Add Your Thoughts to Videos

Imagine you are getting ready to do some research for a course. You are studying the 1st Amendment and you want to see what people have to say about it so you decide to look up videos on Youtube. Lets say you find one that has great graphics and some interesting ideas but you want to put your own twist on that video. Well, now there is an easy way to add your thoughts to the vid. Overstream allows you to put words over a video.


On the Overstream Home Page click on the 'watch demo' link to see a short overview.







So how does this work for my course?

1: Pick your video from Youtube, Google Video, or MySpaceVideo. Copy the URL.

2. Go to Overstream.net (initially you will have to set up an account).

I recommend watching this tutorial before your first attempt.

3. Paste your URL and begin the captioning process.

4. Submit the link through the course or an email and you're done.

Create a Timeline

XTimeline allows you to upload pictures, insert text, and create a timeline of events. The result is a professional looking product that looks better and allows for more expanded details than a traditional poster board timeline you would of made in you old history course.

You can also research events, people, and ideas to find info on a topic you are working on for your courses. If you want to work in groups and create a timeline together, that option is open for you with this site. When you are done, just tag your timeline with the keywords (ex. Civil Rights, WWII, Beijing) and submit. You will receive a web address (url) that you can post on your own blog or website. Send me the url and you are all done.



You could use this as a project option for virtually any assignment in my courses.

Cool Flickr Tools for School

Flickr Places is a tool that lets you search by city, state, or country to find photos unique to that area. This could come in real handy for many of the projects you work on in my courses. Whether you are writing an essay about U.S. History that discusses Boston or completing a photo slideshow project on the geography of Ireland, this tool can help you.

Flickr Maps is great for searching ideas at a specific location. Say you want to look up architecture in Beijing. Just type in architecture in the left hand search box and Beijing in the right hand search box.








Select an image from the photo stream:

One Step Further:

Note: Whenever downloading from the Internet, keep in mind who owns the product you are using. If people post under a Creative Commons license then its okay to use for our school projects.

The Day I Almost Unofficially Met Mark Cuban.com

I almost got to ask Mark Cuban a question today. If I would have, that means we might have almost unofficially met. He looked right at me...... I got nervous, but I was ready...... I thought for sure he was going to call on me....... but at the last second he passed. Off to the next man with his hand up. I don't feel sad, don't worry. I am a little disappointed though. He seems to know a lot about the internet, and I really wanted a quote from him to share with you, my students. Here is how the story goes.

I was attending the Blog World Expo which is the largest gathering of bloggers on the planet. DONT STOP READING NOW, this isnt all geeky. So anyway, I was sitting with 500 or so other bloggers at the closing Keynote address listening to internet guru Mr. Cuban (also owner of the Dallas Mavericks) about authentic blogging and something struck me. I wonder if he has any visions for education? He knows a lot about business, a lot about basketball, tons and tons about the internet, what about education? A lot of our modern pioneers have visions for changing education to bring American students into the forefront of the information revolution and help them escape from the industrial one (see Bill Gates). I wonder if Mr. Cuban does too? So, I thought, phrased, and garnished the nerve for 10 long minutes to ask him this one question:

Considering that the public education system is light years behind the real world and blogging is almost nonexistent in schools, do you see any role for blogging and Web 2.0 in high schools?

My question is still out there to you Mr. Cuban. My students would love to hear your answer.

VSS 07

A small group of teachers from Odyssey presented at the Virtual Schools Symposium this week. We discussed how we are using Social Networks and Web 2.0 tools in our courses. The presentation went pretty well, check out our wiki if you want to see it. Some of your work was featured in our session.

Virtual Schools Presentation

Blabberize

Blabberize.com allows you to take a picture and make it talk. You can make up to 2 minute audio recordings.

How can you use this for my course:
1. Make introductions for your assignments.
2. Replace a portion of your project.
3. Combine with other programs to create a full project.
4. Any other way you can think of.

Motivating Student Creativity Article

I've written an article that will be posted in the Techlearning E-Zine in the spring. It's a short piece with 2 central themes. The first theme is the idea of options. It's important that teachers provide students with options for completing assignments. Of course this isn't practical for all assignments since we are often trying to teach them something with the method of assessment. However, most assignments in secondary education are essays and traditional objective based assessments. Communication and information in the beloved 'real world' isn't based on those methods anymore. Essays certainly play a role but not the central role in communicating ideas in the Web 2.0 world that our kids occupy. Which is my segue to the 2nd theme, using Web 2.0 tools in my courses. In other words, allowing students to use project based tools that are valid to the world they live in will promote creativity, motivation, and 21st century literacy.http://docs.google.com/Doc?id=dhsgv8zv_15sdkhcm

Flickr Photo Essay = Photos + A Dash of Writing

So you need to create a project for one of my courses. You are creative, like pictures, and are a little bored with doing the same old type of essay in Microsoft Word. I have the solution for you. Your words + your pictures = a flickr photo essay.

