Media and social network experiment

Some may remember the experiment I was running with a colleague and his class a couple of months ago. We were looking at revamping a class with the use of media and social networking. My colleague is an experienced educator who hasn’t had a great deal of time for technology use in his classroom. Back in April this year we had a lengthy conversation about the way I was using media in my classroom as well as social networking. He was intrigued to see how this worked and wanted to know if it could be done in his Study of Religion Class. SOR is a high school subject that is almost like an introduction to philosophy for high school students. They look at some great content from world view and different world religions.

The SOR students were studying a term of work on Ethicial issues in which they normally would learn about 5 key topics and discuss. Prior to this they had already studied theoretical ethics, much of which was to be applied to this study. The project concept was simple… Our aim was for students in groups to engage deeply into one ethical issue and then report back to the class what they discovered. With that aim in mind we set out to create some spaces for the students to express their findings and really engage in the topics. First up, I created a blog for each group where they were to blog and podcast about the issue. Each student was given a piece of stimulus material to help them think of an ethical issue they could report on. Each group then made a decision on the issue they would research and began looking for information. The second element of this was to allow the students to connect not only with each other and their teachers, but “real world experts” who could help them with their research and developing ideas. This was done over their blog, as well as a secure facebook group. The students all joined a facebook group where we could discuss the issues along with invite opinion from academic experts in relevant fields.

The project was a great success…. No that does not mean it all went perfectly according to plan. Some things worked great, some were a complete disaster. The great success was the outcomes (mostly positive) for all those involved. The potential of this project and where it can lead into the future also must be counted as a great success. Students were engaged and once pushed in the right direction achieved some great work. The assessment at the end of the unit didn’t change from the usual in class essay, but did show some great improvement by many students who normally struggle with the course content.

I will try and reflect more on this project as time permits…. However, I would like to leave you with one of the podcasts the students created after choosing the chocolate slave trade. Their stimulus material was Dr Zeus’ Horton here’s a who…. Where the repeated line is “A person is a person no matter how small.”

This podcast was a response to the movie Blood Diamond…

This podcast raised some thoughts around the issues of Genetic Engineering…

For More podcasts have a look at the students blogs…
http://www.ecsitemedia.com/sor (links on that page to each group)