Tuesday, March 05, 2013

A New Goal

It's simple: one blog post a day.  Most days I'm up by 5 with Cash anyway, so might as well get to work and fire off a blogpost right away anyway.

So here's today's -

I we go 1:1 it's going to be amazing.  I know my room is going to be remodeled and you'll still be able to find me in room 205, but with every student having their own MacBook Air will render my room a luxury.

We can meet anywhere anytime.  And get our work done.

I can't wait.

Here are just a few of the tools that I can't wait to build into my daily lessons

storify

glossi

blubbr

Popcorn Maker

easel.ly

blogger (obviously)

popplet

vuvox

tweetgrid

wideo

youtube

vimeo

TED

Google Docs

Evernote

Dropbox

iTunes U

wallwisher (now padlet)

Thinglink / imagespike

QR code generators and Audioboo

Powtoon


And the list could go on and on.

But what I'm really looking forward to - after how well my infographs went over in College Comp 2 - is giving students an assignment (say, read the chapter "Homework x 2 = the American Dream" or "Why Chinese Mothers are Superior") and then have them choose from a specific list of apps or sites to produce a final product (that can be easily shared via social media and presented to the class) illustrating what they learned from the reading and what other things they can connect their learning to.

So a student would read the Friedman chapter and then use Storify to create a collection of social media, videos, and stories related to how high school students need to work twice as hard as their parents.  Or a student could read the Chua piece and create a Thinglink image and have links all over it to articles and videos refuting or defending the piece.  Or the teacher could assign either article and have the students tweet five observations from the article and five connections to their lives or the outside world.  Then using Tweetgrid the teacher could to post the tweets and to bring in any outside sources related to the readings.  All in real time.

Beats the hell out of a Powerpoint or blackboard lecture.





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