Background on the Adopt A Country Study

Liam had implemented a "Country Study" project in social studies and had been successfully doing it for years. He called it Adopt A Country - students choose a country at the beginning of the year and do a year long "research" project on it. Traditionally, they had used a three ring binder and Liam (being a forward thinker!) wanted to "digitize" it. He wanted to find a more efficient and 21st century way to build and organize the project. We considered database storage and other ways to capture the essays, maps, timelines, etc but quickly turned our attention to a way students could "showcase" their project while "creating" something using 21st century skills and habits.

We chose the PBWorks Wiki site and had each student create a wiki that showcased their work. As a result - the first year, students completed the componenets of the project and created a "webpage" of their work and uploaded their artifacts, attached, and scanned, etc.

This project lends itself to giving students authentic purpose in learning and practicing almost if not ALL of the ICT Literacy Standards.

Christa McCuliffe Conference Presentation

Salon B 1:00-2:00

Turning a 3-Ring Binder Project to a Rich Web 2.0 Integrated Portfolio Allison Mollica, Applications Administrator, Lebanon School District, and PeggyJo Sahlman and Liam Coyle, Lebanon School District

* E2 Level: Beginner Grades: 6-8, 9-12 Extensions

Using the middle school "country study" project as an example, this presentation shows you how one social studies department transformed a tradition 3-ring binder approach to a project portfolio to an online Wiki "binder" integrating several Web 2.0 tools and giving students practice in meeting NETS and ICT standards! Using PBWorks as a foundation for the "electronic binder" students build a web page presenting research on their country and integrate the use of online graphing tools, Glogster pages, and more. This can be applied to any curriculum and probably works best with grades 6 - 12. Discover how students built an electronic binder (PBWorks Wiki) to attractively present their year long research on their country including imported images, written biographies, graphs, scanned "drawn" maps, time lines, and more.

Look What I Just Googled

Google Teacher Academy - Need to apply, show how you will use it and be willing to go out and present/share and be apart of the listserv.

http://www.google.com/educators/gta.html

Emails: I want to send and moderate emails. Classroom gmail account-can be moderated.

Calendar: Uses calendar (published/public) for assignments - posting and details.

Docs: Newer items include drawing and form options.

Forms: Create quiz, poll, etc.

Template component of the Google Domain allows you to share school templates.

Google Alert: Setup an alert for updates on topics delivered to your mailbox or rss feed.

Custom Search - Create a list of sites for students to "search" for things.

Google Scribe: Finishes what you are typing by predicting the word you want to type and showing you how to spell it correctly.

Google Lit Trips: www.googlelittrips.org

Google Book Marks: Set up by Grade Level!

Google Tools for Educators WEbinars: Free Technology for Teachers.

December 7th - Taking google Apps to the next Level