Friday, December 3, 2010

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.

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