Click on the link and when the picture pops up hover your mouse over the boxes. http://flickr.com/photos/mrmosesdotorg/1514900489/


Any ideas how you could use this in your courses?

Sketchcast= Drawing + Audio

Sketchcast is an online program that allows you to create sketches mixed with your voice. This could be fantastic for someone who is at all artistically creative. I'm not, so don't laugh too much at my example below. I've shared tools with you before for completing your projects using just your voice, or your voice and photos. This one allows you to still do audio projects but puts in an extra twist, a drawing pencil in the form of a mouse.
Also, if you have a blog and you want to just embed your sketchcast right into the blog to give your assignment some more flare, that would be awesome for your grade.

Your Own Voki

Create your own Voki. Your very own online character. This really has no educational purpose, just thought you might have fun with it. I guess, if you really wanted to, you could make an online audio essay using your Voki and submit that as a project. See, it does have some educational value.



Get a Voki now!

Voicethread, Combine Your Words with Pictures

Click 'record'(you need a mic) or type if you would like to make a comment. Please say your first name and which course of mine you are in if you leave a comment.

This would work great for combining oral projects with pictures for an assignment in my course. It also allows you to collaborate with other students so if you are working on a project in an online group then you can all make comments about a picture or screen capture that is part of your research. Combine your comments together, send me the link, and poof, you have a project.

If you like this program, go to www.voicethread.com and create an account.

Google Presentation

I made a presentation using the newest Google feature called Google Presentation. It can be found inside Google Docs and has a lot of potential uses for this class.

• Make online presentations, easily
• Work with other students on projects
• Liven up your normal assignment and earn more points
• Get help on your work by sharing with me prior to submitting for a grade

Check it out

Google Docs Made Simple

I posted a couple weeks ago about the benefit of using Google Docs over Microsoft Word or other word processing programs on your computer. Well, here is a cool video with animation(ish) graphics to highlight what I was talking about. Now, reread my posting and see how it will help you in school.

Skype

How many of you out there already have Skype? Awesome, add me as a contact and call me on my computer anytime you want, if I don't answer than I'm taking a rare break from staring at this screen. mrplough07

If you don't have Skype yet, but would like a free service that allows you to call other people on their computers for free, then click here to get going. Download the service, get yourself a headset with microphone for 10-15 bucks, and call whenever you want.

If a bunch of us from my courses get this, than we can all collaborate online. You get the best of both worlds, or three worlds even, you are on the Internet so can be working on an assignment, but you can talk it out with someone while you are doing the work. The someone being me or another student from our course. You can meet other students by joining the Odyssey of the Mind social network.

Have you ever had a question that you really wanted answered but couldn't explain it very well in an email and it was past school hours? If so, join Skype and call me, mrplough07.

Blog Rush and Clustr Maps

If you are interested in getting extra readers to come check out your blog, click on the link below.Blog Rush is a little widget that you post in your blog, see the right side of mine, and by having that it allows readers to see your blog on their Blog Rush widgets. If you need any help embedding the widget into your blog, contact me.
http://www.blogrush.com/r48037556


ClustrMaps
A cool tool to track who is reading your blog. Check out mine ClustrMap on the right side of this blog.

Animoto

Animoto is awesome! All you have to do is upload about 15 pics and choose a style of music that you like, and you will get a 30 second music video produced for you. Sweet. Now, how do you use this for my class? Since I can't tell a lot about your ideas in only 30 seconds,(which is the free version but you can pay to make a longer film) you will probably only use this as a portion of your project. How about using it as the intro? You wanna know how to captivate your reader, put in a 30 second short that makes them think. You can all do this, it only takes a few minutes of your life!

Wanna see my baby, check him out in video form?

Using Google Docs Instead of.............

..............any other Word Processing program.






I would highly recommend to all my students that they use Google Docs instead of a traditional program for completing any project or assignment you choose to do in an essay format. It is an online word processing program that allows you to invite others to view, edit, or work on your document with you. Below are some of the key benefits that Google Docs has over Word, Open Office, Works, Adobe and other word processing programs.

