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.
Jun 2, 2007
The End of the Year
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2 comments:
Cory - This is great. I think that your Travel and Tourism class is going to be a lot of fun.
Here's a slight cautionary tale: when I first started teaching civil liberties I went all gung-ho about having students create web-pages. You know, "we're at an online school. Students should be doing digital stuff" (which they should, but that's not the point :) ).
Some students really took to it and I got perhaps the best projects I've ever received at Odyssey. Other students really struggled with web-pages and we butted heads a lot and it ended up hurting their performance in the class. It wasn't that these student's didn't know the content from the class, they just didn't know how to make web-sites.
What I didn't realize at the time is that it doesn't matter how a student shows me that they know what they know. It doesn't matter if it's in an email, Word doc., Powerpoint, blog post, video, web-page, or something else entirely. What matters is that the student was able to demonstrate knowledge in a way that was comfortable for them.
When you create your projects leave the how up to your students. Show them how to make web-sites. Show them how to make videos. Show them how to put together a blog. But then leave it up to your students to show you what they know in the way that works best for them.
Thanks Glenn, leaving the how to to them is what I had in mine too. My main goal is to give kids many ways to turn something in so that they can work with something they are comfortable in. For the kids who get bored in Mic Word, webpages might be fun for them and give them incentive to do the assignment.
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