Final Assignment

For this final assignment, I wanted to choose 3 pieces of technology I have not yet tried whether on my own or for the course. There were so many different ones to pick from that it took awhile before I decided.

Finally after much thought and deliberation, I chose Diigo, Wallwisher and Mixbook. I think these three would be very powerful tools in the classroom. We talked a lot about ways to empower the students and engage them using technology. I believe that teaching them how to use an online bookmarker properly will open their eyes to a world that was just slightly out of reach.

A lot of my students know about the Internet but few know how to use it effectively. Most are reluctant to change and try new things unless they see us use it. I remember the moment of interest from the students after they saw my simple Prezi. I tried to incorporate all the different things they could do with the program. Once they saw my Prezi, a few were curious with what they could do and they used it! Success is when they want to use it and learn how to master it.

Here are the three tools:

Diigo

One of the technologies I learned in class that I really wanted to use with my students is online bookmarking. I chose Diigo as it seems fairly user-friendly and simple. I created a bookmark list for la francophonie and added some websites I found via Diigo that could be interesting for this unit.

There are two reasons for creating this resource list. For one, I will have a set of links that they can use to research a francophone country for their project. Secondly, this is how I can model to them on how to use an online bookmark so that the seed is planted that they can create one for themselves in the future for their research. I will continuously create new bookmarks as evidence that it is useful!

Wallwisher

I created a Wallwisher for introducing La Francophonie. It would be an interesting board to start the brainstorming of what the unit is about. However, it can be used throughout the unit as the students learn and discover more about the topic. They can access the board anytime they wanted to from my website/blog and they can add things throughout the unit and at the end, we revisit the wall and see how much more it has grown and what they have discovered as a class.

Mixbook 

For my final activity, I decided that this would be the most engaging and fun activity to do as a final project in la francophonie. It could be a project where each group made a scrap book of the francophone country of their choice. Mixbook is very flexible in what can be done. They can start with a template and just change it as they like. All the objects, text and photos can be edited! It would be a comprehensive scrap book with little sentences here and there showing the food, culture, clothes and whatnot into the project. They could even add a page from Polyvore or create a passport from BigHugeLabs. The sample I embedded is a three page spread of France. It is incomplete but it demonstrates what I want to do with this tool.

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