Cory Plough
| Some of the most interesting student work I‘ve seen at my school has come in the form of video projects. Students have easy access to video cameras today and often make movies for their own entertainment. Many students are comfortable playing with editing software and because of free video hosts like Youtube and Google Videos, anyone can post to the web. Allowing students the option to create video projects and then share them in an online network is exciting. Animoto is a newer video production website that allows students to upload pictures, select music, and easily produce a short 30 second movie. It‘s hard to assess student learning in a 30 second project, but using this tool to replace a paragraph or two of an essay or as an intro to a presentation project gets students interested in the assignment.  Up until last year, student collaboration has proved difficult in an online high school. However, with the increase in usability of wiki‘s and the ability to create my own social network using the Web-based network-builder Ning, it has really begun to take off. Wiki‘s can act as editable databases, processor documents, multimedia hosts and any number of additional functions. The idea that people can constantly transform information on a page through real time collaboration is very exciting. Students can post ideas and get feedback from other students with whom they are working. They can bounce ideas back and forth expanding or narrowing their original concepts. Our social network gives students a place they can go to make friends, socialize, and work together. They can discuss their ideas, share research, and collaborate. The key, though, is that they make friends first and the social part of the network allows them to do that in a more natural way than my saying, "partner up with someone and work on this project together." Implementing Web 2.0 tools in my courses has given me an opportunity to open the doorways of creativity and have students walk through it rather than supplying the gentle motivational nudge to which I‘m accustomed. Finally, if you want to get a real hands-on feel as to what this is all about, please spend time at First Day of Kindergarten, the blog I‘ve created to help students learn to use Web 2.0 tools for their projects. Email: Cory Plough |
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