(image by by hnmAck via Creative Commons License)
This week we visited a classroom and a student asked, “what’s a blog?” reminding us that sometimes there are some basic concepts that we might need to cover. And so this week’s This Week is dedicated to a few videos that might come in handy in either your class (as student, or teacher), or more generally on the web. Enjoy!
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What IS a Blog?
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Myths and Opportunities: Technology in the Classroom by Alan November
“In this video presented by Mobile Learning Institute, Alan tours his hometown of Marblehead, MA and comments on the historical global vision of his community. Alan challenges us to think about the emerging role of “student as contributor” and to globalize our curriculum by linking students with authentic audiences from around the world. (For more, read Alan’s article, Students as Contributors: The Digital Learning Farm, found at novemberlearning.com/resources/archive-of-articles/digital-learning-farm.”
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Featured Course: Suzanne Miller’s “Advanced Career Writing”/Roger Herra’s R&H Engineering
This week we’re featuring Suzanne Miller’s EN 3771 course, “Advanced Career Writing,” which uses the OpenLab in a particularly innovative way. Each student in the class creates an OpenLab site as the home of a fictional company for which they create mission statements, business plans, potential events, and a blog. It’s a great way to exploit one of the things the OpenLab can do best: give students the chance to try out different approaches and assignments, all of which can be bound together thematically. This “umbrella” project format leaves students feeling they didn’t just do one unrelated assignment after another, but built upon their work to create a significant final project they can be proud of.
A nice example is Roger Herra’s “H&R Engineering,” which you can see here, which has a nice mission statement, solid design work, and a great piece on DIY projects.
That’s all for this week. As always, email us with any questions!
