Commerical Advertising-Classroom 2.0 Style!

Over the last few weeks, my students and I have been closely examining both television commercials, and print ads. The students have used a form for responding to the commercials they have viewed, and also to print ads. You can find all of the materials for the project (and as fillable/saveable PDFs, no less!)here.
The final project for the unit has the students inventing a product (they can use a basic one already created, a soda perhaps, but there must be something unique about their item) and then using Animoto to create a commercial. Animoto does have educational accounts available so you can use the full site without paying.

We started off with each student individually watching commercials and using the television response sheet. All of the commercials are from YouTube, and I downloaded them ahead of time to avoid school computer issues. I found a variety of old and new commercials. After that, in groups, students used computers to examine print advertisements with a response worksheet. The print ads were mostly from Flickr's Creative Commons.

Students have truly been engaged in the project: the group work has been amazing, and the discussions have ranged from defending a choice of product, and to how things have changed in TV & print ads since the students were children, and since the teachers were children. One group has decided their product is "flavored air"... how often do you get that kind of creativity?

Project Red, White & Food

I've already shared many times that I'm an active volunteer with the Red Cross, and last year on 9/11, I shared my story from that day... and the weeks that followed as I served at the Pentagon with the national Disaster Relief Operation. Last year was also the first year that community service club I co-sponsor created an activity for this day.
This year, in recognition of the 9/11 Day of Service and Remembrance, club students created Project Red, White And Food. Our school colors are red, white & blue, so the name was both recognition of the school and of our chosen project. We chose to make sandwiches to donate to the DC Central Kitchen.
The club set up stations during all of the school lunch shifts, and each student had the opportunity to make a sandwich. Everybody that made a sandwich received a foam sticker in the shape of a piece of food as a thank-you. We made 374 sandwiches before running out of lunch meat, but we were able to donate the additional gloves, hand sanitizer, and bread to the Kitchen, along with some fresh produce.
At the end of the school day, we had a pep rally, and the students ran relay races where they have to put together sandwiches made from one of the play food kits. The senior class showed their class spirit by making the most sandwiches, and winning the relay race at the pep rally.
The project would not have been possible without support from Whole Foods-Reston, Wegmans-Sterling, and Giant Food-Sterling. Thank-you!

Coming Up Next: A New Year

I've dived into the deep end this year... Somebody should remind me to look next time! This year will probably be hectic, and interesting. I'm not sure yet if interesting is a good thing or a bad thing, but give me a few weeks and I'll see if I can't figure it out.

I have two new roles this year at my school: autism resource & team-taught history. My school has had some success integrating the principals of Universal Design into science classes, and so now they would like to try history. Its not exactly a secret that I have a laptop welded to my back while at school, but I wasn't aware anybody knew about my secret passion for non-fiction documentary-style books and movies, especially 20th Century history. Or that I worked at a Renaissance Faire, and minored in history in college. Guess I need to hide that weakness a little better...
The autism resource is also really not a surprise: I worked as an autism teacher for an extended school year program when I started teaching, have always had at least one student in my classes who had an autism spectrum disability, and spent 3 years working at place known for their work with kids with autism.

School opens for students on Tuesday, and so I've been creating materials for Basic Skills this weekend, and trying to help the general education teachers I'm teaming with adapt materials for history. The students who have had me for Basic Skills before know that I like to do projects... This has not changed. Our first project will have them invent a product, research a real version of the product using Wikipedia. Side note: Do NOT twit at me about using Wikipedia in school; if we don't show the students how to use it properly, how will they ever learn? Just like we need to teach students about advertising, we need to teach how to use other media resources! The last part will have them create a commercial for their product. Originally, I was going to have them make a commercial of themselves, but decided to do the group thing. And, while I have access to a video camera, I'm not sure if doing that first thing in the school year is a good idea... Thanks to the UD Tech Toolkit I found a cool site called Animoto. There is a version of Animoto for schools to use, but I created this in about 5 minutes using the regular site. Very, very cool. So, I may use this for their commercials. It is a lot more structured, and much easier to use than actually creating a video themselves.

Donor's Choose

Donor's Choose is a website that lets teachers post needs for their classroom and request funding. Its kind of like a mini-grant application and social networking all rolled into one. The website was started in 2000 by a teacher from New York City; at first, only schools in NYC were eligible to participate. I've kept it on my radar, but really didn't have anything that would fit the bill until last year. I've always done pretty well with grants for technology, and purchased or created most of my own instructional materials. And that would be why I'm paying for a storage locker because of all the functional materials... I really should try to sell some of them, but then what if I need them? Ah, the mantra of a teacher. I think most teachers are closet hoarders. Anyway...
Last year I went looking to see if I could do anything about transportation for the service club I co-sponsor, but discovered that you can't do a field trip request as your first action on Donor's Choose. I reluctantly shelved the idea, because I didn't really need things for my classroom at that time. One of the nice things about doing a lot of functional teaching is that I have not had to buy things for awhile.
But, this is a new year with a new classroom (more about that in another post). I'll be teaching kids with autism. My room is rather bright and echo-y: cinder block, linoleum, and fluorescent lights. Not exactly the ideal setting for kids with autism spectrum disabilities. And I remembered Donor's Choose!
In a very few minutes, I was able to find a decent sized rug, some floor lamps and light bulbs. I wrote up my request, and we were on the way! The project went live yesterday, and a dear friend has already contributed toward the request. No, this is not an advertisement for my project (but I won't object if you'd like to help fund it!), but Donor's Choose is a great idea. Check it out!