Module+7+--+Creativity+and+Innovation

**NETS:**

Students demonstrate creative thinking, construct knowledge, and develop innovative products and processes using technology. Students: Participants will be able to:
 * 1) apply existing knowledge to generate new ideas, products, or processes
 * 2) create original works as a means of personal or group expression
 * 3) use models and simulations to explore complex systems and issues
 * 4) identify trends and forecast possibilities
 * 1) Investigate and discuss collaborative tools for both professional development and for use with students.
 * 2) Develop an innovative product, something completely new for their classroom.
 * 3) Develop authentic assessments.

Thoughts on Ning and Twitter

After looking at the information for this week, I was left thinking two different things. Once again, I'm not sure how much benefit certain social networking tools have. As always, it's how we use the technology, but things like Facebook leave themselves too open to becoming either pointless or even detrimental. After all, you could try to have a class group set up on Facebook, but it would (I think) quickly devolve when people started posting personal things, plus as an educator, that's exponentially more time that I would have to spend policing and censoring (for lack of a better word) our group. Ning seems to fall into this same gray area for me, as I can see some benefits, but overall, it still seems to be very similar in scope to teacher created wikis that we looked at before.

On the other hand, Twitter actually could serve a useful purpose, I believe. This is an idea I had heard from a friend of mine last summer, and I intended to utilize it, but never quite did. I even had my account all set up and ready to go. Now, taking Twitter at its main focus (spreading information in short bursts quickly and effectively), I think it could easily be adapted to suit our needs as educators. So long as you kept focused to school-related information, you could easily use this to disperse information to parents regarding homework, quiz dates, test reminders, etc. Although students in elementary school might be lacking in cell phones (though I'm sure that percentage is steadily rising), I know that probably 3/4 of my students in 7th grade have their own cell phones. Or maybe it just seems that way... Regardless, I have found, as a coach, that if you want to quickly get information to students, text messaging is the way to go. I may include this Twitter information in my year-opening letter and once again hope that the information makes its way home.

Thoughts on Tools for the Classroom

As I browsed through the various tools sites, the only thing that kept popping into my head was the feeling of being infinitely overwhelmed. Even after spending X months on this course, during which I have learned quite a bit, being hit with all these various sites all at once was bothersome. I think that's because just about every last one of these sites began with "SIGN UP HERE NOW!!!" It's a little, no a LOT, off-putting. Many of them, I'm still not even sure what the benefit of using them is.

Maybe I shouldn't be this way after growing up with technology and having taught for four years now, but sometimes the old ways work just as well as anything else. I look at all the various sites, which could be very good in theory. The problem is that each one uses a different interface that I will have to learn first, then figure out how to educate my students on using them. I get that the idea is not to use EVERY one of these, but rather to pick out one or two, but still... I have heard of Wordle before and it looked interesting, but I thought I remembered it being a pay site. Perhaps it was something similar.

Voki sounded interesting when it had "animation" listed next to it, but it doesn't seem to be referring to using actual animation in the classroom. It seems to be focused upon having an animated avatar present while you do the lesson. Perhaps I'm missing the point of the site, but I'm not sure why this is an educational breakthrough. Frankly, it doesn't seem much different than creating a Mii on my Wii system. Voki also seems to operate on a pay system as well. I know speaking for myself, our classroom budgets were two things: Jack and squat, and Jack just left town, so spending $30 out of my pocket for something I'm not even sure about what it accomplishes... eh.

Sites like Flickr and Picnik are great in theory as well, but what educational purpose do they serve for my 7th grade English classroom? I'm not saying this to be negative; I'm trying to grasp the purpose. Many of these seem like things that I guess I might use given the time in my classroom, and they're certainly useful to file away for the future, but as far as in-class resources go, there's not much here for me to assimilate, especially if I am worried about getting my students up to speed completely on things like Microsoft Word.

Innovative Activity

My idea for an innovative project is to create an "interactive" story on the computer. This could be done either on the level of the students or perhaps as a story written for younger children. Students could create their stories originally by mapping them out almost as a "choose your own adventure" story. Option one might lead to a whole tree of options while option two could take the story in a different direction. Likewise, these two paths could intertwine throughout the story, eventually reaching a final conclusion.

What would separate this activity from others is that you could easily link to photos on sites such as [|Flickr] while also adding audio clips (sound effects, scary noises, etc.. user created or found online) to enhance the story. Unfortunately, most sites seem to have issues storing audio files, so this could be tricky, but adding these extra touches could bring an average story more to life, giving it a face and voice as opposed to plain old paper. Students are sometimes hesitant to put themselves on film or acting out stories, so this could also be a way to get more in-depth with novels, allowing students to use their own interpretations.

The stories themselves could be created and stored on a website such as [|Edublogs]if each student had their own. Or perhaps we could create a class story with everybody having the opportunity to edit things. The tricky part, naturally, would be connecting up various storylines, but that is why there are multiple options at each point in the story. Each student could be assigned his or her own chapter. If you did this in Power point format, it could also go onto a site such as [|Slideshare].

Authentic Assessment

This assignment would require students to engage in what I call “mixed media”, utilizing film as well as the written text. Basically, I would start the students off by having them compare the qualities of say, a novel we were reading, with a film version of the same text. We can look at things like plot, characterization, style, tone, setting, theme, and point of view for both texts. For the movie version, we would need to also consider visual imagery, special effects, lighting, sound, etc. In this case, it would make perfect sense to create a wiki for each group so that students can view the clips and then type in their thoughts immediately after. Theoretically, I could upload a short video clip and have them add their comments via a Voice Thread as well, but I'm not sure on copyright issues there.

From here, students would have to collaborate to look at a separate, third text, again a novel. In this case, I would be choosing one that either does not have a film version, or is one that we have not viewed. Students would be asked to describe the video that will exist. They need to storyboard the production. They will also be asked to sketch out a diagram of the scenes and also describe whatever audio will be included. Again, wikis could be a great way for students to share ideas without having to be together in a classroom setting. From here, students could use our digital cameras to film their movie (or simply scenes from the novel) and ultimately, we could possibly upload this to a file site like Youtube for others to view.