In a previous posting I talked about hosting an unplugged or blackout day in the HS, as a way to create student awareness of their own "wired" behaviours and to give them a sense of how "connected" they really need to be. We are now at the end of a five week long buildup to our first ever Unplugged Day which happens next week on April 8th. Throughout these five weeks I have been trying to engage and draw staff and students into participating in this event, using some "hooks" such as having 1984 related references and videos in assemblies and newsletters, running weekly trivia contests (grade level competitions for house/grade level points) for 5 weeks in a row, branding the Unplugged side of the event as being a student in 1984 (you can only use technology that was available back in the day), connecting a dress-up Spirit Day in the HS with the event, and building mashup movie posters with teachers from favourite movies of the 80's.
1984 Weekly Trivia
A major component of the buildup to the event has been the weekly trivia competition where the four grade levels compete for "house" points over the school year. I used the 80's to theme all of the trivia questions - at first I did not even say what it was all about and let the student's natural curiosity build. Over the last month, I have been asked a number of times about what all the 1984 references were all about. In fact, the student council president had the idea to kick everything off by having the movie trailer for the movie "1984" mysteriously be shown during an assembly with no explanation at all - that got the students talking.
Fitting the trivia questions in with the theme of the 80's was simple. The first week focussed on major events in '84 such as the famine in Ethiopia, and the recording of "Do they know it's Christmas" as a fundraiser. The second week's questions turned to famous bands and movies from 1984, and the famous "1984" Apple television ad to launch the Macintosh to the world. The third week raised the bar as students had to identify famous bands/songs, movies and television shows from 1984 based on video clues that I spliced together. Here is one of the video clues that I put together, if you are interested . . .
Week four questions forced students to use primary sources, as I built the trivia questions around information about the school in 1984 (location, address and name of the director), and about the current faculty (Who graduated from high school in 1984?). This was interesting to watch unfold as students could not just go online to figure out the answers. They had to actually talk to one another and collaborate, talk to various people in the school beyond their immediate teachers, and figure out their own plan of attack. This particular week's trivia was definitely the most difficult to answer, so it generated the fewest responses, but it was interesting to see how students were working together, talking with the students in their grade who have been at the school the longest, and trying to figure out how old their teachers are - some estimates were very far off in both directions!
The final week of trivia was designed to hype next week's event, and to give students more information about what to expect that day. To get more of the faculty involved and to help build some spirit into the event, I decided to put a ton of time and effort into making teacher mashup movie posters from the 80's. Teachers simply had to send me their favourite movie from the 80's and I would insert them into the movie poster as one of the characters. In some cases, the posters turned out much better when they took a self-portrait with their head at an angle to match what is in the original posters, which the staff were more than willing to do. As I was doing all of the technical work to make the posters and staff just had to volunteer to be included, this turned out to be a massive hit with more than half of the faculty getting involved. The final round of trivia was simple - students were shown in an assembly, a video with 22 different movie mashup posters and they had to name the teachers (in order) as they saw them . . . and it was tough but a whole lot of fun! To hear the hooting and waves of hysterical laughter from the student body as they saw the posters made it all worth while. After all, part of the event is all about school spirit! Here are three posters that I made for the final trivia, as I could not help it (it was so much fun and I kept getting ideas for movies to use as examples) . . .
Spinoff or Collateral Learning
In preparing for our upcoming Unplugged Day, there has been a lot of spin-off learning amongst staff and students that has come up through the weekly quizzes. Some of these outcomes I had hoped for, and some came as a surprise, but these are what make all of the time and effort really worth it. Some of the collateral learning and positive outcomes which reach beyond technology, have been:
1984 Weekly Trivia
A major component of the buildup to the event has been the weekly trivia competition where the four grade levels compete for "house" points over the school year. I used the 80's to theme all of the trivia questions - at first I did not even say what it was all about and let the student's natural curiosity build. Over the last month, I have been asked a number of times about what all the 1984 references were all about. In fact, the student council president had the idea to kick everything off by having the movie trailer for the movie "1984" mysteriously be shown during an assembly with no explanation at all - that got the students talking.
Fitting the trivia questions in with the theme of the 80's was simple. The first week focussed on major events in '84 such as the famine in Ethiopia, and the recording of "Do they know it's Christmas" as a fundraiser. The second week's questions turned to famous bands and movies from 1984, and the famous "1984" Apple television ad to launch the Macintosh to the world. The third week raised the bar as students had to identify famous bands/songs, movies and television shows from 1984 based on video clues that I spliced together. Here is one of the video clues that I put together, if you are interested . . .
Week four questions forced students to use primary sources, as I built the trivia questions around information about the school in 1984 (location, address and name of the director), and about the current faculty (Who graduated from high school in 1984?). This was interesting to watch unfold as students could not just go online to figure out the answers. They had to actually talk to one another and collaborate, talk to various people in the school beyond their immediate teachers, and figure out their own plan of attack. This particular week's trivia was definitely the most difficult to answer, so it generated the fewest responses, but it was interesting to see how students were working together, talking with the students in their grade who have been at the school the longest, and trying to figure out how old their teachers are - some estimates were very far off in both directions!
The final week of trivia was designed to hype next week's event, and to give students more information about what to expect that day. To get more of the faculty involved and to help build some spirit into the event, I decided to put a ton of time and effort into making teacher mashup movie posters from the 80's. Teachers simply had to send me their favourite movie from the 80's and I would insert them into the movie poster as one of the characters. In some cases, the posters turned out much better when they took a self-portrait with their head at an angle to match what is in the original posters, which the staff were more than willing to do. As I was doing all of the technical work to make the posters and staff just had to volunteer to be included, this turned out to be a massive hit with more than half of the faculty getting involved. The final round of trivia was simple - students were shown in an assembly, a video with 22 different movie mashup posters and they had to name the teachers (in order) as they saw them . . . and it was tough but a whole lot of fun! To hear the hooting and waves of hysterical laughter from the student body as they saw the posters made it all worth while. After all, part of the event is all about school spirit! Here are three posters that I made for the final trivia, as I could not help it (it was so much fun and I kept getting ideas for movies to use as examples) . . .
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Spinoff or Collateral Learning
In preparing for our upcoming Unplugged Day, there has been a lot of spin-off learning amongst staff and students that has come up through the weekly quizzes. Some of these outcomes I had hoped for, and some came as a surprise, but these are what make all of the time and effort really worth it. Some of the collateral learning and positive outcomes which reach beyond technology, have been:
- Development of student search online skills and working with primary sources
- Student collaboration and communication, and working in self-forming teams or small groups
- Building school spirit and involvement with both staff and students
- Faculty developing new technology skills such as using Photoshop or other built-in tools on their new Macs like Photobooth and iMovie - there is nothing like "just in time" tech learning to move people's skills forward
- Building currency and connections with the faculty that I work with in the high school
- Faculty developing new project ideas and connections with their own curriculum through inquiry learning, using different media in class, and how visual and video media can be used in the classroom to study/analyze advertising and other concepts.
It will be interesting to see how our Unplugged Day works out tomorrow, but I will write a short follow up once our first attempt at this is complete. It has been a fun build-up to the event, and I hope that staff and students gain at least a little insight into their habits and need to be connected - it's all about finding the right balance. Have you hosted any school events which had collateral learning beyond technology or spin-off technology development? What happened and how did it go?
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