SLATE 2010

Today and tomorrow I will be tweeting live for the SLATE 2010 Conference in Wisconsin. Please follow me at http://twitter.com/jepc71.

Movie Day!

Movie day, what every student young and old loves to hear.  Movies can have a profound educational experience or be a time filler.  I tend not to use them for the latter purpose.  I think every teacher has a favorite movie to share with students.  When I use to teach Economics, I loved to show “Monsters, Inc.”  Now before you start judging me, I had a purpose.  At about the point I finished teaching Supply and Demand most young students brains started to shutdown.  I did not blame them, some adults still find these concepts hard to grasp.

I would inform them at the start of class that we would watch a film that demonstrated supply and demand, scarcity, shortages, ethical dilemmas, and much more.  I also told them they would have to write a two page report describing those topics in detail.  At the first or maybe second grumble I would then start the movie.  The minute students say the Disney logo they would get confused and once they say the main screen a few would chuckle.  The video normally took 2-3 days to show.  After the first day many students would question how these economic questions could be in the movie, but after a night of thinking they would come back and be amazed.  In the end, the reports students wrote for this film were some of the best reports I received from any other class.

Now this is just my example, so what are some movies you have seen that have had a profound impact on you, your classroom, or on your students?  Please share your thoughts and/or insights through a comment or a tweet!

Image Courtesy of Francesco Marino