Prove It

I listened to the conference about primary access. Primary access is a web based digital video editor designed for social studies curriculum. The teachers select pictures from different places on the internet, then the students write on the website descriptions of the photos. Those descriptions will then serve as the captions during the movie. Once the videos are finished, the teacher can then go back and leave comments that the students will be able to see. The authors of this blog feel that digital media is the future of education. Because it is relatively new, it is almost unknown the amount of benefits it could have on education. As new methods of implementing digital media in the classroom are developed, I think that the amount of learning involved with it will go up substantially.

Kicking it up a Notch

I listened to the article about the Monster Bloom. This was a collaborative project between a two teachers who connected their class by computer labs. They classes communicated to each other through wiki's. The basis of the project was to design monsters and then to describe them. This was the first time that the students ever used Microsoft Office. They also had to be extremely detailed in their descriptions of their monsters. The idea behind the project was to see how well the other class would be able to re-create the monster without ever having seen the original. This was made possible by the fast sharing of information on a collaborative wiki.

I felt like this was a very good integration of technology for the students. They were able to use computers in ways they had never used them before, all the while they were learning and practicing their language art skills through descriptions.