RJ Stangherlin

Keystone Technology Integrator and STAR Discovery Educator

This site is for Mrs. Stangherlin's classes at Salisbury High School.

Teaching in High Definition

They drove into the snowstorm, father and son, so that Dan Lebo could present at PETE&C in the Student Showcase on Tuesday.  Dan’s project was a German film he made with a team of students in Frau Clauser’s German 4 class. Recently, Dan began working with high definition, and that’s what he taught for 2 hours.  Active word: taught.  As always, he was engaging, intelligent, fascinating, and way over my head with technology knowledge.  So, I took a crash course in high definition filming.  Although the weather thinned the crowd, those who stayed were totally engaged, and almost everyone watched the entire video.  One student actually filmed Dan’s film. 

For me, an experience like this one is why I teach.  It’s about social networking one-to-one, but I am not discussing laptop initiatives.  It’s about face-to-face networking with some of the best people in the business..  Scott Kinney spoke to Dan about using his team’s Integrated Project on Lincoln as an example of digital storytelling.  Since the project was featured in the Discovery Education Resource Guide in the January 2007 issue, the Discovery group was familiar with the project.  Dan is sending Scott a DVD of the project, and the German video is already in Scott’s hands, ready for use in his next Digital Storytelling presentation.  Dan also got to meet Hall Davidson, who gave him some sound advice about a career in film making.  Does it get any better, networking students to their future. 

As the morning came to a close, I must admit I was counting the snowflakes, worried about getting home.  As luck would have it, Mr. Lebo grew up in Palmyra, exactly one town away from Hershey, so I followed him through back roads to my turn off for home [bypassing the 16-hour jam on I-78].  It was a wonderful two days, watching students at their best, actually making all the buzzwords of 21st century learning visible.  The power of Discovery: it was being inside of the story.

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