Taking to it like ducks to water...

Having found the toondoo site over the last holidays and highlighting it on our school blog and wiki, I was surprised to see that none of the students really took that as a hint to have some fun and take up the challenge.

I suppose like most things, it is not until someone sits you down and shows you that you feel you can take the leap out of the comfort zone??? Or maybe they just didnt really think I made the cartoon on a free website... who knows...

Last week I gave my students two lessons to "take action" and bring attention to an abuse of Human Rights. So I let them decide which way they felt comfortable bringing attention and which Human Right abuse they would choose (old or present).

(Just as an aside - most choose to bring attention to the Holocaust - which goes to show that kids still feel like it is relevant to them in some way)

So groups decided on the following...
- Make a poster
- Blog
- Make a cartoon
- Make a powerpoint presentation
- Make a skit
- Make a song/rap/poem thingy!!!


At first the only ones that was online was the powerpoint and the blog - although the powerpoint people did not know that there powerpoint would end up in their blogs. I did not want to promise something I had not tried at school - despite being able to do it at home!

Yaaa I was so excited to see that slideshare was not blocked at school, and it took just minutes for the kids to email me their document and then upload it to slideshare, get the code and then embed into their blogs and then have me approve their blogs. I was jumping out of my chair with excitment as this just all fell into place!! Click here to see their first attempt.

So often the kids decide to make a powerpoint presentation to communicate their information, but at the end of the day - who are they communicating to? With this tool and the help of a blog, they now have another medium to communicate with inside their blog, which is to a worldwide audience.

The blog option was an obvious one and was short and sweet and made its point - no surprises there.

The other interesting group was the cartoon group. They were a bunch of quite impressive artists and so looked foward to showing off their skills, however I knew they did not have long to do this and suggested that they make the cartoon on the computer.........

I was given screwed up noses - which I was shocked at but then thought they were probably thinking I meant using word and clipart!!! BORING and hard to do.

Little did they know I meant Toondoo. Reluctantly they let me show them what I really meant and how simple it was to use (which I did for literally one minute). Within two minutes they were creating their impression of the Holocaust. Now I have a bunch of students who are creating cartoons online as if it were second nature to them. Click here to see the cartoon in a student blog. (the same cartoon is below)

I guess my point is that, all this kind of thing is second nature to our students - the problem is, is that it is not second nature to us teachers because we have not been brought up with it and we think that it is going to be hard to teach them how to use something.

The thing is, our students can actually problem solve and they are not afraid to play around until they get what they want out of something. It is rare for me these days to take my kids to the computer rooms and have a lesson teaching them "how to do..."

Now I teach two/three people and simply let the knowledge spread around those who have not already worked it out by playing with it. This spreads faster than an email around the world and much faster than I could have taught the whole class. What's more, students' communication skills and knowledge are being reinforced through this process.

My next project with my class is creating a collaborative wiki with what we are learning about the Treaty of Waitangi. We should have this finished by the end of term 2 - so keep an eye on this one :)
http://treatyortrick.wikispaces.com/