• The most important benefit of using Google Docs is that you can share it with anyone. I would love to see you collaborating with other students on a project using g.d. You could create a document and then invite other group members to continually edit it with you until you got the final product. Remember, you can meet students in your class by joining Odyssey of the Mind.
• You can also share it with me before you turn it in. This might be the single best benefit of using g.d for our course. The best part about this feature is that I can give you some feedback or answer your questions about your work before I ever have to grade it. When you need a hand, just go to the 'Share' button to invite me to edit it.

Here is how it works:

1. Log into Google Docs, you may need to create a new Google account first.
   
2. Go to 'NEW' on the left side, select 'document' from the dropdown menu
3. Either upload an existing assignment, cut and paste a doc you have on your computer, or start typing from scratch.
4. When you need help or feel like you could benefit from suggestions, 'Share' it with me. All you need to know is my school email and select 'Share' from the top right hand side. Invite collaborators, and send me an invitation. Thats it.
5. When done, 'Publish' the url and send me the link. Or if you want, save it in a traditional format like .rtf or .doc for easy uploading.

Web 2.0 Definition

This slide show explains what Web 2.0 means and some of the reasons why its playing a huge part in our courses this year.

SlideShare.net

"SlideShare is the world's largest community for sharing presentations on the web." Thats what it says on their website and I believe it. Its also one of the coolest communities for seeing creativity.
This exciting web 2.0 application allows you to explore ideas of others, research presentation or project material and showcase your own presentation style. Here is how I imagine you can use it in my course.

1. Create an online slideshow. Upload your powerpoints and copy the link to send me so I can grade your assignment.
2. Create a Slidecast. You upload your powerpoint, add a link to an mp3 file, and you get a slidecast. This will allow you to add music or your own voice to any powerpoint.
3. Your friends/acquaintances from this course that you meet in Odyssey of the Mind can form a group in Slideshare and collaborate on assignments.
4. Complete research by looking up slideshow presentations rather than a typical text search in Google. For example, I searched the term 'civil rights' and this is the slideshow that came up at the top of the list.

Here is my first Slide Cast = Podcast (mp3) + powerpoint


Click this link to watch a A SLIDESHARE TUTORIAL

U 2, Can Digg It

Digg.com is a social news site. The site is 100% powered by users. Users 'digg' stories and videos that they come across on their favorite sites and upload them to Digg.com. You can find out a ton of information that you would never come across on CNN or Fox News or any traditional news site for that matter.

Here is how it could help you for research and projects in my course.

1. The articles on digg are current, dated, and posted by users. Unlike Google searches which most of you do for research, you will get news that is up to date on Digg and chosen by readers like yourself.

2. You can form groups and have friends in Digg. So if you know some people from our course, which you can meet by joining Odyssey of the Mind, then you can share stories you find. For example, lets say you are working on a unit on Civil Rights and there are 4 parts to the unit. If you worked with a friend using Digg, one person could do the Internet research for one part, shoot it up to Digg and then your friend can read what you posted. Another group member could do the research for Part 2 and shoot up the best info to Digg. Pretty soon you can all see each others stories and your research is done.

3. You can search videos, podcasts and blogs in a basic Digg search. These are three Web 2.0 tools that I want you to get familiar with and use to complete assignments for in this course.

4. Its more fun than traditional research!

Note: As with any research, you must be careful what you quote in your assignments so use opinions and facts cautiously.

Our Very Own Odyssey Social Network

Lets talk about Social Networking. I would venture to guess that many of you are experts in this category. Most teenagers Ive met over the last few years are a part of Myspace or Facebook. Its a great place to go socialize with others and to share your ideas. You share videos, pics,music, and all types of things about your life for the purpose of interacting with friends. Well, we can take that same approach but add a little twist to make it work for our High School. Lets take a look at a couple of ways it might benefit you to join our Odyssey Students Social Network.

• You can share ideas and collaborate with your class mates.
• You can ask for help from others working on the same lessons. (open 24 hours)
• Share unique ways that you are completing the projects in my classes (remember, there are a lot of ways to complete your work that aren't described in Eclassroom lessons).
• You can have discussions with friends, share music, videos (in other words, the site isnt just about education)
• This may be the only chance you have to interact with people at Odyssey. You might make a few friends that will lead you to feel more connected to others.
• Web 2.0 is about users like yourselves creating the content on websites that you visit, we will be playing with some of those 2.0 ideas in here.
• This class will be A LOT more interesting if you join our Social Network, promise:)

Click the link to join: 'Odyssey of the Mind', our Odyssey Students Social Network

sooo DEL.ICIO.US

Time to start talking about social networking sites. You may be familiar with MySpace, Facebook, and too many others to name so instead of trying, lets just talk about how they can help you learn. The first one we will address is DELICIOUS. Otherwise known as del.icio.us.

