you found or didn’t find compared to the contemporary project.
What I learned about researching my colony compared to more contemporary topics, like the wikis last year was definitely the wiki were a lot easier to research. For information I had to find about Rhode Island, I wouldn’t necessarily say it difficult to find but you definitely had to look more. You couldn’t just on Wikipedia and find all the info you needed for my colony. (at least I couldn’t) The types of sources I found for the colony I was researching were of course a lot of websites that included all thirteen colonies. For me I had to really look for info just relating to Rhode Island. There were also slide shows that I thought was pretty helpful from a PowerPoint format. As far as comparing the research process with the wiki, the wiki was a lot easier for me to find info on. The topic I was looking for was easy and it was literally right there to find info.
3. If you could fix/tweek/redo this project, what would you do differently and why? Think about all aspects of the project including filming, sound, music, location, script, pacing of the film, and information.
Well I personally would definitely not do any last minute work, and trying to have everything by a few hours school started. With dealing with technology, sometimes everything doesn’t really work out as plan, and things can get messed up. I think it would have been nice if my whole group to a script or something where we were all together, instead just talking in a room. ( more interaction) Then again due to timing of everything and the pacing of the film, we weren’t able to do that.
4. Did the film get a better or worse reaction from your classmates than you expected? Explain your answer.
Just by from what I saw I think my classmates got the reaction I thought it would it get. I didn’t expect it to be an epic presentation, but I think the individuals made some of their characters their own, so I can’t really say the reaction the video got was something I didn’t expect, because I didn’t expect to really turn out a negative way. (if that made sense)
5. Assess how valuable this experience was – from the research to the team work to the video production process – as a whole and explain whether or not you felt that next year’s APUSH students could benefit from something similar. Please explain your reasoning.
I feel this project was valuable only because of the team effort that had take place. If you didn’t all come together as a team and things got done last minute, and not all members communicated with another, the task can possibly be done, but the final work will not be the best. As far as the research process, it allows you have some independence somewhat as it relates to you gathering information, and having your team members relying on you to have certain information. I think next year’s APUSH students can benefit from this project or something similar. I think they will learn that when working in groups certain things need to take place when comes to time management, communication, effort etc… and as group everyone has to make an effort individually to come to make an amazing final product.
1. What I learned about researching my colony compared to more contemporary topics, like the wikis last year was definitely the wiki were a lot easier to research. For information I had to find about Rhode Island, I wouldn’t necessarily say it difficult to find but you definitely had to look more. You couldn’t just on Wikipedia and find all the info you needed for my colony. (at least I couldn’t) The types of sources I found for the colony I was researching were of course a lot of websites that included all thirteen colonies. For me I had to really look for info just relating to Rhode Island. There were also slide shows that I thought was pretty helpful from a PowerPoint format. As far as comparing the research process with the wiki, the wiki was a lot easier for me to find info on. The topic I was looking for was easy and it was literally right there to find info.
3. Well I personally would definitely not do any last minute work, and trying to have everything by a few hours school started. With dealing with technology, sometimes everything doesn’t really work out as plan, and things can get messed up. I think it would have been nice if my whole group to a script or something where we were all together, instead just talking in a room. ( more interaction) Then again due to timing of everything and the pacing of the film, we weren’t able to do that.
4. Just by from what I saw I think my classmates got the reaction I thought it would it get. I didn’t expect it to be an epic presentation, but I think the individuals made some of their characters their own, so I can’t really say the reaction the video got was something I didn’t expect, because I didn’t expect to really turn out a negative way. (if that made sense)
5. I feel this project was valuable only because of the team effort that had take place. If you didn’t all come together as a team and things got done last minute, and not all members communicated with another, the task can possibly be done, but the final work will not be the best. As far as the research process, it allows you have some independence somewhat as it relates to you gathering information, and having your team members relying on you to have certain information. I think next year’s APUSH students can benefit from this project or something similar. I think they will learn that when working in groups certain things need to take place when comes to time management, communication, effort etc… and as group everyone has to make an effort individually to come to make an amazing final product.
1.I learned a lot from doing my colonies video and I really enjoyed the experience! I found that this was a really useful way to retain knowledge and it was a lot of fun! My main resource, honestly, was Wikipedia. I know a lot of teachers don’t really like it because they don’t think some of the information is necessarily correct but it was all right for me.
2.I learned a bunch about film making because I had to edit the entire video before the video was due and camtasia did not work as I had hoped so I had to teach myself how to use iMovie! It was a lot of fun and I think that the video turned out really well!
3.I don’t know I really liked my project! Probably because I’m the one who made it so it has a special place in my heart. Honestly, if I could change one thing about the project there would be more activity with actually live people instead of just pictures. Unfortunately, we did nothave the time or the equipment to do that. Also we had someone from another hour join our group so that mad it hard but we defiantly worked it all out.
4.I wasn’t sure what exactly to expect from the class as a reaction to the video but they all really liked it, which made me so happy! I felt accomplished for sure because there really wasn’t many bad things to say about the video and the class really focused on what was good about it. They all really seemed to enjoy it during the video as well and they said that they were able to understand the information that was being given to them in a relatively fast pace but they were also able to enjoy the experience and laugh along with the video.
1. I learned more about Virginia than I would have if I had made a wiki. The video required constant repetition to get everything perfect and the editing took about 10,000 re-listening (just for me). Since I did all the editing, I had to voice over the clips and match them up perfectly, after I had matched them up, every clip and their images had burned a specific fact into my mind. The wiki as more like, find a fact, type it up, and then move on. The sources were pretty much the same, a lot of wikipedia and a lot of long documents to read.
2. The main thing that I learned is, that if you filmed all you think you needed to film, and you wrap and cut, you might need more. Its hard to call your friends and say hey we need to film some scenes right now, when its 930 at night and everybody is busy the next day. Also, deleting film is a problem, I accidentily recorded over some clips, so the inevitable editing mash.
3. I would start working a lot earlier, probably buy more stuff like costumes and prepare better. I would have wanted to do some of the fighting scenes instead of voiceover, I think it would be more fun to voice over that. Location was perfect, KFC, but only since there is no VFC (Virginia fried chicken). Sound was good on volume, but I wished I had added some music to dramatize the voice over scenes.
4. The movie did basically what I was hoping, during the parts that was my group acting or talking, the class was laughing. But then the voice over it was listening to facts while having an appealing movie that fit. I just wished that the limit was like 10 minutes instead of 5 because I cut out a lot of facts we had and more ORT MASKUSHKI action.