Well done Grade 6! You are on the last stage of the MYP Design Cycle for our Teachers of the Future project! Now it’s time to look back at all of our amazing accomplishments during this unit (from January 2012 until May 2012), and reflect on what we’ve learned, how we’ve worked together and individually, and where we can go from here.

Here’s a great brainstorm by 6B highlighting all the different tasks we completed during this unit:

Your final task for this unit is to Evaluate your work on this unit. Since you did quite a lot of writing in the Create Reflection, this time we’re going to make a video!

1. Using the Evaluate Assignment Sheet, select at least one question (but no more than two) from each section to answer.
2. You may want to script your response, or make a quick brainstorm to be sure that you include all of your ideas.
3. When you’re ready, you can record your video. Here are a few creative ways to present your final evaluation (especially for those who prefer not to video themselves talking):

When you’re finished creating your video Evaluation, please export the large size (just like we did with our tutorials) to your desktop, and then either

• Upload to your own video sharing account (YouTube, etc) and embed on your blog, or
• Wait until next class to upload to the YIS Vimeo account and embed on your blog.

Please do not upload the video directly to your blog – the file will be too large and will take up all of your storage space.

Deadlines (also on the assignment calendar):

• 6A: Friday, May 11
• 6B & 6C: Tuesday, May 8th (you will be on a field trip this day, but please make sure your work is complete)

Good luck! Let me know if you have any questions.

Well done grade 6! We are just about ready to finish up the Create assignment.

Before our lesson next week, please complete your Create Reflection and publish it on your blog. Here are the brainstorms we worked on in class to help organize your thinking:

• 6A Create Reflection Brainstorm
• 6B Create Reflection Brianstorm
• 6C Create Reflection Brainstorm

By Friday of this week (April 13th) all of your tutorials will be posted on our Tutorial Channel on Vimeo (and embedded on each students blog)!

Before our lesson next week (Monday  16 April for 6C  & 6B, and Wed 18 April for 6A), please make sure to leave a comment on at least 2 – 3 tutorials (on their blog) to give them some feedback. In your comment on the individual student blog, make sure to answer the following questions:

• What makes this a good tutorial? Why?
• What did you learn by watching their tutorial?
• What criteria does this tutorial meet?

We will be using this feedback to help write our reflections next week. If you would like to get a head start, you can also work on your reflection for homework.

Reminder: You can also find these questions on the Create Assignment Sheet on the Projects page here on the blog (Criterion D), or in your Google Docs 6(A,B,C) Tech Documents collection.

Well done Grade 6!

Everyone has completed a storyboard, and a timeline plan to help make sure that your finished tutorial turns out exactly the way you want. Here are a few of the Plan assignments that really stood out as I was reading your blog posts and reviewing your storyboards:

• Raveena
• Connor
• Josephine
• Juulia
• Taro
• Rhiannu
• Johan
• Layna
• Yudai
• Alina
• Tobi
• Helen
• Arunansu

Have a look at their work and leave them a comment! What did they do especially well? Why do you think their work jumped out at me as being especially super? (Don’t worry, I’ll tell you in class, but I’m just curious to see if you notice it too!)

Congratulations Grade 6! You are now ready to create your final tutorial videos! In honor of your amazing work so far, we will be embarking on an exciting adventure!

For the next two periods (next week, March 12 – 16th, and the following week, March 19 – 23rd), our lessons will be focused on your own individual work, in order to help you complete your tutorial at your own pace, and with individual support as needed.

This means you have the challenge of:

Planning:

Specifically, planning which activities you will do at home, and which you will do at school. This is important to think about, because the activities you plan to do at home should probably be the ones where you feel really confident with the task, and you need total quiet. The tasks you plan to do at home should be newer things that you may need help with, as well as things you can do in a noisy room. You will need to use your storyboard to organize the time and location of all of your filming. Here’s a good example of a logical task breakdown (this template is also in your Tech Documents folder, so feel free to make a copy for yourself to get even more organized):

Time Management:

You have the next two weeks to complete your tutorial. Your work is due before we go on Spring Break. This means you need to organize yourself to make sure you do a little bit each day, and each lesson, to make sure you are done in time. You should be using your Tutorial Plan document to make sure you are on track and organized to finish on time.

Organization of Materials:

Because we have two whole weeks to complete this part of the project, and because you will be doing some tasks at home and some tasks at school, you will need to be very organized. You will need to make sure you have the materials you need during class time, as well as when you’re working at home. Again, you should be using your Tutorial Plan document to be sure you have everything you need when you are working on your tutorial.

