Blendspace Teaching Ideas
Idea #1: Personal Narrative
One of the reasons my co-teacher and I decided to introduce the novel Persepolis using Blendspace is so that students could have background knowledge on this resource if they chose to use it for their final project in this unit. The final project requires students to present, in visual and written forms, the hopes and fears that influence their lives. Since Blendspace allows users to pull videos from YouTube (where a student could upload a skit he/she recorded about his/her hopes and fears), images (ones that are representative of the student's hopes and/or fears), Word documents, and much more, the students could create an electronic collage for their presentation.
Idea #2: Review Material
Option A:
With our sophomores, we used Blendspace to introduce background material for a novel. However, Blendspace would work equally as well for a unit review. In fact, what I plan to do with Blendspace before midterms is create a review of the vocabulary words and texts from semester one. The final tile of the lesson will include either a Googledoc or a Googleform that students must complete before the exam.
Option B:
To make this activity useful before an in-class review, I could create a Googleform that is entirely multiple choice, true/false, and matching. That way, I can use Flubaroo to grade these forms. (If I used short answer, Flubaroo would not be able to grade it the way I want it to be graded.) Using this data, I can determine which words, terms, and texts we need to review in more detail before the midterm exam.
Option C:
If I wanted to create more student responsibility, I could ask groups of students to use Blendspace to create a review for different sections of the midterm. For example, one group could create a Blendspace about Animal Farm, another could create a Blendspace lesson for Persepolis, and another could create a Blendspace lesson about vocabulary terms. They could post these reviews to Edmodo for their classmates to access before the midterm.
With our sophomores, we used Blendspace to introduce background material for a novel. However, Blendspace would work equally as well for a unit review. In fact, what I plan to do with Blendspace before midterms is create a review of the vocabulary words and texts from semester one. The final tile of the lesson will include either a Googledoc or a Googleform that students must complete before the exam.
Option B:
To make this activity useful before an in-class review, I could create a Googleform that is entirely multiple choice, true/false, and matching. That way, I can use Flubaroo to grade these forms. (If I used short answer, Flubaroo would not be able to grade it the way I want it to be graded.) Using this data, I can determine which words, terms, and texts we need to review in more detail before the midterm exam.
Option C:
If I wanted to create more student responsibility, I could ask groups of students to use Blendspace to create a review for different sections of the midterm. For example, one group could create a Blendspace about Animal Farm, another could create a Blendspace lesson for Persepolis, and another could create a Blendspace lesson about vocabulary terms. They could post these reviews to Edmodo for their classmates to access before the midterm.