STEM 7th Grade Girls Workshop - Pathways - Video Haiku... A letter to their future selves...

I was asked to do a workshop using video - The participants would be 7th grade girls interested in STEM careers for our annual Pathways event. The video above is an example of what I hope the girls can accomplish in 50 minutes!! - A sort of letter to their future selves about what they are good at - what they like to do - and what they hope their careers will look like in 2020 ....Below is a description of the genesis of the workshop

At a recent EDUCAUSE Live event on digital storytelling given by Joan Getman of Cornell University, I was struck by the notion of video haiku that she mentioned... a 3-part video sequence that follows the haiku format of 5-7-5 (I need to check this...) and in this case, instead of syllables - it would be seconds of video clips... anyway... this idea began to blossom and when the opportunity to do a video workshop for this event came up, I thought of this idea again....

Well we are constrained by a 50 minute time frame and 14 girls in each session, so I knew we couldn't do three video clips and we'd have to be pretty controlled, too... so over time I came up with this format... and I hope it will work!! One of the goals of the Pathways program is to get girls to consider STEM careers - and meet women during the day who already work in those careers... so I've asked our instructional librarian and an IST faculty member to help me in the session as well.


So I created a template for them to fill in - that gets them to reflect about their gifts, talents, interests, and dreams... and then that becomes their script for the video - The bottom piece of the handout has a template for a Haiku poem that pulls it all together to end the video - They choose to sit at one of staged sets around the room (I gathered props from the chem and bio labs and engineering. brought in some science reated posters from home - put a long equation on the board for mathematics - and that created little "sets" around the room to film in front of... They work with a partner and film each other - then come back to their seats to create the movie - using FLipShare software in teh cameras - adding a title and credits slide - and the burning it to a DvD to take along - The workshop leaders and I went around the room to make sure everything went OK - and for the most part it did! - Some USB ports didnt' work and even though we upgraded all the software int he room - so stations still gave us trouble... but all in all - it went very successfully -Every girl left with a video!!! Here's a video of the room...




It is going to be technically challenging because of the time limitations... so fingers crossed!!!!

DEBRIEF.. after-the-fact - everything went really well - I did change the format - instead of having the leaders work with a smaller group of girls to make the movie and burn to a DvD - I decided to walk everyone through it from the front of the room at the same time - freeing up the assistants to help as needed - This turned out to work really well - so in the case of the few problems - they could really be free to work those through with the individuals. I simplified the ppt between sessions 2 & 3 and used mostly the prompt slides to show them process steps - and help with writing the Haiku...

5 minutes - Introductions & Overview
5 Minutes PowerPoint and Camera overview
10 minutes - writing script and practice with a partner
15 minutes - filming
15 minutes creating the movie with FlipShare software and burning to a DvD - and time enough to watch their final videos

Pretty much consistently we started a little early and had 4 minutes to spare - so just enough time... AND I talk ed about this with another presenter -t he girls were REALLY tech savvy - more than I expected in terms of file management and operations - like copy paste, renaming files, finding files - drag & Drop - that kind of thing used to be an issue - interesting that nothing was an issue.. not even the cameras -

It was a GOOD day!!! The girls seemed to like it and I don't think I'll change much next time at all... Thanks to great help - Emily Wenk - IST Instructor and Barbara Eshbach - Reference Librarian - assistants extraordinaire!!!