Branching Out

I recently attempted to write my first article for publishing. It was for Techlearning's E-zine and it was about using Web 2.0 tools to enhance student motivation and creativity. I started knowingly using Web 2.0 tools about 6 months ago and immediately saw some of the possibilities, so I played all summer trying to get a feel for how to implement into my courses. So, the beginning of the year comes around, I got a handful of kids to start using them and then the opportunity for the article came up. One month into the school year I didn't have too many student samples that I felt comfortable publishing and wouldn't you know it, once I submitted the final version of the article to the editor, I got A LOT of student samples turned in. Oh well, hopefully it gets published and then I can build from there, if not, I can try again later with some better examples. Nevertheless, I'm completely stoked with what I am seeing and new ideas are popping up everyday.

This week Im going to work with some students to set up a wiki that hosts student samples for online assignments in each of my courses. The student volunteers will run the wiki and post the good, and really bad, examples I send their way. A student ran wiki with student samples for students to use as models. Cool.