Not Web 2.0 but needed

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Permalink Reply by Wendy Melnick on March 25, 2009 at 7:30am

One idea with Word, is to create a linked story. You start with a main page, they each student has a link from the main story to their page. They continue the story in a different direction or point of view. This can be adapted to english, history, even science (point of view of bacteria invading a host).
You can also create eBooks with Powerpoint. Students create a project on a topic (original photos or artwork maybe). Save the Powerpoint as a .pdf file, and you can upload this onto the web.
You can also make a stop frame animation using Powerpoint. You can get kids to take photos with their phones.
Just a few ideas.

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Permalink Reply by Cheri MacLeod on March 25, 2009 at 8:12am

I don't have any links to lesson plans although I' m sure there are many out there. I do have a few ideas though.

One
-students create a 'time capsule/folder' of items that they create to represent a significant day including self-developed newspaper ad, a graph, a slideshow with a movie embedded etc (whatever you want them to practice although I suggest that the documents are left in soft format so hyperlinks remain active) - they need to use all the programs and use all the parameters you require but the topic/day/theme is up to them

Two
-ask students to create a very short and simple paper-based survey that they format in MS Word and deliver to the rest of the class or to friends. Ideally this would focus on something (e.g. student habits or behaviour, a school or local issue, research for a paper in another course) the student is genuinely interested in
-students then collate results in a self-created form in MS Word and transfer that to Excel to create 2-3 differnt graphs to display the info in a meaningful ways
-they then insert the graph into a PPT along with their comments and some supporting materials and share all their ppts either in Slideshare or somewhere else where they can all share their end products
-on the final day students are assigned to view and provide feedback on x number of student slideshows

If this is meant to provide practice in particular skills then at each step you must clarify exactly what is minimally required in each document (e.g. two inserted photos size x by y, at least one table, 4 colours or more in font, heading, footer, etc) so you can actually measure their ability to use the tools. Then encourage students to be creative in delivering something beautiful or useful within the parameters you set.

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Permalink Reply by Cory Tressler on March 25, 2009 at 9:46am

Webquests almost always incorporate MS Office tools. Check out http://webquest.org (click Find Webquests and use the search Matrix to find High School specific webquests by subject area) or google high school webquests.

The nice thing about webquests is that everything is included (directions, rubric, websites, etc.) and High School students should be able to complete on their own with a little guidance from the teacher, thus one class could be completing/working on multiple webquests at the same time .

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Permalink Reply by Darcie Priester on March 25, 2009 at 11:24am

Hi!
Anything with Judi Harris is great-she calls it Activity structures, instead of project based learning though.

Here are two websites with sample lessons that may help you:
http://virtual-architecture.wm.edu/
http://www.fsu.edu/~imsp/silent_invaders/new_weeds/educators/mining...

Also an article on activity structures:
http://www.lclark.edu/~krauss/usia/harriswebarticle/Body.html

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