Making PSAs for intellectual property lesson

My students have begun their PSAs and it is quite a learning experience for me. Although I use lots of technology in my classrooms, I am way behind when it comes to video and audio recording. My students are way ahead of me in those areas.

I borrowed a video camera from one teacher in the department, but had to get a firewire connection for my MAC from another teacher to make it work. The first teacher couldn’t find the connections that came with the camera. My students, however, put the camera together and got it working before I could turn around.

Another set of students was doing a radio PSA and needed to record their message. I had my MacBook Pro at school so they took it and made the recording even though I had no idea the computer even had that capability. I was awestruck by their ability.

Tomorrow we will do more recordings and more downloads to MAC G5s that I use for the yearbook class. I bought those computers through a grant with the idea of making videos and finally, they will get used for that. I’m sure the kids will have very little difficulty figuring out iMovie.

Great guest speaker

Today’s guest speaker is a young lady, only 19, who has an amazing jewelry business.  She makes necklaces from old soda bottle caps, putting crystals around the outside of each one and putting it on a stainless steel chain.  She won a $5000 scholarship to college with her idea along with a year’s use of an office at the college’s business center.  Her necklaces were SAG swag this year and she told the students of getting to meet all these celebrities who she has featured on her website.I hope my students were impressed with what she has done.  She went to a high school that had NO business classes, and my kids have had at least 3.  She has motivation, poise, and lots of smarts.  I hope it rubbed off on my students. 

A peeve of mine

I love books.  I love to buy books, read books, and even read about books.  I always read book reviews with the idea I’ll find something new to add to my ever growing stack.  Whenever I read about a book I want, I immediately fire up the computer, go to Powells.com, and since I have an account there, order with great speed.  This is what makes me mad–a book for which someone has written a review but the book has not been released.  Do I want to preorder?  No, I want to order $50 worth so I get free shipping.  I want my books within the week, not next month or even later.  Today I went to order books whose reviews had been in Sunday’s SF Chronicle, but two were not yet released.  Didn’t matter too much, though, I still found seven  to order and they should be here in a few days.  

The score is not the whole story

Our inner city school’s girl’s basketball team did very well this year, all the way up to winning the league championship and going on to divisional playoffs. Last night, in the second game of the playoffs, the girls were up against a powerhouse school from a neighboring district. This district is well known for its sports teams who win state championships all the time. The kids are trained up from the time they can walk to play a sport and play tough. They are supported by well heeled parents who stress participation at all costs. Families are upper middle class, very conservative and traditional in all they do, and that includes education. The school district is disciplined, well structured, and does nothing at which it cannot win.

Because of the odds against our team, I wanted to make sure I was there last night to be supportive. I know some of the girls on the team and they are good kids. Our principal makes it to all the kids’ games, and last night was no different. He was there, wearing school colors. A few of the faculty came, but nothing like it should have been. The cheer squad did not come to cheer on the girls and stir up the crowd. The opposition had their cheer squad and a full house to root for the opposing team.

As I watched the girls scramble back and forth across the floor, I noticed so many differences. None of our girls are caucasian, the other team was mostly white girls. The girls on the other team all had high end, matching shoes. Our girls had whatever shoe they could find to wear. Some of these girls probably had to scramble to come up with the money for shoes. The gym in which the game was played belonged to the well heeled district and it was large and well equipped, unlike the old, smaller gym in which the girls practice each day.

As you may have guessed, this was no cinderella story, our girls lost–big time–77 to 36. But they played with so much heart and grit. I was very proud of them and I was glad I was in attendance, even if I did have to pay $10 to that other district to gain entrance.

Time’s up

We are two weeks away from the California High School Exit Exam (CaHSEE). Every day I am talking about it to my students and we are discussing strategies to help get through the two days of questions. My students always do well on it, passing at a higher rate than the whole district, because they take it seriously and desire to pass it the first time out.

A few days ago this past week, while having the daily conversation, one of the boys made the comment that they really wouldn’t keep you from walking if you failed the test. “Oh, no, you will not get a diploma if you haven’t passed the test by the time you finish high school.”

“That’s what they said in eighth grade when I was failing all my classes, that I couldn’t get to high school. But, here I am. So if they couldn’t do it then, why do you think they can now?”

Middle school is a landmine that doesn’t explode on us until high school. Students are not held to any standards in seventh and eighth grade and there are no consequences for the kids who fail every class. The middle school shoves them out in June and they show up on our doorstep in August planning to do the same thing they have been doing, not much. And then there’s that exit exam waiting to make the final cut.

Tell it to the court

Today the students took their case to court…they were divided into defense and prosecution teams, two of each for each period. The prosecution held that Keisha Winters (the girl in the case study we have been working with for two weeks) plagiarized her story’s plot using Margaret Goodis’s book and Ms. Goodis was now filing a civil case. The defense had to defend what Keisha had done. The students had all this material I had brought into class over the course of the two weeks; they had websites to check, and they had one day to prepare for trial.

