Activity+2+EDLT+628

USDA/NASS & The Census of Agriculture 2012

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The purpose of this video is to teach to our students that agriculture is a way to live, is a way to take food to your home, is an economic and lucrative source, and is part of our education. The main objectives of present these two videos to the students are make them think in agriculture, teach them how to search online agricultural statistics, teach them the importance of being part of the agriculture and the statistics, show them some web 2 tools that can help them to conduct online presentations, and show them the variety of things they can do with one topic.

I add some cartoon pictures to catch the attention of my students, to add a little bit of color, and give them some type of visual illusion of different concepts that are related with agriculture.

In my video I start with a little background of what is USDA/NASS, the uses of it, and the presentation of the Census of Agriculture. The idea of put the President of United States, Barack Obama, is to add some history to the curse, to relate the class with the real world, and also use the president as a fact of how important is the agriculture to USA and the importance of participate in the Census of Agriculture. All this little details will help me to create some subtopic of discussion during the semester.

Before show the demo, I incorporate an slide of the powerful Web 2 tool Screemcast-o-Matic,, that was the key element to create not just the Memo but also my presentation. The idea is to open a door to discuss with the students different tools they can use to create online presentation. For this project, I also used Microsoft Power Point program, Window Movie Maker, ITunes Music, Internet Pictures, Microphone System, etc. There were not easy to combine all these elements, take time to do it and more when you have to recorder more than ten times everything looking how it can sound better to the ears of the students. But thanks to all this repetition, I became with some different alternatives of how to record it and make it work. That’s the idea of let the students use their creativity to create some videos and I think no matter how imperfect could be, the example should start from the teacher. I used a power point presentation to help the students understand what I was talking about. As part of my pan I anticipate that maybe the students won’t understand very well because my language limitation.

The second video is a video created for the agency to promote the Census of Agriculture. This video is totally different but match perfectly with the theory I want to bring to the class. If you see it was made without voices, all is musical and with written messages. Like my video, this video connect the agriculture with the real life outside the classroom, supporting the idea that policy maker use Census Data to create policies and the important that is the agriculture for our life and the economy of United States. Also, this video teach them how far can go their creativity if they want too.

Both videos give an idea of where they can go to find more online information about the Census and the importance of it. Furthermore, it is a video for all kind of students, without restrictions. It is an educative video and do not have obscenity or negative messages. Maybe my video is little more complicated to visualize for elementary students, but the second video help me more to keep their attention.

In my opininon, I will like to use this videos to flipp my classroom!!!