Twitter + PLN = Fantastic Ideas

A couple of weeks ago I became twitterized!  Best thing ever.  Using Twitter to create a Professional Learning Network has been such a wonderful, yet overwhelming, experience.  There are so many brilliant web tools and lesson plan ideas that educators all over the world are sharing.  I have actually had a hard time processing all of the information that I have gained.  So I figured the best thing to do was to pick one idea and try it!

As every one knows, Japan experienced a double natural disaster in March.  Thousands of people have died, thousand more are homeless and all of Japan has had their lives turned upside down.  While I was watching my twitter feed I noticed an intriguing tweet about a way for school children to help those in Japan.  Students Rebuild has teamed up with dosomething.org and architecture for humanity, these non profit organizations have pledge money to send to Japan in exchange for Japanese Paper Cranes - origami.  My geography class is studying East Asia, so this was a natural addition to my lessons for the week.  I taught the students the cultural implications of the Japanese Crane and the Art of Origami last Thursday and on Friday we worked to create paper cranes.  My initial goal was to send 50.  But imagine my surprise when a few students arrived Friday with working knowledge of how to create these origami cranes - they had researched it the night before.  As we worked through the day several more students wanted to work on them through the weekend to give to me on Monday.  Overall, I mailed 232 cranes - I definitely exceeded my original goal.  This real world service project struck a chord with my students - they felt empowered to help others - and all because of a tweet that I read that led me to the Paper Cranes for Japan site.

I have truly entered into the world of Twitter - and can't wait to learn more from my powerful PLN.

Open Mind at Work Here!

PowerPoint to Web 2.0

This last week my cohort and I put together and fun lesson for the students.  We are currently studying East Asia and he had found a kid friendly website that showcases Japan's Culture. Students were given different 'virtual cultures' to study and then they created a PowerPoint slide.  Their slide needed a summary and picture.  Students also peer edited other students work to help create more powerful examples of learning. 

Overall, this lesson was interesting and engaging.  It allowed students to explore a culture that is very different from their own. My question is....how can I take this assignment and utilize a Web 2.0 tool or application.  I think this would be a fantastic lesson to take to the next level.  I have only been exploring these emerging technologies for a couple of weeks and find myself overwhelmed with the possibilities.  One option I considered was Prezi.  I also considered using wikispaces. Even though I looked at these applications I felt that my knowledge was lacking to adequately teach these to the students.  I strongly believe that I need to be knowledgeable about these applications before I use them!

One unforeseen obstacle occurred during this activity.  In our school students have access to their own private drive on the network system.  Students and staff also have access to a common drive.  So to share their work for the peer editing portion of this assignment students saved their PPT to the common drive.  It was in this drive that I planned on using to grade their work.  Well....the worst possible thing happened.  All of the files disappeared <<POOF>>.  My heart sank.  Luckily most students had saved their work in their personal folder so I was able to recover 90% of the assignments easily.  The other 10% will have to recreate their work.  It was a lesson learned for all of us.  Students need to ALWAYS save to their personal drive and I ALWAYS need to move student work from the common drive into my personal drive.  Of course, this got me thinking - there is probably a better way that I could have had students submit their work to me.  So another question... what is a better solution for students to submit digital work to me for grading purposes.  I am just new enough that I don't have all of the answers.

I welcome all of your ideas and comments!  :)
Open mind at work here!