Using Digital Media in the classroom (F2F and Virtual)

I have taught in the Face 2 Face classroom and online and also hybrid courses that combine both. I have used video in my classroom quite often.  The most memorable use of video was when I showed the 1940 film adaptation of Steinbeck's, "The Grapes of Wrath" to my class of welfare to work students.  It had a huge impact on the class of 15 students who never realized that there was a time without welfare and the hunger of Tom Joad for honest work to support his family motivate over half the class to find jobs that week.  I presented that Film in two sessions with a viewing guide for the students on which they could take notes and then the third class we discussed how the film affected the students' attitudes toward work and welfare.

For this assignment I chose a video segment from Discovery Education entitled, "The Alien and Sedition Acts: Preserving Liberty in a Nation of Immigrants".  I plan to use the segment as part of the introduction to a Social Studies unit on Immigration in America.  The objectives for the unit include;

• familiarizing students with the timeline of immigration in the United States
• recognizing government's actions in the restriction and protection of the rights of immigrants
• encourage students to compare and contrast the experiences of immigrants in America of the past and present

The lesson would address PA Standard

8.3.6.D: Explain how conflict and cooperation among groups and organizations have impacted the history and development of the U.S.

•  Ethnicity and race
•  Working conditions
•  Immigration
•  Military conflict
•  Economic stability

The video segment discusses the Sedition and Alien Acts of 1798 when our Country was still very young.  It is a short video of 2 minutes 30 seconds.  The first way that I might use it in a F2F classroom would be to give a brief lecture and then have the students view the video in its' entirety with the class as a whole.  I could also do this in an *Elluminate session with my online students.(*Elluminate is an application that allows a group to meet online with chat and voice capability and it also has a virtual white board capable of doing almost anything a Smartboard can do).
A second way I could use the video would be to show it to the students as a whole but break the segment into "chunks" and have a brief discussion or other activity between each segment and then have a culminating activity at the end.  This would also work in a live Elluminate session.
A third way to use this video segment would be to have the students view the segment individually at computer work stations in the classroom and complete an activity related to the information presented.
Another variation on this would be to include the video as part of a self contained unit in an online course, blog or WIKI.  Students could view the whole video along with a supportive text lesson or it could be broken into segments and text to support and extend learning.Short  activities to assess learning and concept understanding would also be included.
Lastly,
 I might ask students to create their own Powerpoint show or IMOVIE using clips from the video segment and incorporating their own video, images and text to expand on the lesson as a whole or particular aspects of it.  Students could do this in groups or they could produce it as an individual focusing on one smaller aspect of the lesson.  Aproject like this could also be done as easily by students in a Face2Face classroom as online students using social collaboration applications/websites.

Introduction - Laurene

I currently supervise the social studies department for an online learning company.  Some of our courses use a lot of different media while other, older courses use very little.  I expect my teachers to use various media such as, video, avatars, animations,  to supplement the content developed by our curriculum department.  I encourage the integration of media into my teachers online instruction because teachers tend to use too much text in their online courses.
I want to be able to share what I learn in this course to help my teachers integrate media into their online instruction tool kits.