Category: Multimedia

A Year at Mission Hill - Chapter 1: Why We’re Here

Summary: A Year At Mission Hill is is a 10-part series, which chronicles a year in the life of one of America's most successful public schools.

The Guiding Question for Chapter 1: What characterizes a great school, and how do schools sustain greatness over time?

A Year at Mission Hill: My School

Summary: Chapter 1 in a series of short videos aligned with "A Year at Mission Hill' in which UK Filmmakers Visual Influence explore what it feels like to go to a great school, from a child's perspective.

ACT out against SAT - One College Applicant Puts Her Testing Gripes on Video

Summary: Allie Kauffmann is a high-school senior who dislikes standardized tests. Sam Kauffmann is a filmmaker who thinks the world of Allie, his daughter. These conditions inspired the following video, a nine-minute gripe about standardized tests and their role in college admissions. Watch as Allie explains the struggles and injustices regarding the achievement of high test scores on ACT and SAT tests and explains how and why wealthy people are just more likely to succeed in taking these tests.

Alfie Kohn: “It’s bad news if students are motivated to get A’s”

Summary: This is a clip from Alfie Kohn's DVD: "NO GRADES + NO HOMEWORK = BETTER LEARNING" (http://www.alfiekohn.org). In this short clip, Kohn discusses the grave implications of rewarding students for getting good grades. Research and analysis shows definitively that rewarding students for good grades stifles students' intrinsic desires to learn, and motivates their desires to get good grades for the sake of being rewarded.

American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs

Summary: AMERICAN REVOLUTIONARY: THE EVOLUTION OF GRACE LEE BOGGS is a feature-length documentary that includes biographical elements, but it is not a biopic. Grace is less a protagonist than a conduit for ideas and this is a film about the power of ideas and the process of building community. It's also a film that will channel the elusive spirit and energy of a woman who has given herself over completely to ideas, community and revolution. The driving narrative is how one person traversed the major social movements of the last century - from labor to civil rights, to Black Power, feminism, and beyond - and emerged with a philosophy that is almost radical in its simplicity and clarity: revolution is not an act of aggression, but a series of dialectical conversations. It is a willingness to change tactics, reevaluate strategy, and embrace contradictions.

An Open Letter To Educators

Summary: In this six and a half minute long video, Dan Brown discusses how and why teaching students facts in today's day and age just isn't preparing people for living successfully in the real world. Dan has just recently dropped out of college because he felt that his college "education" was interfering with what he considers a real education. Today we have plenty of free access to information via the internet alone, so why are schools still teaching us facts when they ought to be teaching us how to succeed, innovate, and creatively contribute to our societies?

Chimamanda Adichie: The danger of a single story (TED talk)

Summary: A TED talk where Chimamanda Adichie tells her story and along the way raises awareness about our tendency to create or not examine the single stories we are told about Africans, Mexicans, or any social construct. She talks openly about literature, power, and media in a personal and deeply compelling way.

Rated: (4/5), based on 1 review Posted in ToolsMultimedia

Crotty’s Kids

Summary: Crotty's Kids follows six Black and Hispanic debaters from the Eagle Academy for Young Men in the South Bronx, whose lives are transformed by Eagle's unlikely coach, who, amidst a midlife crisis brought on by the death of his parents, seeks to prove that any kid, from any background, can compete with the city's best and brightest.

Dan Pink - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us (RSA Animate)

Summary: Engaging and clear visual animation with author Dan Pink about motivation and the importance of autonomy, mastery, and purpose. Although mostly from a workplace orientation, this video is a highly relevant and engaging way to think about the importance of intrinsic motivation in learning and education.

Rated: (5/5), based on 1 review Posted in ToolsMultimedia

Hip Hop Genius: Remixing High School Education

Summary: An excellent video by Hip Hop Genius illustrating (literally) how hip hop can teach language arts, innovation and value of community. Hip Hop Genius finds inspiration for innovation in the evolution of hip-hop music and culture. While our current system has proven particularly ineffective for urban, low-income, Black and Latino students, these are the exact demographics of young people that invented hip-hop. Beyond being an extremely lucrative and high profile musical genre, hip-hop represents an indefatigable creative and entrepreneurial spirit.

Howard Gardner: The Multiple Intelligence Theory

Summary: Howard Gardner is the John H. and Elisabeth A. Hobbs Professor in Cognition and Education at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. In this 1997 interview with Edutopia, he discusses student-directed learning, multiple intelligences, and a different approach to assessment.

Just Listen: Being Someone, Doing Something

Summary: Kenneth, in grade 11, muses about how his growing passion for math could shape his future out in the world.

Learning Matters

Summary: Learning Matters is a 501 (c)(3) non-profit media production company focused on education whose mission is to encourage and enrich public dialogue about education, youth and families. Learning Matters has produced more than 30 documentaries and filed hundreds of reports for PBS NewsHour. Our work has taken us everywhere from community colleges to kindergarten classes, and from policy hearings to protest rallies. Unparalleled access to education's leaders, long-term in-depth coverage, and scrupulous representation of complex issues are the hallmarks of our approach.

Learning with the Land Preview - The Walden Project

Summary: The Walden Project takes public high school to the woods each day in western Vermont. In this 5-minute preview of a 30-minute film produced by Walden alumna Julia Walsh, check out the history, environment, community, discussions, food and philosophy of the Walden Project.

Not on the Test

Summary: This is the video for the song, "Not on the Test," that Tom Chapin wrote with John Forster. The two wrote the song to express their disappointment in the lack of arts education in public schools.

On Play and Learning

Summary: The voices you hear are those of 8 - 11 year old Opal Public Charter School students, who know well the profound connections between play and learning.

Opal School Children on Play and Learning

Summary: The voices you hear are those of 8 - 11 year old Opal Public Charter School students, who know well the profound connections between play and learning.

These words (recorded during an unscripted lunchtime conversation) are evidence of the power of environments for learning that have as a first priority to sustain curiosity and the joy and wonder of learning -- both the wonderful and the wondering. They are also evidence of the deep pleasure of learning in itself, enough to engage and inspire and carry us on through the hard stuff.

To learn more about Opal School, visit us at http://www.opalschoolblog.typepad.com.

Prescription for Play

Summary: This video addresses critical issues facing children and families today -- rising levels of stress and anxiety, obesity-related health problems, dramatically reduced time for free play and play outdoors, hectic and overscheduled family life -- and offer solutions to addressing these problems. Produced in collaboration with the Alliance for Childhood and KaBOOM!.

President Obama On High-Stakes Tests

Summary: On March 28, 2011 at a town-hall meeting sponsored by Univision, President Obama responded to a question from a public high school student who asked if there could be fewer tests in school. President Obama responds with a vision of testing that is low-stakes, that does not punish students or schools, and that does not create "teaching to the test," in order to make sure that students will stay engaged and interested in learning.

This seems opposite to his administration's education policies that generally support more testing and higher stakes for teachers and students, and has led to strong responses by education bloggers (see links below).

Project-Based Learning: An Overview

Summary: In this 2001 Edutopia video, Seymour Papert, a distinguished professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, discusses project-based learning (PBL). Interviews with students and teachers using this approach provide concrete examples of what PBL can look like in classrooms.

Rated: (5/5), based on 1 review Posted in ToolsMultimedia