Finding resources for the portaportal website REALLY opened my eyes to what's available for online learning. I'm young and my generation is supposed be tech-savvy, but I could not believe what all is out there. I worked with sixth graders a couple years ago on a Geocaching project and they made movies (by themselves--only guided by a teacher-given rubric) on their laptops using basic Mac programs. The movie was an explanation of Geocaching for someone who was new to it. They actually dramatized it and made scripts. I was impressed. I also knew about those programs and could just play around and figure them out. However, the feeling I had today was different. I didn't even know about the tools available. If I don't even know the tools available, I'm not going to have anything to "play around with." For example, something called "Animoto" allows a user to put together pictures, videos, sound clips, etc., and the websites puts it all together to make an organized, elegant, and honestly, beautiful video clip combining it all. Each video clip is unique and the user can put the same files on there many times and get a different product each time.
Amazing.
And, there are many sites like it. They incorporate ALL types of media into one cohesive piece. Some can even tap into your Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, etc. and automatically take your information.
There are so many uses for this! I thought an obvious project would be a biography project. The students could put in all the random pieces of information about themselves to form a piece of media that describes them. It could be added to a larger writing project or really any sort of project. This could also be used for creative writing... maybe using images representing different parts of a story and then rearranging it to form a new one... or combining parts of different stories to make a whole new one!
I don't know everything about technology. All the hype about technology and its implications isn't B.S. that an older generation talks about. There's so much to learn and it is never-ending. It's refreshing.
The sky is the limit and I realized today that it is no joke when people talk about how fast technology moves. Being able to do so much with information in such an easy way means that as soon as we think we have it all figured out, it's time to update. Every day or even every moment might be a refreshing reality check.
By the way, the geocaching project led the students to check up on different sites around the world so that they could then communicate with that particular place and learn about the culture. Very cool. Here's a basic site about geocaching if you are not familiar:
http://www.geocaching.com/
And, here is Animoto:
http://animoto.com/
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