What Does This Section Cover?
1. Ways to connect your students to the real world
2. Ways to connect their work to the real world
2. Ways to connect their work to the real world
Connecting Your StudentsThis all comes down to what do we do all it all for? Why are we teaching students what we are teaching? In reality, it's all about making them successful in the real world, so why not do it now! High School students can do amazing things when given the opportunity.
Real World Ideas
Skype / Hangouts / Others:
It's amazing to think that elementary teachers are using video conferencing more than high school teachers. You can see them Skyping with other classes and authors all the time, so why aren't high school classrooms doing this? You could connect with experts in the field and really bring that real world connection home. If you don't know any, you could use the Skype in the Classroom site which can be found here, or you can reach out to them on social media.
Social Media
Social Media can be an amazing tool when you really use it correctly. It can be a great tool to connect your class to experts and others across the world. Twitter is great because you know when you reach out it is usually that person responding, but it can be effective with other social media platforms too. If you want to see a teacher who is using the power of twitter well, you can see it here.
Doing Something That Effects Others
High school students can do a host of things that affect others if given the opportunity to. They can start businesses, non-profits, or simply help solve community problems. Think of it.... they help others and the lesson sticks!
Some Examples |
Connecting Their WorkGiving your students a real world audience can be an important step in their development. It gives them the opportunity for real world feedback and they can experience the new world media. It builds future skills!
Ways for Students to Display Work for an Audience
A Class Website
A class website can be a fantastic way to display student work. The best part about it is that it will take all forms of digital media allowing for almost any creation project to be posted. You can then use it as an area for peer review or for review from an authentic audience. You could even give your student's responsibility for creating the site and giving it a theme. You can find a great example here.
A Tool for Websites: Weebly
Yep, it appears in this section too. Weebly is an easy way for students and teachers to build and deliver a class site. You can even give students a username and password and allow them to build the site.
A Class Corkboard
If you don't want to go all in on a website yet, there are online cork boards that allow the easy posting of student projects. All students have to do is go to the cork board, click on it, and post. You could then bring the audience through the corkboard link
A Tool for Cork Boards: Padlet
Padlet is an incredibly easy tool to do an online corkboard. All you have to do is create the board and students log in with a QR code. The one downside to it is it does struggle a bit with video in the free version. You may have to take the videos to Youtube, and then add them through a link.
A Video Channel
A video channel can be a great way to display student video work. The nice thing about teaching high school is that this becomes much more of an option, although it is still suggested that you get student permission forms. You can do this with a host of services, but the obvious one is listed below.
A Tool for Video Channel: Youtube
A Youtube Channel can be a great way for students to show their work to the world. It allows 24-7 access, and you never know who will come upon their video if it has some quality to it. You can also take the channel to unlisted if you are worried about privacy issues. If you want a good example of a class Youtube channel that is a bit of everything click here.
Community Day or Presentations
Bringing the community in and letting them actually view and evaluate project presentations can be an incredibly powerful real world experience. There are tons of ways to do it, you just have to find the way that fits for you. One school's answer is by having a senior project that has community members come in and judge. You can find out more here, and you could easily do this on a smaller class level scale.
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