What a difference a few months of working with the web 2.0 tools can make to students and teachers alike. Prior to being introduced to these amazing tools of trade by our two dynamos Anne and Jess, project presentations were somewhat tedious to say the least.
At the start of the term, when I proposed the idea of a “project” and brainstormed methods of presenting them, the preferred option for students were posters or books! I was horrified.
That’s when I made the decision to hop onto the blogging wave which was swamping our school. The students all had their own blogs, and they had in place some of the tools that became pivotal to our progress. Once my home internet was reconnected and I could access the technology from home again, it was all go, go, go.
The students helped design our presentation rubric, where we explicitly pin pointed the things that made a presentation a “good one”. Then we brainstormed a number of ways in which we could use these tools of technology, to help us enhance our projects. The results have been amazing.
The students have used:
• Powerpoint – and then slideshare to embed their presentations in their own blogs
• Smartboards and wireless mouse (does anybody else have their tongue out the side of their mouths, or feel like they have had a stroke while using this? )
• Photostory
• Podcasts
• Video interviews and role play
• Voicethread interviews
• Quizzes using “mystudiyo”
• Voting – using “polldaddy “ and “zoho”
• And of course, the faithful old wordfind and crossword puzzles
Below is a quiz created by one of our students, who did a brilliant presentation on Albert Einstein. Tzigane created this quiz using polldaddy and it was a huge success. It was the finale of her presentation. She chose the same number of children as she had questions and as each child got the answer correct, she issued them with a lollypop.
