Final Project on Famous Iowans

Well we the Cookie Cutters, presented our final project today. Over the past week we worked with Web 2.0 Tools, Google Docs, Second Life, Podcasts, and Digital Video making. I have talked about this in previous bloggs. However I'd like to share my reflection on how our presentation went. We worked very well as a team, in fact I think our collaboration was superior. We each worked on the content by choosing famous Iowans and creating a page on our website specifically for them. We each took the time to find links that were fourth grade friendly and posted them on the individuals page. Then we found pictures of each Iowan and posted them on their corresponding pages. We each had a role in our podcast and had a lot of fun writing the script for interviewing Grant Wood. When it came to making the moving we worked together in finding pictures, adding music, and recording voice. Then we worked on editing our podcast and vodcast. This took a little bit but Gabe and Sara figured it out while I created rubrics for our students.

The best part was presenting to our fellow classmates. They seemed to be engaged as we made our presentation and shared why we chose to focus on Iowa History or more specifically Iowa History. They were given time during our presentation to do part of my fourth graders assignment. This was to find a famous Iowan that they were the most like or had the most connections with and write down at least 3 things they had in common with that individual. We also were able to ask their opinions on alternative assessment and what they might suggest adding to the lesson to allow for student customization. This would also allow for more alternative assessments to be present. My friend Lisa suggested Glogster as another way to have students present their work. I enjoyed their ideas and liked hearing how they could modify our lesson and apply it to their own classroom settings.