Camera Obscura Featured by School Improvement Network!

Hiya! Adam here.

A few months ago some lovely folks from the School Improvement Network came by our humble little school to see what we were up to. When they found out about Camera Obscura, they wanted to come back and take a closer look. I did not expect them to do a segment just on our pet project, but they did!

On Edivate (formerly PD 360), a website rich with professional development resources for teachers including videos, trainings, communities, and more, you can now find a nearly nine minute video segment with accompanying guidebook that is all about us! How cool is that?

Jeremy Tuttle, the content specialist who came to our site, was already into gamification, and got really excited to see a real-life example being designed and implemented. The screenshot above is from the video, which is titled 7th-12th Grade STEM: Implementing and Alternate Reality Game. For you non-educator types, STEM is teacher shorthand for Science, Technology, Engineering, Math, and is a hot topic in American education today.

Jeremy, Alex Anderson, and their crew came on the day Liz was giving her senior presentation, and filmed that exciting event, which provides much of the narration and some of the visuals in their video. They also got some footage of my photography classes that are playing the game, my Film II class that is producing the web series, and some of our clue implementation. They talked to me a lot too, so I'm in the video as well, but that's literally the only downside.

Here are a few more screenshots: one of the Film II class, one of our logo sequence, and one of the summary section from the guide book.

The video isn't publicly available; Edivate's videos require a paid subscription (though the first 30 days are free) and the site is specifically for educators. I'm only posting these screenshots because they feature images of Liz, me, or content we created. Still, if you're a teacher or administrator and you want to see the clip, log in to Edivate and search for "Alternate Reality" or "gamification." It should pop right up. The video featuring us is the only one of its kind, though hopefully it won't be that way forever as gamification becomes more and more popular and better understood.

Thanks so much to Jeremy, Alex, and the whole team at School Improvement Network for taking the time to get invested in this project we care so much about.

Love,

Adam