Delicious, (Im leaving out the periods from this point on because Ive been typing all day and don't need any extra key strokes if possible) is a Social Bookmarking site. That means people use the site as a place to bookmark their favorite websites. Its a social site because the users supply the content. The users can make friends and set up their own networks with people they have favorite sites in common with. And users create notes and tags to highlight each site.

So how can this work for helping you with my courses:

1. This is a great place to do research. If you go into Google, and type in "Hurricane Katrina" you will get over 13 million hits. There is no way you are going to navigate through more than a page or two of what comes up because it is way too much. If you go to delicious and type in the same term, you will ONLY get 2800 hits. That's because people have already done the sorting for you. They come across a site on a topic they enjoy and save it to delicious. Then the rest of us come on and check out which sites people like best out of all that research. People mark their favorites by saving the site and the more times a site has been saved the more likely you will find something useful in it, or at least something people enjoy.

2. Unlike many search engines, when you look up a term on delicious you will get a very short keyword description of what the article is about. These types of keywords are known as tags.
Click here for a demonstration

3. If you would like to collaborate with students in our course, you can set up a network of our students and you can all share your favorite sites from your research. Essentially, if you are sharing then you will have less research to do, which is a wonderful thing.

Check out this helpful vid:

Oral Projects

Two questions: This is an online school Mr. Plough, how can I do oral presentations? 2ndly, Why would I even want to?

Okay, let me answer the second question first. I've been trying to emphasize the fact that I really don't care how you complete your projects. If you want to make videos, websites, powerpoints, online slideshows, essays, or any other method I haven't yet mentioned, Im all for it. What I really want is for you to complete your lessons and show me you have learned something. Back to oral presentations and your 2nd question. Here is my answer.......some people would simply rather talk. Are you one of those people, can you communicate your ideas better by saying them out loud? If so, Oral Projects might be something to consider. Back to the first question in the very first sentence of this blog.

I can imagine three possible ways for you to do oral projects, but there may be more so shoot me ideas when you get them.

1. You come find me on campus and we will talk about whatever lesson/assessment you want to turn in. All I ask is that you are able to meet the requirements I laid out in the project/assessment instructions.

2. You call me, we talk about it over the phone, same rules apply for requirements.

3. Lastly, what I think is the most interesting option, and the one most likely to add to your skill bank for the future, you make an audio recording using a piece of software and you send me the recording. I imagine this goes something like, you are sitting home talking into a microphone, a program on your computer is recording it, when you are done the program saves it in a .wav, .mp3, or other audio format and you send it to me. I open it up, listen, take a few notes, and give you a grade or ask for more. Sounds easy right, lets do this. Oh yeah, buy a microphone if you don't have one yet.

Im going to include some links to free software programs below, but you may have one on your computer at home, or know of an online application that would work for this (send me the info). Note: read the descriptions of each program and decide what would work best for you.

Audacity (recommended)

Digital Dictation
Free Sound Recorder
Pocket Voice Recorder
Magix Music Maker (you can use this to make songs for projects, but can also just record your voice)

Zoho Show

I played around for a little while last night on a program called Zoho Show. Its an online program that allows you to build presentations using a format similar to PowerPoint. If you don't have PPT than this is a great, free alternative. It's even better than PPT in some ways: you can post your presentations online (you get your own page on ZOHO's website), embed them into a blog (see below), put them on your own website, Google Home Page, and a number of other online applications. Also, you can submit them to me by just sending me a link for where ever you posted your presentation. If you have a Flickr Account, it links right to the pictures you have uploaded and you can also access pics, multimedia, and documents that exist on your hard drive. Its really easy to use, and its fun to create. I would love for you to complete your assignments/essays/projects/reviews etc. using this program

To submit to me: While in your project select Publish > Public URL > copy and paste and either email it or put in the Dropbox

In addition to Zoho Show, there are a number of other programs that you can use from Zoho that might replace your need for Microsoft Office.

