Instead of a face-to-face class, we had an online midterm course reflection assignment in which students were asked to answer the following questions for each week of the seven weeks we have had in the course thus far:
1. What did I learn?
2. What did I do?
3. How did I feel about what I learned and what I did?
Students had a lot of Web 2.0 tools to choose from. They could do a blog, a loggel, a series of 7 vokis, a moviemaker video, a toondoo, a Photostory 3 digital story, or use jing.com to capture their stories.
Most students chose to do vokis and blogs. I had outstanding submissions from the majority of the students. I would like to showcase a few here and on the sidebar as loggel won't let you embed.
Here is Tom's Toondoo.
Tim and Rolando did an awesome job on their loggels. For those of you who don't know what a loggel is it's like diary entries on a timeline. They are often used for travel logs. I thought that loggels would be a great way to capture our journeys as writers. I haven't experimented with this Web 2.0 tool which allows people to comment on your entries. You can embed videos and photos in addition to text. The only disadvantage to loggels is not being able to embed the code into a blog. Here are the links.
Tim's loggel: http://www.loggel.com/lifelogs/timilne/Diary--Midterm-Reflection/1373
Rolando's loggel:http://www.loggel.com/lifelogs/rlopez/Diary--Midterm-Assignment/1378
The voki submissions were also good. Ryan's series of vokis were very creative. He not only chose different characters but he used different voices. He did his Borat voki for Week 2 of the course.
One student took the time (from noon to 5 p.m.) to make a moviemaker clip. I asked him to submit it to YouTube so that he can get an embed code and I can add it here on my blog.
The one thing I would structure more on this midterm reflection is have the students tie the midterm objectives more directly to their discussion. I felt that a lot of the students talked about the readings and didn't connect the objective of the lesson to the discussion. Some made the connections between the essays using the constructive approach, but most just talked about the readings and how they felt about the readings. Even though the midterm objective document was in the lesson folder, I have a feeling that most students didn't look at it when they did their course reflections.
I need to work on this more, particularly in the online portion of the class. I need to constantly remind them to make those connections to the concepts.
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Hi Sheila,
ReplyDeleteSince you're using ToonDoo with your students, we would suggest you also check out our edu-friendly product at www.toondoospaces.com
Do tell us what you think of it.
Meera
ToonDudette from www.toondoo.com
I liked the criteria we had to do for the mid-term assignment because it made me think back on to what I have learned. All the skills to be a better writer and have stronger papers.
ReplyDeleteJennifer Anderson
Vokis...I love watching them every week from Professor SBS. I saw that you stopped posting them the last couple of weeks with what to do's and was like awww..This person did their voki very well done.
ReplyDeleteI love the multimedia affect that we have in this class. It puts composition in a whole new light, and makes it something you are interested in, instead of something you dread.
ReplyDeleteI love how the same concepts can be learned through writing an essay and doing a voki, only one is alot more attention grabbing and keeps me focused on the task at hand than the other does.
i enjoyed the midterm assignment. i liked being able to reflect on everything that I've learned and post it all in a blog. I can always go and look back on it and see what wonderful things i took from comp 2!
ReplyDeleteThis was by far my favorite midterm that I have ever been assigned. Not only was there not a stressful test to study for, but I felt that this creative midterm was much more efficent and useful than a normal midterm. It was nice to think back and recap on all the different activities that took place throughout the class and all the interesting things that I learned. It was also really neat to be able to use a web tool for the first time!
ReplyDeleteVoki is my new obsession! This was the coolest midterm I’ve ever had. Because it was so different I decided to be different and choose the Voki. I’ve always been amused by them. My last comp professor as well you use them to communicate lessons which are very creative and entertaining. I had a lot of difficulties in trying to submit them, but together we make a great team!! This was challenging and interesting, defiantly a lot more fun than another paper.
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