Reflecting on my inquiry project

At this point in my inquiry process for this semester, I believe I can say that I have gotten through the most difficult issues posed by my research subject. First and most importantly, I have recently filmed my first set of videos in which my students ask questions about life in China for children their age. I will say, however, that doing so was not easy for all three classes involved in my research. My third period class had numerous behavior problems (which I expected) and were nearly unable to respectfully and efficiently complete their video; I think that though this issue was a bit of a headache for me, this realization that behavior problems in the classroom will also show up in this activity will be helpful to my research and analysis.

I also successfully sent my first video to my colleague in China who has already shown my video to his class and filmed their responses to our questions. As I have stated in previous writings, I could not have picked a more difficult country to try this video communication inquiry with because the Chinese government blocks all sites that allow video sharing. My only alternative is using email to attach my videos, yet this also creates an issue because Google mail has a 25 MB limit. Thankfully, my first video was not very long so this limit was not much of an issue.

My favorite part of my inquiry so far is that I am already seeing the benefits of adding video communication and teaching global awareness into the classroom. I recently talked with the other 7th grade social studies teacher who told me that her students in homeroom have been talking about their excitement for my video activity and showing a great deal of enthusiasm for my class. I have noticed that when students asked about when we were going to watch the video from the students from China, more than anything else they were excited about having communication with people from a different part of the world. I also have been able to use our little project to help the students make connections to abstract ideas and new vocabulary. For example, we recently talked about Thomas Jefferson and his work as an ambassador to France; to explain this, I told the students to think of Mr. Blevins (my colleague in China who is a WVU graduate and US citizen) as our ambassador to China. To this thought, I heard a collective "Ohhh okay" of realization from my class. The sound of understanding is music to my ears.