Open Office

We are all pretty familiar with Microsoft, right? Microsoft Office, Powerpoint, Word, Excel, Windows XP and a myriad of other programs have become common names. There is no wonder how Bill Gates got to be the richest man in the world for a long time (he recently got passed by Carlos Slim Helu). Those programs are expensive to purchase. Have you ever priced Microsoft Office?

Well there is another program in town, and its free. It is called Open Office and its an open source program. That basically means some people created it and made it available to everyone. Sounds better than paying $400 for almost the same thing, doesn't it? Some reviewers even rate OO higher than Microsoft Office. So, for those of you who don't have a computer that is loaded with Microsoft Programs and would like OO, click here to begin downloading.

Here are a few ways you can use it for my class:

1. Open Office Impress- This is a program very similar to Microsoft's PowerPoint, but more powerful in some regards. You can create slide shows. Slide shows allow you to use graphics, videos, screen captures, pictures, and words to make a presentation. I will accept slideshows for just about any project in any of my classes.

2. Open Office Writer- As the name implies, this is a writing/word processing program. It has some desktop publishing capabilities too, but you would mostly use this program much like you would use Microsoft Word. This program will give you the tools to complete your projects in a more traditional manner.

3. Open Office Draw- This is a graphics program for those of you that are artistically and digitally inclined. You can create many types of graphic based projects using this program.

When you are ready to begin using OO, click on the tutorial below to get started.

Photo Sharing

Most of you are probably familiar with photo sharing websites like flickr, photobucket, and Google's picassa. There are many more sites out there but these 3 are pretty popular and easy to use. For the sake of this blog entry, Im going to focus on Flickr because it is the most popular and has the most tools for manipulating your photos. I would like all of you to have a Flickr account for this course. If you already have a Yahoo ID then you are set so please click here and select 'create an account'. If you dont have a Yahoo ID then click here to get one, you will use that for Flickr too.

Now that you have an account, lets talk about how to use photos, and Flickr for completing projects in my courses.

1. In all of my courses, projects are the main types of assessments. You can use photos to enhance any project but they can sometimes be the project itself. To get started on a project, go to Flickr and type in a search term. There a couple things to be leery of when searching for photos. Pay attention to the description of the photo, dont just type in a search term and select any photo that comes up because it might not be exactly what you were looking for. Secondly, do advanced searches and select Creative Commons photos. Creative Commons photos can be downloaded and saved to your hard drive and used in your projects. If the photo has All Rights Reserved then you wont be able to use it.
Here are three examples of search results for projects in my courses:

• Travel and Tourism- Scotland
• Civil Liberties and Street Law- Getting pulled over by the police
• American History through film- American Revolution

2. Make Friends- Flickr is a social networking site for people who love pictures. When you find a photo you like send the person a comment or email. Tell them you are working on a project for school and ask them about their experiences in regards to the photo. Most people love to talk about themselves so would be happy to share their stories. The extra tidbits could really help your projects.

3. Set up groups. Talk to people in your course and set up a group so you can share photos. Collaborate, be creative.

4. Imagination- Looking through photos really helps our imagination. If you are trying to envision a period in history, or a place to travel too, or the suffering of people, photos can really tell those stories. They may spark ideas you never thought of.

5. Use the Flickr Services to manipulate Creative Commons photos and the personal photos you upload. There are lot of fun things you can do to make pics more interesting and your school projects more interesting as well.

Check out this 2 minute tutorial:

Video Sharing, You Know...YouTube

Video Sharing simply means people put videos on the Internet that talk about things they are interested in, think are funny, or just want to share with others. That's pretty obvious Mr. Plough, Ive been to You Tube before, duh. Okay, okay, so how does video sharing apply to this class. Several different ways:

1. If you ever want to create a video as a project for any of my classes then go for it. Since much of my work is project based, I would be happy, no, ecstatic, to accept a video project for just about anything. Here is a tutorial video that gives you an idea how to create your own vid using a common software program that many of you have. If you don't have it, get a hold of me, tell me you want to make a video and we can try to work something out. There are 'How To' videos on YouTube for many video editing programs.



2. You can use YouTube or Google Videos or another site to find videos that can be a part of a project. As long as you give credit in your project to where you found the video, or who created it if possible, than you can put the video in your project. You can embed the video (like I did above) or provide me with the link.

3. You can use video sites to look up information and learn about a topic. Say you want to know about the Civil Rights Movement for my history or CivLib courses. Simply go to YouTube, type in your search term and watch one of the videos. This will give you information that you can use for your assignments. Keep in mind who made the video as they might not have all the facts correct, so its good to double check against other resources.

