Process, Not Product

If you walk into our classroom, you might see this:

Here's a different view:

Or this one:

You might be wondering what those things are lying on the ground or in the students' hands:

It may look like students are playing and doing arts and crafts, where is the actual learning? The learning is in the process, not in the product.

What you see above is students learning about story elements. We learned that all good stories, whether they are literature or YouTube videos have these essential elements. We learned that making a YouTube video takes some planning. Before we press that record button, we need to know what we are going to record. We need to have characters. We need to know where those characters are. And, we need to know what is going to happen. There needs to be a problem and a solution.

Of course, we first need a cast of characters. So, students created these little construction paper monsters (it's October, after all). These monster buddies have names and are the main characters in the videos (stories) we are creating.

Up next is the setting. You can see in the first video that students are acting out a fight scene in front of a makeshift green screen. To make these green screens, I simply took a piece of cardboard and spray mounted green butcher block paper to it. Nothing fancy, super low budget, and it gets the job done. This is the first time that students are using the iPads to make videos, so it's a little sloppy. Sometimes, learning can be messy. We are using the Green Screen by Ink Do app for the iPad. With this, students can place their characters in any setting their hearts desire by importing any image from Google Images.

Finally, students need to come up with a simple problem and solution that is going to unfold in their video. In the video above, the students are battling it out on top of a volcano (boys will be boys). The problem, of course, being that the evil arch nemesis wants to throw the hero into the pool of lava. The solution: the hero throws his nemesis into the lava instead.

Now that you have an understanding of the project, maybe you are looking at the videos and pictures in a different light. As cool as all of that stuff is, it's not the product that really concerns me. How does a little construction paper puppet or a video of them battling atop a volcano indicate that any learning has occurred? For that, we need to go a little bit more behind the scenes.

Pictured above are the story planning boards. Prior to filming, students must submit a plan to the teacher. Once approved, students can begin filming. Hopefully, it's all becoming clear now.

What you also don't see is the hard work that these students put into their writing. Writing does not come easy to some of them. Some simply refuse to write because "they are not good spellers." I don't know where they have learned that (perhaps they were self-taught), but before they put the pencil to paper, a lot of time and effort goes into breaking that thinking. Before these students can even learn to spell, they have to unlearn that they can't. Not pictured is the 20 minutes it took for the top student and I to sound out and write "en tho uotr." Also not pictured is the celebration, the pat on the back, and the "I knew you could do it!"

Yes, the view from 1,000 feet looks wonderful. Some may think that we simply play with technology. Some may say, "I wish we had time for arts and crafts." But the view from the trenches is much different. It's messy. Sometimes, the classroom resembles a war zone. At times, the process seems daunting. It takes patience and unwavering faith. There are times that I just want to pick up the pencil and spell the word for a struggling student. There are times when a student asks, "How do you spell..." that I just want to tell them. That wouldn't help them, though. Instead, we sound it out. And even when they misspell the word, I have to let the mistake happen. We can go back later and make the corrections.

Suddenly, it doesn't look so glamorous, does it? Why on earth would any student want to put in the effort? There has to be a higher purpose than "because the teacher told me to." I am convinced that leveraging technology can motivate students to do incredible things. In the short amount of time in this classroom, I have seen tiny miracles happen every day. We will continue to forge ahead and create new pathways for learning. The final products will be a testament to the gritty process.

Ideas, comments, suggestions? Drop a line below or hit me up on Twitter. I would love your feedback. We're all in this together. The more spitballs we shoot, the more chances we have that one will stick.