Our social science teacher acted as judge (he used a black graduation gown we had hanging in a closet) in a classroom that I rearranged to simulate a court room. Each set of teams presented their cases and then the judge gave his verdict. In period 1, the defense won; in period 2, the case swung the other direction and the defendant was found guilty. Our judge is an absolutely fantastic teacher who was able to show the students why he made the decisions he did. I took a lot of pictures so we would have “evidence.”

The kids loved the simulation and wanted to know when we can do another case. The two students on each team who acted as attorneys even dressed up for court. The got into the role play, calling the judge, their teacher, ‘your honor.’ I was very impressed with their behavior and with the results of the assignment. When I send the final assessment for this field study, I will definitely give this exercise an “A.”

Next week, we start PSAs. Some of the kids will do videos, others will write radio ads, attempting to teach teenagers about intellectual property.

What is normal?

Today, while just snooping around, I found a blog spot for a church in Normal.  Don’t you love it?  I wonder if there is an abnormal?  We have a very bad joke in our family–normal is a setting on the dryer, it doesn’t exist anywhere else.  Maybe the Mennonites have stumbled onto something.  Normal?  If you call it so, is it?

Where am I?

My world went a little off-kilter this afternoon. While entertaining a mother and daughter who are thinking of moving from the upper middle class white school to the north so as to join our little Academy where we give very personalized attention, there is a knock on the office door. I can see three very made up, well dressed, preppy looking girls peering in. I thought they must be graduates coming back to visit, but no, they are actually students at our inner city high school.

“We go to school here,” when I questioned them, “and we want to talk to you about the pep and cheer pages.” Oh, yearbook drama.

“Come on in ladies, and tell me your story.” Well it seems they think they aren’t getting enough coverage in the yearbook, even though the spread on which they will be is not even finished.

“We heard that you didn’t put our team picture on the page, and the other teams got their pictures on the page and that’s not fair.”

“No, ladies, if you took a team picture, it will be on the page. But I haven’t seen the finished page yet so I can’t tell you too much, but I can assure you, your team picture will be there. By the way, did you buy the yearbook?”

Two of the girls vigorously nodded their heads and the other one just stood there. “I can still buy one, can’t I?”

“No, the order has been placed and if I have any extras, you can buy one after the preordered books have been distributed.” I have done the yearbook for six years, and this has never changed. The little cheer girl is shocked. “Goodbye, ladies, and don’t worry, your team picture will be in the yearbook.”

Now, back to the guests. The girl who wants to move to our school from the elite northern school looks like she would fit right in and is not at all preppy and made up. The cheer girls could easily go north and fit right in. Where am I?

Valentine’s event

The standards for my senior marketing class call for event planning. The students plan and execute a fashion show in the fall and a party in the spring. The students must plan, organize, and evaluate a large event where invitations are sent, the room is decorated, food is prepared, guests are entertained, and it’s all satisfactorily cleaned up. We have had an old fashioned Valentine’s party now for the past 3 years.

This year’s event was well done, however many of our invited guests were not able to attend, including all of the school’s administrators who had been invited. The kids were pretty bummed by that, but they carried on. There was more food than we could eat and everyone who did attend had a pleasant time. My students have a hard time chatting with adults, and this was one area that really showed up what with the smaller than usual attendance. I am always stressing the importance of schmoosing, but it’s not something they are comfortable doing. We also had some problems with getting serving pieces to all of the plates of food. The students seem to think “finger foods” means you serve them with your fingers, too. It is a learning experience for everyone, including the guests who get to see the kids close up and in action.

More intellectual property lessons

Today’s lesson with my sophomores involved an article I had downloaded from Microsoft. It discussed a survey of teenagers and their opinions of what is legal and illegal in the matter of music and video downloads.

The students are required to enter all articles which I give them into a bibliography log in the back of their journals. This gives them practice for writing bibliographies but it also gives them knowledge of an area that is on the exit exam (CaHSEE). Today’s entry was from a website so it gave them practice working with a different type of reference material. They recently finished a project that required internet research and some of the students have trouble with those references in the bibliography. After the bibliographical entry, the students discussed the article and they were quite pleased to realize that the curriculum we’ve been using was mentioned.

The article talked about a website developed by Microsoft where students could go and engineer music which could then be registered and downloaded as ringtones. The kids were really excited to do this so we logged on, registered, and they got busy designing their own ringtone. They could also listen to pieces done by others and either download or purchase depending on the rights assigned by the originator. Some of the kids were aghast that another student would think his music worth selling, or that the student could even restrict the use of the piece. It generated more discussion about intellectual property and the use of it. Since today was the day after Valentines, and the day before a 3-day weekend, I figured it was time for a little fun. The kids enjoyed a day where they weren’t expected to do very much.