Andrea Cacek

“Reeling Through History: Enhancing Community and Reading Achievement” is Cacek’s winning project that will give 300 online MTS Minnesota Connections Academy students a meaningful opportunity to interact, problem solve and create with peers. Beginning with a series of interactive, live online lessons in media arts and social studies, students will participate to gain a foundation for face-to-face field experience. They will then visit one of 10 Minnesota historical sites in groups of 30. Students will be assigned a site and then join together in small groups to research and explore the history of the area. The small groups will gather pieces of the past by searching the Internet, taking notes from tours, capturing photos, recording commentary, and drawing out visual ideas using the Apple iPad 2 purchased with the ING grant. Each set of 30 students will then reconvene and share collected ideas and create a single storyboard for their assigned site. Videos from all 10 sites will be compiled into one piece using the Apple iMovie application, a MacBook and LED display, and then showcased to the entire school. Cacek, who lives in Duluth, plans to have the finished work debut at MTSMCA’s St. Paul Building, on the Internet, and submitted to the Reel Youth Film Festival in Wrenshall.