WAMS Teachers Collaborate to Enhance Student Learning

Mark Fabio and Rachel Sharpe have developed a collaborative project between Mr. Fabio’s 8th grade Creating Music elective and Mrs. Sharpe’s 8th grade Graphic Design elective. The Graphic Design students turn their photo manipulations reflecting their personalities into a video of quotes and images representing who they are. These students, in turn, share this video with Mr. Fabio’s Creating Music students to order a custom song for their video. This communication is done via the share abilities of Google Drive using a Google Doc. The students develop an ongoing open dialog to collaborate what the customer (Graphic Design student) wants and the composer (Creating Music student) creates. This real world application put the Graphic Designers in the role of film makers and the Creating Music students became a music production company. Google Doc communications were essential to the sharing of musical and thematic ideas removing the boundary of needing to met face to face since the classes are not during common periods. This successful collaborations resulted in animation films that were entirely designed and constructed by the students!