Online Resources
Today I’m quickly looking at a few sites presented to me in my Eng 3241 class. They offer some unique features such as building interactive time lines, posters, and “museum exhibits” . Specifically, I will be exploring a few uses for these sites in an English classroom.
Glogster (and Glogster for educators)
Excellent resource for students to create interactive or non-interactive posters. Using a format like this takes out a lot of the time students would spend making a poster look clean. Some students have a hard time drawing, and stress out much more over making the poster look clean than they do in compiling relevant or useful information. It also allows for a great deal of creativity and personalization.
This site allows students to build an “exhibit” of sorts to present just about any project you could think of. Explorable rotating cubes can contain images, ppt’s, documents, text, videos, etc.
TimeRime is a great way to put together a movable time line that is easy to navigate, easy to put together, and can contain pictures that correspond with events. It makes lining up text with dates properly, editing information, and creating a clean look much easier. This could be used for a plethora of subjects and projects, from a time line of a student’s science project to a history of the Renaissance authors.
All of these resources have the potential to help students make some stellar work. But as with any project, the outcome depends largely on the effort put into it. If I were to give students the option to use resources such as these, I would probably hold the work to a higher standard since the physical labor involved is greatly decreased. These sites have the potential to be great resources for teachers and students, and I plan to hold on to them for a long time.
Your comment about holding students to high standards is well-taken…it’s just as easy to put forth minimum effort online as it is with traditional assignments. Some exemplary models as benchmarks along with clear, detailed instructions for the assignment will help.