Giving the students more credit

Last week, I realized just how eager students are to learn and appropriately use technology.

First, a student of ours sent an Animoto get-well video to the other teacher on my team, who had been out sick for a few days.  This was amazing to me, as I was so excited to learn about Animoto and teach students about it. Little did I know, many of them already know about it and were using it proficiently!!

Second, I showed my math classes a "who wants to be a millionaire" game that was great to review material.  I actually linked the them to the site by creating a sharetabs page, which was really helpful.  However, if I had to do it again, I would rethink what I named my sharetabs page because I chose sharetabs.com/?spak, and once you create a page, (unless I'm missing something) you cannot go back to edit or add links.
That being said, I was also pleasantly surprised to recognize that at least 5 students logged back onto the sharetabs to access the game I posted after class was over.  (You are able to see how many times a page has been viewed)

Finally, I gave my students a writing assignment where they were required to write about their idea of a utopia, and several students opted to create videos for "extra credit." Although I wasn't planning on offering extra credit, I was so excited about the intrinsic motivation for learning/creativity/use of technology, I decided to encourage the projects and was very pleased with the results.

So, in summary, the terrific realization of the week is that I really should include my students in more discussions and activities using technology.  Although some of them have demonstrated otherwise, the majority of them are eager to learn, and just as ready to explore the the web 2.0 tools as I am.