This year, as I began to learn with TTF, I integrated technology in two ways. I created flashcards on the website we learned about for my 3rd grade Hebrew class and with my 6th graders, we used Quia.com to create an end of the year Jew-pardy game to review the year's learning with the 4/5th graders who the 6th graders were sharing their learning with throughout the year. In both cases, I saw how much more excited and engaged the students were. They all thought that using computers in class was very cool and their energy around learning and participation was markedly different.
One of the projects that I have devised for my 5-7th graders for next year (as a part of our new Project Based Learning curriculum) is a Digital Midrash project. This project will be presented with them with a Prezi (created on prezi.com), one of my favorite on-line teaching tools. I used Prezis with my Adult Ed course this year and they LOVED the slide presentations (and a Prezi is SOOOOOO much easier to create than a Power Point!). The Digital Midrash project will encourage the students to use a variety of the technology tools/ideas I learned about in TTF this year including (but not limited to): word clouds, timelines, Ted Talks, Blogs/Vlogs, and more! I'm very much looking forward to sharing the Prezi with the TTF class and to getting their feedback on how I can make this lesson even better before sharing it with the students next year!
You sound like you've really taken off running with the new tools! I love the idea of a digital Jew-pardy game; I spent hours putting together a poster board game board with index cards and library card pockets. My students really enjoyed playing the game, but I can see how they would be that much more engaged if I could meet them where they are, with the technology.
ReplyDeleteThe power of Prezi does, as you noticed, work with adults as well as students. I appreciate how much content can go into such a user-friendly space. I hope you'll share with us how these projects work out!