iTeach180 Project Day 15

The past three weeks have been a lot of setting up and introducing blended with independent practice. Students may become irritated, cranky, and anxious about using all of these tools on their own. And, hopefully they are starting to use them in other classes as well. Today we are going to send them on an search for information using the skills and tools we introduced this week: Diigo and Evernote.

Objectives:
Students will be able to compile information on given subject
Students will be able to organize information on a given subject using tags
Students will be able to present information

Process:

If you are presenting this lesson in a Web 2.0 class you will have many directions in which you can take this lesson. If you are integrating these tools and this lesson into a content area classroom, you will want to focus your lesson around what you want your students to find.

1. Have students respond to this prompt: Social Networks are closing us off from the rest of the world and creating a society of selfish, ego driven individuals. They are wasting time in workplace and are a constant disruption to a student's learning. 


2. Explain that students would normally respond to this type of response in a written essay, however, that will not be the case today. Have students seek out information to either defend or challenge this prompt. Instruct students that they have the entire class period today to work in groups or individually and find clippings that support or challenge this prompt.

NOTE: You may want to provide a list of sites that you suggest they use and explain that they must cite everything when clipping. Again, depending on what content area you teach in, you may want to cover web citations. I constantly think of this since I am an English Teacher. 


3. Allow students to present in any way they want but require them to use one of the web clipping tools you just introduced.

NOTE: You could have students write a blog reflection post on the positives and negatives of the web clipping tool they used to find, clip, and organize information. 


And that's it. Tell students that they will be presenting in class on Monday (unless you have a block period than you could do this in one day). You may wish to present a rubric for presentation guidelines. This lesson is a fun way of using some of the tools you have been covering for the past three weeks. Plus, they are covering a topic that they are surrounded by daily. This topic will also preview our next three units on collaborative learning, social networking, and digital citizenship.

Have a great weekend!