Week 7 Projects for the Classroom

• I love Read-Write -Think's lesson plan idea to use wikis to catalog and comment on protest songs and then relate the commonality of the songs to a character in literature who has been a social activist. This could work for TKAMB, Tale of Two Cities, many characters in American novels. Plus it could be cross-related to history class. I've already sent this link to school. This is a treasure trove.


• Wordle in addition to making a great notebook cover for each class, this could be used as a study aid, to jazz up a cloud of vocab words in any subject, or to make a ppt. of wordles and use it as a quiz. It could also take the place of one of the pro-forma poems that kids often have to write. I'd love to be able to use them for screen savers on the library computers. I did one on taxonomy, above. I like the way the cloud effect demonstrates the inter-connectedness of life on earth.
• TerraClues This was fun and I think it would be better to start with this then progress to Google Earth 5. Having to do extra effort to locate the clue and to relate images to searching are good mental activities. We have teachers who do small projects on countries--culture, foods, currency etc. This would be a great use for TerraClues. Another move away from just ppt. or brochures.
• KidPix These lessons plans could be adapted for any subject, but I'm thinking chemistry or anatomy.

The situation at my campus-- I don't do lessons plans for the computer labs, however I do co-teach research with various teachers on several topics: mythology, Dickens era, genetic disorders, speech topics etc. I think these applications would be great for both short and in-depth research products. There would still have to be conventional writing, but for class presentations, these would be so much more engaging. I would use or suggest anything to get our students excited about learning and thinking, not just responding. I also really believe that having teachers of two or more subjects team up to show kids how inter-related history, ELA, science etc are can only make for better students.