We continue to work on our Reno Bike Project, project when we can. Just to review, we started this project in December, but various things have eaten away the time we would like to be spending on it … and its just really hard work doing everything really well.

What is great about this project is that it forces my sixth graders, in their last year of elementary school, to bring all the skills they’ve learned to bear on it. We have produced (un-narrated as of yet) 23 seconds + of a 30 second PSA designed to induce people to donate their old bicycles to the Reno Bike Project, which will fix them up and sell them for cheap (and give away many too). We are working hard now (as I write this there are 4 students that came in on their own during recess to work on it) trying to design an ending graphic for our video that displays a web address (for a web site we are designing) and other information.

The only software we have for that is Appleworks, so everyone has been focused the last 2 mornings on getting this graphic done. We looked at the end graphics to over 10 professionally made PSA’s to get ideas (keep it simple we noted).

As often happens a few students got discouraged at first because they way we are doing this is very  unforgiving … basically if you make any mistake or want to change something you have to start over … which is a pain, but has also lead to increased focus and introspection. I reminded them that this was their very first experience doing this ever, so maybe they needed to cut themselves some slack and allow for a bit of a learning curve … since then we have seen some nice progress.

It’s only a bit over 6 seconds of time in the PSA, but my students are learning that filling that measly 6 seconds is as time consuming as any other work they’ve ever done.

Learning is messy!

Tags: RenoBike Project, PSA, Project, Appleworks, iMovie