GoAnimate Service Learning Project

Service Learning Project: GoAnimate at Adams-Friendship High School

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My service learning project started one way and then it split and doubled down.  Initially, I was able to get Marsha Roelke, biology teacher, to agree to help me teach her 10^th grade biology students to use GoAnimate to make cartoons with their class content which was biomes of North America.  I obtained permission from the principal who was familiar with the cartoon making program.  Then, I taught Marsha the program and she loved it.  So, naturally, she wanted to do it in both of her biology blocks.  I agreed.  The, we had a complication. 

The assistant principal called and asked if I would substitute long-term for an auto shop teacher who had walked out because he had too many students with bad behaviors.  He was primarily concerned with safety, I think.  I agreed to do it on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays.  Nick Darnick agreed to do it on Tuesdays and Thursdays.  He was fired last year as the teacher of ALIVE, a program for impossible kids, so that another person who had more political clout could have the job.   We worked out a coordination scheme with Mr. Nofzinger and Mr. Eichman who would feed us stuff to do in the classes.  Mr. Eichman in the wood shop guy and Nofzinger is the long-term substitute for the auto shop who was transferred to the metals shop for the new metals shop teacher who replaced Nofzinger when he moved to Minnesota because his bride wanted to move in with her mother who lived there.  So, when the new metals teacher went to hospital to deliver her baby, Nofzinger took over that job and the administration was not able to staff the auto shop with a certified substitute.  So, the students got mad and rebelled because they wanted to be in the shop.  That’s when I, expendable super sub, was called in.

 I told the assistant principal that he had to cover for me on the day that I planned to be in Marsia’s class doing my service project.  He said OK and then during my first sub day in auto shop, he told me he would not cover for me.  So, I had to punt.  Marcia’s room has several computer stations where her students work in pairs.  The room is next to the computer lab in the commons area.  Luckily, I signed up my classes in auto shop for the same times we had planned the service project.  Marcia agreed to help cover mine when I was instructing hers.  I also signed mine up for the proceeding class day so that I could teach them the GoAnimate program before I had to teach hers.  That worked out.  So, I taught the cartoon making program and assisted students to use it for content presentations during several class periods.  We did both of Marcia’s for 2 days and I did 3 blocks of mine for 3 days for a total of 13 hours.

What I DID

I started by explaining to the auto shop students that they would learn to make cartoons using the auto shop content that Nofzinger had taught them from the text book.  Some of them thought it might be fun and others threw empty plastic bottles at me.  I thought they might like to learn a little about technology tools so I set up poll anywhere and asked them to use their cell phones to text me a message consisting of the key plus their name.  They started to do this and thought it was fun.  Then I received 25 racist and pornographic messages that I deleted before closing the browser that was being displayed on the IWB.  I used the IWB on he first day to show the shop students how to sign up and start using GoAnimate when they got to the computer lab the next period.  One student took the IWB projector remote from mje and Announced that they would do the class their way.  I threw him out sending him straight to Nofzinger.  Class was over.  During the next 2 class periods which were a Friday and Monday, we spent the time in the computer lab where I monitored their work with GoAnimate and provided individual help while walking around.  During their first session, some students made pornographic and racist cartoons.  I was using Vision and shut them down.  At the end of the 4^th Block on Friday several of the students tried to leave early and started horsing around.  I raised my voice to shut them down.  They ignored me and other teachers ran out of their rooms screaming at the students to help me.  Saved by the bell!

Monday was better because the students had experience and could actually start making cartoon movies.  Students were told to bring ear phones.  Some did and some shared.  Marcia borrowed some from the technology teacher, Mrs. Kuchta. (Her husband was the former vice principal whose arm a student dislocated at the shoulder and then snapped like a stick.  He is no longer at the high school and has had several surgeries to repair his broken arm and shoulder.  Mr. Kuchta is larger than I am and younger.  Teaching can be hazardous to your health.)    In addition, Marcia was there to help me when I was in her room where I taught the program to her students.  During second block when I had my best students and Marcia had her most challenging students, Sherman Anderson, an EEN teacher, helped in Marcia’s room with some of his labeled students.  He really liked GoAnimate and his help was really good.  My kids started making cartoons and finding neat effects that I did not know about.  They made videos of cars having accidents, running over people and other things.  The biggest problem was finding cars to insert but there were several available in the templates that were free.  Some of the videos were quite good although short.  Students often got in a hurry and clicked on skits which wasted some time because the skits buttons do not take students to the movie making studio.  This simply showed that students had not paid close attention to my instruction, or that my instruction was lacking.  However, it is easy to understand how distracting the GoAnimate site is.  As the students worked I walked around helping them individually and filming their activities to provide evidence for my final report and for my electronic portfolio.  The lessons actually went very well except for a moment when I stepped into Marcia’s room before she made it to my computer lab.  Suddenly Mr. Norton ran over screaming at me not to leave the students alone.  The students felt bad for me and that helped me.  Of course I wanted to smack Mr. Norton.  He could have offered to help because he was on his prep period after all.   The students did not misbehave during this block in any way.   I know Mr. Norton was not wrong for correcting me, but under the circumstances I had little choice if I were to do justice to my service project.  There were no bad students in this block and I only left momentarily expecting Marcia to rotate with me.  She just was not fast enough.  Nuts!   Anyway, some of the student videos are highlighted in the video linked and/or attached at the end of this report.

