Amanda O'Brien

Thesis – Concept/Project Description

Overview:

Project Based Learning is a comprehensive learning approach for elementary school teachers that addresses both academic and artistic disciplines. The production of a claymation movie introduces both areas of study in a collective, engaging format. I plan to develop a blog that allows teachers to share information about the integration of a claymation movie into academic curricula, while also providing a space that instructs teachers how to implement the project.

Goals:

By creating an environment that supports project based learning in the form of claymation films, I hope to accomplish several goals: to encourage project based learning, to creatively stimulate teachers’ curricula and to maximize learning for all students.

Traditionally, elementary school courses are taught in subject area segments such as: Art, English, History, Math, Music, Science, etc. There is a dividing line between subjects, and there is an even further separation between academic and fine arts areas of study. Although a clear-cut division can be useful in regard to focusing students and having a concise teaching strategy for teachers, it can also lead to boredom and the inability for students to see how all areas of study are integrated and applicable to the learning and creating process. Project based learning creatively incorporates all areas of study, both academically and artistically, into one collaborative, comprehensive project.

Evidence suggests that PBL curriculum enhances student learning and motivation (e.g., Bredderman, 1983). By introducing creativity into the learning process, teachers are making learning fun and hopefully enjoying the project themselves. “Children learn better when they are excited and engaged…” (The Standards Site)

Typically classrooms have students with a vast range of capabilities. “Project based learning is one of the best ways to organize activities in your classroom to ensure that maximum learning occurs for all students.” (Watson, About.com) Children explore their individual strengths and interests, while learning how to work collaboratively.

Audience:

The blog I am creating is targeted for teachers, grades 3-8. Coming from a family of teachers, it has been my experience that teachers are constantly searching for creative ways to enhance their curriculum, and ways to reach out to the class as a whole. My ambition is to address both of these issues. By supplying a free, open-source blog that provides academically and artistically rich curriculum material and appeals to a wide audience of students, teachers will be able to quickly find or develop lesson plans that will collectively engage the class.

Location:

My blog is an online space that may or may not require that users signup for usage. (Once I have decided on the specific media that I will be using, this requirement will ultimately be decided for me.) Ideally it will be a space where users can visit as frequently or infrequently as they wish, with the option of sharing and/or borrowing curriculum as frequently as they like. This does effect my design decisions in that I need to account for the inactivity of users for possibly several months. The layout of the blog will have to function in such a way that will it make historical posts easy to access.

Description of Core Features:

My thesis project is building a blog that demonstrates to teachers how to implement project based learning in the form of a claymation movie. The intentions of the blog are to: invoke discussion among teachers on how to make their curriculum more artistically rich, provide free step-by-step guides on the creation of claymation movies, allow file sharing so that teachers can access each other’s work, allow teacher’s a space to blog about creative curriculum, make learning more exciting, break the boundaries between fine arts and academics, create lesson plans that appeal to a wide variety of students and provide tutorials on the skills necessary to create a claymation, stop animation film.

The intention is for the users (teachers) to become intrigued by project based learning in the form of claymation, and then eventually incorporate it into their curriculum. My ambition is that the ideas in the blog will be so richly presented, that teachers will download a project idea, implement that project by either interjecting their own ideas into the curriculum, or following the curriculum verbatim, and then share the project work with other teachers on the blog. The intended effect is that teachers all over, from different backgrounds (some artistic, some not) will implement this project in their classrooms and be a catalyst to support project based learning.

Users of the blog can visit for a number of reasons, to: download curriculum, upload their own curriculm, chat with teachers, watch tutorials on how to create a claymation movie, watch finished claymation movies for either fun and/or research, and find out where to buy or find materials for the set. I will be utilizing a standard blog format, either WordPress or TextPattern, and reformatting the Html to better meet the needs of my project.

I am learning towards using WordPress for my blog. Using WordPress, blog users can easily upload and download the following files: jpg, jpeg, png, gif, pdf, doc, ppt, and odt files. Users can also utilize mp3, avi, ogg, m4a, mp4, mpg, mov, wav, and wmv files, but are limited to a 3G limit. However, WordPress allows users to either purchase more storage or link to external sites such as Flickr.

The “Write” feature on WordPress allows users to write a blog post, and also tag it with relevant subject lines. For instance, a fourth grade teacher may tag her post about different finds of clay with: “clay,” “claymation,” “fourth grade,” and “Claytoon.” Users can then search for these tags when they are gathering information on a particular aspect of the project.

The tutorial section will include videos that I have made, that will provide instructional insight on how to perform key factors of the claymation process. I plan to cover: stop animation, armature creation, lighting setup, cameras setup, and iStopMotion software. My videos will be embedded links that point to BlipTV, YouTube or Google Video. I will host each tutorial, and demonstrate the best practices for each area of interest.

Teachers will also visit the site to watch completed claymation movies. They will go to this area of the site for either inspiration or research. Hopefully this will be the same area of the site that they visit to upload their completed projects. The same functionality that I mentioned earlier for tutorial videos will be the same one that facilitates uploads and downloads in this section.

Users will also visit this site to find out what materials are recommended, and where they can get them. There will be a listing of both stores (mostly chain stores will be listed so that a broader, geographical audience can use this section) and websites, so that teachers can order supplies online. Also, there will be a money saver section that will list tips on what around the house items can be used for production. Many times these items bring a lot of life to a project, such as a leaf from a plant that is used in a jungle scene. It is cheaper than buying a fake plant, takes less time consuming than making one and also authenticates the scene.

Measuring the success of this project will be done on both a functional and conceptual level. Functionally, the user should be able to access all portions of the site that were previously mentioned. If users can visit the site, watch a tutorial, download a curriculum document, upload a curriculum document, chat with a teacher, watch a complete movie and find out where to order materials online, my project will be successful in the functional sense.

For user testing I plan to test the site myself, then include friends and then finally invite a small group of teachers to login and participate. I will provide a condensed version of a test script, to about half of the participants. This will facilitate direction in the testing process for those that have the scripts. For those that do not have test scripts, I will receive valuable feedback as to if they are able to understand the site’s mission and functionality, without having anything explained to them prior. Also, I worked very closely with a third grade teacher on the implementation of a claymation project, and I am looking forward to her feedback on the site. She is a teacher that has gone through this process, and it will be interesting to see if she finds the blog to be helpful.

Theoretically my project will be successful if students are learning creatively and academically at the same time, and a broader student base is reached, due to the teacher’s willingness to participate in project based learning. I can analyze this based on the comments that teachers make in the blog section, the content of the documents that are uploaded, and the quality of the finished claymation films that have been uploaded.