PB Works and Darfur

I checked out three of the sites from last weeks reading.  The first was Rebecca Blood's blog and i didn't take to much from that.  The second was the Darfur plan created by high school kids.  There hasn't been any activity with the site since 2009 so i'm not sure if it has been effective but as far as how the site is set up it actually is quite impressive and smooth.  I then checked out PBworks which appears very helpful educationally as far as setting up a safe site for a classroom to get together.

Making a Video for English

I don't have much to stay on this.  I knew making a video for an English class was possible and I knew that the process of how exactly that video will be made is numerous.  In high school we did similar projects multiple years.  The idea of using video to demonstrate learned knowledge about a certain literary author, genre, time period, story etc. has always been a method I planned to use when teaching.

Let's Make a Story!!

Just saying, while i was doing the readings, i think it would be a really fun idea for our class if we collaboratively used digital story telling and created a story made up by the whole class!  Either each group, or each individual contributed a piece to the story and we put it all together.  Kind of life how Daniel Tosh asked his viewer audience to come together to tweet his death, or was it just a story?  Anyways it was hilarious how parts jumped around because people just added whatever they wanted so i think it would be a ton of fun.  I'll leave it up to you to decide how we can make it educational in the classroom.

Using Nature as a Tool to Learn?

As I've probably stated before, i am in Literature of the Environment with Dr. Dimarco.  Today we just finished reading the novel Into the Wild which I will admit is now one of my favorite books.  I'm not going to get real specific here, I just wanted to know some of your thoughts about this idea.  I took a lot from the main character's (Chris McCandless) actions and motives and words.  I was wondering if taking a class actually outside, maybe on a field trip to a national park or reservation or something like that and have them write about the experience in any form they desire would be a good education tool.  I mean of course this field trip would take place around the same time the class might be reading about transcendentalism or reading literature concerning the environment.  I just feel like though to truly get a glimpse of the idea behind these stories they have to be physically experienced.