Saturday, December 1, 2007

Mockumentaries

I loved this idea that I got from the UNC-Greensboro presenters.   They played a video (vodcast?) spoofing Mad Money and using a staged call to explain the concept of Economic Profit.   I found myself actually anxious to hear the explanation.   I think this could be done on a small scale to teach almost anything. Imagine capturing students' attention by imitating pop culture icons.   Another powerful aspect of the video was that it wasn't explaining the concept to the students, but rather a third party.   It was very powerful that the audience is an indirect target of the information.   It would take considerable work for a single concept, but it may be worth it when considering that it could be used in multiple classes and in multiple school years.

Wiki projects!

One of my favorite tools that I learned about at NCETC 2007 were wiki's.   I thought that one excellent use would be for a teacher to start a wiki with a simple paragraph or page about a general topic.   Within the paragraph, many of the key words should be created as links.   These keywords are then assigned to students who would research the keywords and fill in the wiki with data related to that keyword.   I think this could be an amazing way to carry out a research project with students.   I don't have anything concrete for this yet, but I would like to create a sample page.   Most of the implementations for this idea so far relate more to subjects other than Math.   I might develop this idea for Science or Social Studies first.   As a second effort I would like to adjust the idea to fit Math somehow.

Gaming Fair

Another idea that I absolutely loved from David Warlick's presentation on video gaming. He stated that some schools had hosted a gaming fair. What a magnificent way to get students excited about a school event. Students were invited to bring in their gaming systems and they demonstrated to parents and faculty the many aspects of the gaming world that are foreign to many adults. This would also be a great event to springboard a PTSA meeting. There are lots of great resources available at David Warlick's wiki page for this presentation. Click on the attached link to visit the page.
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