Petrie & Ranta respond 12/7/09

I don't think of it in such black & white terms. In the multi-media world, everyone needs basic competencies in all media. I'd agree with you if we edited it to say the following:

"Leslie loves to write. Leslie is an outstanding writer. As a matter of fact, she's wanted to be an author since she was ten years old. Since we have clearly identified that writing is Leslie's strength, she gets to spend the majority of her time reading and writing, once she has a command of the basic skills of video, powerpoint, podcast, etc., because we've already identified that these are not her media strengths."

I've had students with serious reading and writing problems, even disabilities, who were quite talented at video production, or web design, or animation. Unfortunately, these students struggled in their core classes, because so much emphasis was placed on reading and writing. From a differentiated instruction standpoint, we'd have been helping these kids to be successful if we had let them create their essays/reports/stories in the media forms with which they are most comfortable and adept. Phil & Aimee have been discovering the same thing in their classes, and have broadened the list of media in which kids can work for particular assignments. So a student is no longer constrained to a 5 page written report for the Immigration unit (for example) - that student can choose to write a report, or a web site, or a video. Phil & Aimee have worked out the rubrics so that the effort and standards are similar across the board, no matter which media the student chooses.

In my opinion, for option #2, multi-media in such a school would be taught the way we teach art today. Every student needs to take some art classes, even those who are lousy (as I am) at drawing and painting. This is because all students need to have a basic understanding of image and graphical composition. I think the same would be true of multi-media - all students would need a basic understanding and set of skills in each media, because they are going to come across all forms of media in our culture. But we would not expect, or require, a student to have master's level skills in all media.

But hey (disclaimer here), these are ideas that I am just starting to form as part of my Career Growth, they're still in the embryonic stages...

-----Original Message-----
From: Lisa Petrie
Sent: Mon 12/7/2009 1:32 PM
To: John Ranta; Frank Gallo; David Saxe; Susan Carr
Cc: Tom Sawyer; Bernard D'Amours
Subject: RE: 21st Century schools videos

If we chose option #2, that means we would allow this:

Leslie loves to write. Leslie is an outstanding writer. As a matter of fact, she's wanted to be an author since she was ten years old. If we have clearly identified that writing is Leslie's strength, she would never have to create a video, powerpoint, podcast, etc., because we've already identified that these are not her media strengths.

Right...?

L.