Some Important Advice

You should come to class with all of your filming complete next class:

• 6B & 6C: Tuesday March 13th
• 6A: Friday March 16th

This way, I can give you feedback on the work you’ve done so far, and you can continue to improve any clips that need work in the following week.

Just a quick reminder that your complete tutorials are due:

• 6A: Wednesday, 21 March
• 6B: Monday, 19 March
• 6C: Monday, 19 March

Well done Grade 6! We are already almost finished with the Plan stage of the Technology Design Cycle and you are well on your way to creating some amazing tutorials!

To complete this stage, as usual you will need to publish a blog post reflection, here are the steps:

1. Type your reflection in a new blog post. Your reflection should have 5 paragraphs, one for an introduction, one for a conclusion, and one for each of the questions below:

• How does your plan demonstrate excellent tutorial design? Using our class criteria (6A, 6B, 6C), choose at least three criteria from the list that are very important to you and explain why and how you meet those criteria through your storyboard design.
• How does your plan ensure that the viewer of your tutorial will learn this skill? What did you do well in your storyboard that will help the viewer of your tutorial learn?
• What else do you need to learn to be able to create your tutorial?

2. Title your blog post: Teachers of the Future: Plan Reflection

3. Within your blog post, remember to include:

• A picture of your storyboard linked to the full size, public document – if you used pencil and paper for this part, you will scan your storyboard and upload the image to your blog.
• A picture of your tutorial plan template, linked to the full size, public document

If you need help linking your storyboard or your tutorial plan template, follow the directions here.

4. Make sure your blog post goes into the Tech category on your blog.

Plan Reflection Due Dates:

• 6A: Wed, 22 Feb
• 6B: Tues 28, Feb
• 6C: Tues 28, Feb

One of the most important things you will learn in this class is how to organize and plan for a big project. As you can already tell, you will have lots of projects in middle and high school (and in life!) and it really helps to understand how to break down a big project into small steps, so that you can be organized and finish on time.

This is why we are going to spend some time creating a formal plan for completing our tutorials using the tutorial plan template.

Hopefully, this will be easy! Here’s what you need to do:

1. Write down each of the things you think you need to do to create your tutorial in the “Name” column, each in a separate row on your tutorial plan template.

You will probably want to use the lists we brainstormed as a class (6A, 6B, 6C) to help you get started – but remember, the list is just a starting point, you might have different things to add to your list.

2. After you’ve named each task, write a short description of what you need to do to complete the task in the “Details” column.

3. Decide what order you need to do your tasks in so that you can finish on time – this is called prioritizing your tasks. You can just write the numbers in the Priority column (or if you’re super organized you can cut and paste things into the right order).

4. Finally, put a deadline for each task. To do this, you need to know when your final tutorial will be due. Here are the due dates:

• 6A: Wednesday, 21 March
• 6B: Monday, 19 March
• 6C: Monday, 19 March

Image Credits

• Organizing My Seed Stash by Chiot’s Run on Flickr, Creative Commons Licensed

Our next stage of this project is the Plan. During planning, we will design storyboards for our tutorials before we actually create them. Here are some examples of storyboards, compared with the final movie, to give you an idea of how important storyboards are.

And one more.

After watching, discuss (or leave a comment below):

• What did you notice about the storyboards when compared with the finished film?
• Why do you think it’s important to create a storyboard?

To start properly planning for your Teachers of the Future Tutorial, you will need to storyaboard your video first. You will use the storyboard template to plan out your finished product, just like the examples from Hollywood above!

To get started:

1. In each box, draw a picture of the beginning of each clip (a clip is the video that you take from the moment you press record until the moment you press stop).
2. Don’t forget to include a title and credits at the beginning and end of your storyboard.
3. You might even want to use title clips throughout your tutorial to help organize your work.
4. Once you have all of your clips, and all of your titles drawn in the boxes, you can start adding the details in the outline section below. Make sure to make notes for every box (even if you choose to add “none” – this shows that you have thought about each step).

You may use as many storyboard template pages as you need. You may use paper copies, or you can design your storyboard on the computer using Google Docs.

Don’t forget to use the Storyboard Tutorial Checklist to make sure you completed all of the steps!

This storyboard will be very important as you begin to create your tutorial. It will help give you guidance on what to do, how to film and how to make sure your work is complete by the due date. Take your time and make sure it’s thorough!

Storyboard Due Dates:

• 6A: Friday, 17 Feb
• 6B: Monday, 20 Feb
• 6C: Monday, 20 Feb