Reflections on My Second WALO

Name: Sarvashreshtha Patel My second WALO My second WALO as stated in my PLP was Use the resourcefulness of my colleagues, teachers of Physics and Maths as well as the laboratory personnel in helping my students and in turn help their students! There is a slight change of plan here. While the essence of the WALO has remained the same for me, Id like to alter the context of Physics and Maths teachers to the team of educators with whom I am working on my documentary project. I guess this will call for a change in my PLP as well! The team comprises at this stage of five members me, three Geography teachers Vikas Patil, Jaydeep Mehta and Sanjay Nath, and a special skills (film-making) teacher Pradhyuman Solanki. Ive already shared our experience of script-writing and planning our shots in the document on reflections on the first WALO. Here, I am going to describe the experiences we had during the shoot. Our experience Though we worked our way through writing the script and subjecting it to multiple critique and drafts, time did not permit us to rehearse our narratives and get help from an expert. Therefore, there were quite a few instances where we faltered in front of the camera; at times we became too conscious, at times too casual. This resulted in a lot of unplanned time spent at each location and shot. I guess the next time, we attempt to make a documentary, we must work on this piece quite well. However, the good thing that happened was that there was constant critique, albeit without a protocol, as we gave our shots, and there were multiple drafts in the form of retakes. I guess these are the foundations of a good project! There were at least a couple of situations where we had difficulty seeking permission for shooting. A bit of time taken to foresee this would have saved us the trouble on the field. Nevertheless, through this experience, we have had multiple experiences of practicing the some key elements of project-based-learning such as project tuning, critique, multiple drafts, protocols etc, and I guess this experience will help us bring more sophistication in our future projects. Critical Friend: David Stahnke

Our plan ahead We had planned to have 20 sequences in our documentary. The number and order of sequences is still the same. However, we are looking at the script of each sequence again and writing a post-script based upon the visuals that we obtained in the shoot and a few afterthoughts. The following is what we are engaged into. We have done a good job of delegating work amongst ourselves but once again, these are not water tight compartments. Each one of us is playing multiple roles. 1. Writing post scripts for the sequences Two of us have taken up this job, and the others are providing critique. 2. Shooting a few pending scenes This time, we are taking the step to rehearse before we take the shots, and also getting help in voice modulation. We are also tuning our expertise with videography. 3. Working on animations We may not be equipped with doing this; we are getting external help, but a couple of us have started learning to do flight simulations in Google Earth and recording them, and softwares such as Adobe Creative Suite. 4. Putting the pieces together to create complete sequences Three of us have done some really hard work at using Sony Vegas; we do have Pradhyuman as a specialist, but I guess by the time the documentary is over, we will be experts ourselves. Our first sequence should be ready by the end of this month. Though we have agreed upon a timeline, we are not very pushy about it, knowing that this is our first project and that our primary responsibility is still priority. Again, we shall be subjecting this to a rigorous critique; we did discuss the idea of putting it up on Edmodo and doing some asynchronous critique as well. Our experience with the first sequence will give us a lot of insight and impetus for the remaining nineteen sequences, and I guess these will take a lot lesser time and effort. How are we going to take it with our students? I feel it was indeed a good idea doing the documentary ourselves. We are now in a better position to do it with our students and manage our expectations from them. The students will be visiting the field next month. We have divided them into groups of 4-5 each. Each group will be creating a short sequence on one theme. Since they will have limited knowledge and exposure to the chosen theme, they will be encouraged to engage into guided research on the theme. The objective is that they will know what to look for in the field and take their shots accordingly. We are already beginning to see students approaching experts

and tuning their videography skills. Once they have taken their shots, they write a post script just as we did, and follow all that we are doing at present. The above is just a tentative brief about the plan. In about a fortnights time, we will come up with a formal proposal for the project, and do a project tuning session as well. How this experience has impacted our practice The single most wonderful thing that has happened through this experience is that we have come quite close together as a team. We are seeking opportunities to work collaboratively and meeting each other far too often and what started as trust limited only for the situation has now grown into deeper and more enriching relationships. As a result, we are now beginning to see our practice quite differently. Hitherto, each one of us was teaching a different group of students and had his own lesson plans but we are now planning to work as a team and create better lesson plans using each others resourcefu lness. We have even gone to the extent of planning to execute these lesson plans as a team, handling one group of students at a time. Our feeling is that this will result at a lot lesser time being spent on instruction, and leave more time for project based learning. As we have shared this thought with other educators, we are beginning to have a whole new paradigm at how teaching-learning can happen in our school in the future. P.S. Ive shared a short video on our takes and mistakes in our documentary on http://spateldp.weebly.com/index.html