ESL Summer Enrichment project notes

2010
ESL Summer Enrichment Project
7/2/2010- Luis Garcia, Cileia Pimentel, Kris Kerr and myself met to plan, organize and launch the ESL summer enrichment project with flip cameras and moviemaker software. Administrative issues were overseen by Kris Kerr, ESL Administrator with the Middletown City School District, Middletown, NY. 15 Flip Ultra cameras were ordered, a classroom, and computer lab were secured, and Flipshare software was installed in the computer lab. The students who were eligible for the program, were English Language Learners grades 8-12. Our focus at this meeting was on recruitment and attendance.
7/12/2010- Our first day and week of the program involved recruitment, attendance, planning and organizing our field trip to Dia:Beacon. There were challenges: students who attend summer school for academic intervention, could not miss instructional time to attend this cultural event. We received our flip cameras! Our enrollment is 10 students, due to conflicts with scheduling, and perhaps, insufficient marketing of the program. The tools we needed to conduct the class were not available for the majority of this week. The smartboard was not set up, nor was there an LCD projector, which we needed to play instructional media. After unsuccessful attempts to have students storyboard their ideas, we allowed the students to use their video cameras. After recording various videos, the students were unable to upload the videos to Moviemaker.
7/19/2010- During this week we had a successful field trip to Dia, with 5 students; continued to work out technological problems, and instructed students on media literacy, storyboarding, critical thinking and communication skills. Overall, students are engaged and enthusiastic. We decided to launch a blog: http://tesolmoviemaker.blogspot.com to extend the program online. Students will be posting thoughtful comments following prompts by Ms. Pimentel.
7/26/2010- In general, technology continues to be a vexation, as new software (FLipshare) and outdated software(moviemaker) cause crashes, burns and the need to have technology technicians assisting us in updating computers, loading additional plug-ins and converters. Please see attached detailed technological concerns list. Students remain engaged, active and are posting responses to the blog. Additionally, most of the students are editing their material in Moviemaker. In anticipation of writing this journal, we explored the standards addressed in this project. NYSED ESL standards 1,4,5 and NETS standards 1,2,3,4,5,6.
8/2/2010- Starting the end of last week, and continuing this week, attendance is a problem. We seem to have lost student motivation and enthusiasm to complete the project. Luis Garcia and I made a home visit to one student after numerous attempts to contact by phone. It turns out he doesn’t live at the listed address. This student has stopped attending his classes in summer school as well. Editing is challenging as the computer freezes, edits are lost, locating moviemaker project on the computer is challenging. Without a technology coach, it’s hard to know where one can save material for the best retrieval: on our server system, is it”C”drive; “H” drive; “S” drive; desktop or USB drive?

Technology issues and recommendations:
All computers should be tested and running prior to first day of class. Flip cameras should be on hand 1st day, but should be tested prior to.
Our issues consisted of an inability to load MP4 videos, without converting to AVI’s, into moviemaker. We thought that an earlier version of the flipshare software had been installed, prior to purchase of newer version flip cameras, and perhaps that was the problem. Nevertheless, “Pazera” free MP4 to AVI converter was installed, to allow for the importing of videos into Moviemaker for editing, creating and ultimately publishing the videos. Craig Hunt, John Tornone-technology geeks supreme- were fabulous in assisting us in updating, downloading, setting up and troubleshooting. In an ideal world, we would have a technology geek on hand at all times. A major concern regarding adding music/audio is the inability to access the royalty free music sites. This greatly hindered our ability to research appropriate material for student videos. As a result, students were tempted to violate copyright and fair use laws, by uploading commercial music without receiving permission from the artist. We were able to unblock the following source for royalty free music:
http://freeplaymusic.com/search/category_search.php?sindex=11&i=19&t=s