LJW23Things

On the K12 Online Conference 2009 site, I viewed a session titled “Using Web 2.0 Tools to Teach ‘The Outsiders.’”  I chose to view this session because The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton is one of the novels we have our students read in 7th grade.  Last year, our librarian created a WebQuest for our students to learn about the author, but I would like to include more Web 2.0 tools in the teaching of the book this coming school year. 

In this session, the presenter demonstrates how he used Stupeflix, Google Maps, and Google Streetview as he taught the book to his students.  Using Stupeflix (similar to Animoto), he had his students create slideshows of images that would represent what greasers, the social gang a group of the characters were involved in, would have looked like.

In the book, two of the greasers were involved in a murder in self-defense and ran away.  The presenter had his students look at a map on Google Maps and find a town that the characters could have run away to in one night.  He then had them switch to Google Streetview and look at what the rout would have actually looked like.  He had the students take notes of what they would have seen along the way.  The students then wrote a story from of the characters point of view describing the run away experience.  The presenter was working with some reluctant learners who ended up writing much more in response to their prompt because they were able to use the Google tools to see what the characters in the book would have seen.

I will definitely use these ideas to teach The Outsiders and other stories/books this coming school year.  My students love looking at Google Maps and Streetview but I had not thought of  a way to incorporate the maps into a lesson.  This is a great idea!

I do like the online anytime delivery style of professional development.  It allows teachers to see just the presentations we want to see instead of being stuck in a presentation that you don’t like.  I have been to several teaching conferences where you choose what sessions to attend based on titles and maybe a brief one sentence description and then end up disappointed because the session was not what you had hoped.  Online sessions give you the freedom to close the session if you start watching and realize it’s not what you expected.  Plus sites like K12 Online Conference are free.  The conferences that teachers are often sent to are so expensive and there’s no guarantee the info will prove to be useful in the classroom.