Great Unexpectations - Day one of Title IX videotaping

Today we started the video portion of the Title IX project that I’m working on with Deb Jacobson. She is documenting the history of women’s sports at Northland College where she taught for 34 years. She has been tracing the team history and electronically converting old photos for over a year. Seeing as she was the one who pioneered all women’s athletics for the school I felt it was important that her story be told as well. That’s where I come in. I get to be the one to interview her. So I created a set of interview questions and a basic story board and came up to Thief River Falls to get started on it. I learned that I needed to both plan for the unexpected as well as not assume all things unexpected would be negative. In fact some unexpected events can turn into something really good. See Blog titled “The Unexpected” under the blog “From Reality Shows to Showing Reality”. Just like in the classroom, I need some organization and yet some flexibility.

What else I learned today:
Many kids today do not know what Title IX is or why it was needed.
Many kids today do not have a concept how recent Title IX legislation was passed it terms of who it affected (parents, coaches, adults living today)
Plan more time than what you thing for video taping in order to account for some of the unexpected.
It will take longer than expected to save the video clips from the Flip video cam to the computer.
Pat Summit, one of the Pioneers of women’s progress in athletics and women’s basketball coach of the Tennessee Tarhills, was offered the coaching job of the men’s team, but declined it because she felt that would be degrading to women (giving the impression its more impressive to coach the men’s team than her champion women’s team).

Other ideas for class:
Survey my students on history/influence of title nine
Have my students survey other students and/or community members on the history/influence of title nine
Title IX link and short quiz for Intercultural class

PHOTO NOTE: This is a still that we captured from the streaming video.  The flip ultra seems to have pretty decent quality for a very small camera.