Student Media Project

As we progress through the 21st century, our world gets smaller and smaller because of the rate of innovation.  To stay relevant in our world, knowledge and skill in this innovation is essential, not only for students but for teachers as well.

In creating my project, I built upon prior knowledge.  This prior knowledge consists of webquests and Google blogs.  New knowledge includes Google Docs, Sites, Groups, and their usage in creating meaningful teaching activities.  In designing a web-bases activity that combines a webquest, blog, discussion group, and document tools, I feel like a more authentic lesson was created than if I just created paper handouts and presented a slideshow.  Media allowed greater opportunities for students to connect to subject material, connect to culturally relevant media to express themselves, and opportunities to connect to a community that is not limited to the classroom.  This social interactivity also allows students to build upon collaborative thinking, interpersonal skills, and fulfills their social development needs as adolescents.  Finally, by doing research with a medium larger than a traditional library, posting editorial articles, and debating issues in a discussion group, students are modeling the tasks that actual historians take on in their professions.  Modeling these tasks gets students more involved in their world, makes history more relevant to their lives, and expands their intellectual development in learning to think abstractly.  I gained a deeper understanding of these outcomes through creating the new media project.

Looking forward, I hope to use this type of activity in as many units as possible.  The time invested in planning, facilitating, and finding resources is time well spent.  While I realize I am limited to the media technology in the school where I teach, I also realize that it is possible to incorporate media—even if just one component—somehow in most lessons, and that its use as a way of instituting student-centered learning as a more effective way of teaching curriculum.  Being introduced to new tools greatly increases my own abstract thinking in how to be a resourceful and more impacting educator.  More media projects will surely follow in the years ahead.