What I Learned

GoAnimate

The GoAnimate program contained Many more options than I had found in my brief experience with it.  I learned that it is fun, user friendly and relatively easy to use.  However, it takes some practice with settings to get characters to speak clearly.  The program does not recognize technical jargon as well as more common words.  For example,  it is hard to understand he stick figures when they Are talking about the “e” vironment and so forth.  Students did not realize that they had options of setting the rates of speech so that voices would sound more normal.  Generally, students rapidly improved when using the program.  Marcia’s students produced better products than the auto shop students.  It is harder for a sub to keep students on task, especially when they know their grades are not in jeopardy.  Finally, I learned that when I compress the videos that I made for transferring, I lost audio quality more than video quality.

Learner Capabilities

There were differences among learners, of course.  My observations suggest that about half of the students regardless of which class could rapidly read the directions in the program and progress independently.  Others needed a little help from their friends to find things and that was mostly due to impatience.  On the other hand, a few really needed help and were confused while they were trying to use the program.  These kids had no e-mail addresses, no computers at home and little experience surfing computer turf on their own.   Most of their experiences boiled down to watching over peer shoulders in classes.  This I see as a real problem.  Before tech can really come into classrooms, students need to be trained to use it.  There is a learning curve.  I know from my own experience that I can learn new programs faster now because my subconscious has a feel for the formats and computing language that I did not have before.

What I Learned About teaching

I learned that technology has some problem with leaving some children behind increasing the gap between rich and poor.   I either read or wrote that computers serve as society’s equalizer like the six gun of the last century.  It can be wonderful but it can be a problem too.  I learned that HS students can rebel when teaching lacks relevance.  I learned that few teachers are technology literate.  I learned that teachers have a hard time finding the time to become literate and to develop new skills.  I learned that teachers and administrators are not always your friends but expect you to be theirs.  But, I learned that students who are engaged often use the opportunity to construct their own learning and classroom management is better when students understand the relevance of lessons and have something to keep them physically busy.  I was also reminded that students who a teacher connects with behave better.  I should have spent more time in the beginning doing connection exercises.  That was my mistake.

What I Will Do Differently as a Result

I will try to slow down and get to know the students first.  I will establish classroom rules first.  I will spend more time teaching the why before I teach the how to.  I will treat substitutes with more regard and have real, relevant lesson plans ready for them. 

Maybe most importantly, I keep thinking that I fit the best in middle school teaching.  I find that the disruptive high school students can be the toughest on me and the most dangerous.

This is really a hard question to answer because I must wonder how I can do something differently that I have never done.  Of course, I have done it for 25 years.  My problem was always learning the students’ names when classes were large and I was never a strict disciplinarian.  I did not need to be because I was teaching adults.    If I learned one thing in this project it was to make clear instructions that students can easily follow one step at a time.  These need to be printed for each student so that each person can work at their own pace.  A good analogy is the way computer lessons are presented on Lynda.  They are slow, deliberate and cover only one or two points at a time.  I tend to go to fast and forget that it is easy to lose students who have less background than I have.  Good examples of this are on our class discussions.  Some students are having more trouble than others.  The question is why.  Did some procrastinate?  Do some have little computing experience?  Are some more timid than others?  Here is an interesting thought to reflect on.  I am a retired professor.  So, why do I tend to intimidate young university students (unintentionally, of course, but I feel that I often do) versus why am I often intimidated by high school students?  I will be a teacher when I can answer this question.  Or, maybe I’ll just be a philosopher.

GoAnimate Service Learning Project from Mark Johnson on Vimeo.