Google Hangouts - North and South #4 Final Session

Well, I must say, Google Hangouts was a wonderful experience for our North and South Movies as Literature class! 

I think that the value of learning together, collaborating together on documents, and learning how to use Google Hangouts with ease was a real addition to our homeschool experience. 

This discussion centred around the questions of change in characters, fair representation of both sides of the “labour battle” and then we had a great discussion on business and risk. It was also great to hear the opinion of the students on how they enjoyed the series.

The questions for this session are here.

After our session on North and South I had the students do a survey in Google Forms based on which films they would like to see us cover in our next sessions. We have limited sessions and many ideas, so I had the students decide on what they would like based on a rating system. 

Google Forms is a wonderful way to take a survey in a class. You can see the results “real time”. I added up the tally’s and we have a tentative plan for our next sessions.

I love to see our students do this kind of work. Whenever they have to give their opinions it is a great learning experience - and in this case they could not see the other’s response - so it was their opinion and their's alone.

For the month of February we will be doing Pride and Prejudice together (in person) and so we will take a break from Google Hangouts. I look forward to the sessions in March and beyond. 

I just want to say a special thanks to these amazing students that make it so worthwhile! It is a true highlight of my week to meet with you all!

If you know a great group of young people and you need any help getting your Google Hangouts class started, just let me know!

Blessings, Natalie

Google Hangouts - North and South #3

                            

Another great session on yesterday with our North and South Literature through Movies Google Hangout! Our North and South hangouts for Episode 1 is here and Episode 2 is here.

There is such enthusiasm from these students and I was so impressed by their willingness to think about many sides to any question. This week was especially challenging as we talked about many topics including hate and lying. These are not small topics to talk about! 

I appreciate the way that they can apply the questions to themselves with ease. "What would you do?" questions really bring out two sides of a dilemma. It is one thing to understand what someone else did, but I think it is much more challenging to think about what you would do!
I don't have all the answers either and one of my joys in this class is that I get to learn too! My assumptions are very often challenged by this amazing class!!

We continue to use Google Doc's to share ideas and answers to the questions. The students answer ahead of the class and we collaborate on the Google Doc. I love the way the students are beginning to read other's answers and add comments! Each week this just gets better and better! Episode 3 discussion questions are here. 

Next week is our last North and South Hangout. These students have asked me to carry on with more Literature through Movies, so I am making choices and watching a lot of great movies!

I have used Pinterest to sort through the choices and then a spreadsheet to keep track of the main questions I would like the students to explore about the films. 

I look forward to exploring many great movies with these students! It is a joy!! I would love to hear film suggestions that you have!
Blessings,
Natalie

Google Hangouts - North and South #2

Our second session of Google Hangouts went so much more smoothly. All of the students were much more comfortable with the technology and many of them had completed the work on the Google Doc and were prepared for the session. 
We were able to dive right in!!

Episode 2 of North and South questions I was using are here. For this session I also had our students watch this short video on child labour and I read a short exerpt from the book Factory Girl by Barbara Greenwood.

We spent alot of our time talking about the dilemma of taking away child labour and leaving those families with no source of income. Many of our students had great points about the age of children, the type of labour they would do, aid that we could give and ways that child labour could be regulated. 

We also talked about Mob mentality and how mobs can be formed by desperate people, people not in their right mind (through starvation, drugs or alcohol) and that one person could get a whole group of people worked up. We tied in the French Revolution and why people rebelled through mobs. It was a great discussion. 

I am ever amazed at these students and their thinking! It gives me an amazing amount of hope for our future! These are our future leaders and they are learning that there are not always easy answers!! They can be serious but they also love to have fun!!
Blessings,
Natalie

Google Hangouts - North and South Class #1

We have an amazing class in Google Hangouts, with students grades 7-9, based on the BBC production of North and South. This class combines several things that I have really wanted to explore this year. 

First Google Hangouts - this is an incredible platform to lead a small class. What a joy it is to see the students collaborating in the Hangout. 

The second thing I wanted to explore was a Literature through Movies class (you can check my board on Pinterest for ideas) where I would have the students watch a video and then discuss it! I didn't realize how much literary value I could pulled out of one video. It has been wonderful!!! 

I chose North and South for several reasons: 

#1 - We are studying the Industrial Revolution in our Co-op this month and the time frame is perfect to explore Strikes and Unions, Working Conditions, Social problems, Child Labour and so much more!

#2 - It is readily available on both Netflix and You-tube so I knew that it would be fairly easy for the students to access.

#3 - It has very vivid characters and there are several dillemmas that they must face. Based on that it was a good one to present those dillemma's to our students. 

#4 It was a story both girls and boys could relate to! This is important because our class is mixed. 

First I started a circle in Google+ and asked students if they would like to join in the class. This has been an adjustment for me, as well as some of the students, as we had not used Google+ fully before. We had a few kinks to start with, but now we have it running smoothly!

Google doc with the questions here. 

They then collaborated in the Google Doc throughout the week. Adding their responses and reading other's responses as well. When we started the class, they put up the document and we went over the questions. I had extra questions that I asked in the session that were not on the Google doc... just to spur on more discussion.

After our discussion, several of the students left the Hangout, but others decided to stay and chat. They started playing around with the special effects and other features! What fun!

Blessings,
Natalie