Note, external sites such as You Tube often have material that may be inappropriate for children. I will never purposely provide you a video or link that has inappropriate language or content on that page. Please navigate all external sites with caution.

RSS Feeds

RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication. Please watch the video to get a clear explanation of how they work.




These 3 sites are popular RSS organizers. If you have a google email account, I recommend just using their google reader and IGoogle to keep track of all your favorite sites.

GoogleReader best connected with IGoogle
My Yahoo Feeds
NetVibes



Once you have signed up for one of the accounts above, come back here and look for either of these 2 symbols on the page up near or in the toolbar.


Click on either symbol and follow the instructions for sending it to your location of choice. This makes it easy for you to know when I have added something to the blog, it will show up right on your home page or your favorite feed organizer.

Do You Know...

HOW TO BECOME THE WORLD WE ARE LIVING IN?

Wiki's

A Wiki is a webpage that anyone can edit. Wiki's are a good way to work together with someone else, in real-time if you like, and can be used to share with as many people as you wish.
Please watch the video below to get a better explanation.




Now that you have watched the video, post a comment by clicking on the 'comments' word at the bottom of this blog entry. Your comment should be about your impression of a wiki and/or how you think you might be able to use one in my course.

You can create your own free wiki account on wikispaces.com
I will ask you several times this year to use your wiki and feel free to turn assignments into me on your wiki.

Your Blog

Blogs are a great way to communicate online, see, you are on one right now. They also give you an opportunity to share your ideas with more than just me. Its exciting to know that people are reading what you write; that people care about your ideas. I want you to use blogs for my course work. I will often ask you to complete projects and most of the time I am really open to the type of project you turn in, so if you want to complete a project using a blog, go for it. Its easy to create one, click on one of the links at the bottom of the page, think of a creative title (like Mr Plough's Travel and Tourism Blog j/k), pick out a design you like, and get going.

Keep in mind, blog entries are an extension of this school and need to be used appropriately. Please don't create a blog for my course and use it to share disruptive materials to others. If you have a blog already, please create a separate one for your online coursework.

Check out the video for more info.



Blogger.com
You may have to register a Google email if you don't already have one, that is easy too, and we will use many Google functions so its a good idea to have the email anyway. Note: you can't use your School Google Email ID to sign up. Hope to see your voice soon.

Edublogs.org - an awesome education based blogging tool

Imbee.com - a student based blog that has a lot of fun things to do



Also, if you want extra readers, click here to see how.

Facebook

WE ARE NOT USING THIS in 07

Facebook is designed for students to use a social community to meet other students at Odyssey HS. I create groups in Facebook for each course I teach. In that group I occasionally post discussion topics based on relevant things going on in the world that have to do with our class. On top of that, you can post questions that other students can help you with. This is so you can collaborate, not so you can just give each other answers. Please use academic integrity and be aware that I can monitor your posts and emails on Facebook and that I uses Turnitin.com to check and make sure you aren't sharing answers when submit assignments.
Facebook gives me a place to go and work with you guys in real time. I am online a lot and will be logged into Facebook most of the time so you can just hit me up with any questions you have. Stay tuned for specifics on registering.

The End of the Year

I've created this blog just to talk about school related issues.
There are about 5 days left in the 07 school year and Im pretty excited. Not only about getting off work for 3 months but about the possibilities for next year. We are getting a new platform at OCHS and should be a lot easier to use than Ucompass. I've used Facebook for the last few months, and think it can be beneficial for my courses, I will create groups for all of my classes next year. I will be teaching a Travel and Tourism course for both semesters next year, and its mostly project based. You will be able to do stuff like this for assignments, I mean stuff like posting blogs. Blogs are assignments Mr. Plough? Well, in my class they will be. People post experiences about travel all the time on the web, no reason we cant do it for my course.
Websites will be another thing we are doing in some of my courses next year. I will come out with How To videos on building websites the easy way so if you are interested in learning how to do that and turning in all your projects on a website, my classes will work for you. OF course, there is always the ppt or word doc projects if you dont want to do websites and blogs, those are just ideas. Speaking of ideas, let me know if you have any about ways to turn in assignments. I know you are all used to power points and word processing, poster boards, dioramas, those are typical methods of completing a project. Do you have anything progressive, exciting you want to recommend?


P.S. I will teach the above mentioned Travel class, Civil Liberties, Street Law, and American History through Film next year. Hope to see some of you there.