Podcasting Personal Narrative External Peer Review

A great project that we just completed involved an external and anonymous peer review using podcasting.

My U.S. Literature class posted their personal narrative paper rough drafts, along with a recording of each student reading their paper. Then, students in Jen Mitchell's College Composition courses read the papers, listened to the podcasts, and offered their advice on how to make the paper better through an anonymous google docs form.

I have posted the final versions of the papers so you can see how the external peer feedback really influenced the work on the final papers. The last line of this final version really shows how much the technology can inspire students to create.

21st Century Education

Here is a student created film by one of my US Literature classes.

I got the idea for this from Greg Kulowiec at History 2.0, and I decided to use it to showcase students working in groups with new technology.

We spent one day talking about how education is changing, and what businesses are looking for when hiring today. Then, I asked them to work in groups to answer the question, "What do I want to be able to do when I graduate from high school?"

After they had some good ideas going onto paper, I asked if anyone knew how to use a camera, who wanted to direct, and who knew how to put things together in Windows Movie Maker.

They truly exceeded my expectations, and this great movie is what they came up with: