Thinking Like a Scientist

This year my workload at school has changed somewhat. For the first time I'm using my second certification. I went to college to be a Technology Education Teacher (used to be called shop, but has evolved and now includes engineering). With the way the economy is and all the cuts to spending on education there were a lot of threats of lay-off and myself and many of the other "special subject" teacher went out and got additional certifications to help with job security. This year in addition to teaching 8-12th grade Technology Education, I am also teaching 6th grade science.

During a get to know you activity on the first day I told the 6th grade students I like to make stop motion animation videos. They asked to see a video, and I told them I'd show them something at some point. I originally thought about showing them the Woodworking Safety video I made for my high school kids. Later I decided to make a video that I could show them that related to their curriculum.

So, along with all the craziness of the first two weeks of school I wrote, animated, and edited a video for them based on section 1 of the first chapter of their text book. The video features an action figure of the Mad Scientist from Robot Chicken. I haven't show it to them yet, so I'm waiting to hear what they think.


During the same get to know you activity, one of my students told me he and his father collect action figures. I've got to talk to this parent at Back-to-School Night.

I'd like to do other videos for school (and have been thinking about one my digital photography class) but they take even longer to make than the ones I do for fun, and are less fun to make. I keep the script loose for the toy review videos, but they have to be well scripted if I'm trying to teach specific topics or definitions thought the video. So only time will tell if I do more educational videos, but I do plan to keep doing animated reviews.