This project was inspired by an article Digging up history of San Jose Chinatown by Jessie Mangaliman which I read in The San Jose Mercury News in Spring of 2009. It surprised me that San Jose had a Chinatown, let alone six. I knew there were stories in the artifacts which students could explore and share.
I have been conducting volunteer stop motion animation in Cureton Elementary in Alum Rock, San Jose, California for three years and this third time around I wanted to engage the students in creating curriculum enhancement videos.
As an artist (http://www.okadadesign.com/ ), arts educator and a mom, I believe strongly in the need for collaborative art/technology projects in public schools. I am very grateful to the Alum Rock Education Foundation for support of this project as well as last year's project, Thinking Outside The Box, which won Best Elementary Fine Art in The California Student Media Festival in 2010 and Judges Favorite in The International Student Media Festival in 2009.
This animation project was conducted in four classrooms at two school in different parts of the Bay Area. Three were fourth grade classrooms and one was a third grade classroom ( my son's class). In addition, a third school, a Mandarin immersion school in Cupertino contributed the music to the projects. It was a joy to work with the students and the amazing teachers. I hope that my lesson plans and tips here help other educators in creating animations and long term collaborative projects in their classrooms.
Finally, what I would do differently!
Schedule three computer lab days. One lab day was missed at Cureton because my five year old daughter was sick.
The first two sessions at Cureton were done before Star Testing . If I could do again, I would have had these two sessions done closer in time to the rest of the workshops after Star Testing.
I would have incorporated more time for written and verbal peer reviewing of student work in progress. I would have provided the teachers with a detailed rubric for assessing students' work on project.