Collaboration

There are many websites that advertise real-time collaboration facilities that will allow multiple editors to work on a project simultaneously.

I thought it would be a good idea to utilize a collaborative website to have the students practice cooperating.

My first foray into this field was a disaster.

The website I chose to use was Nota.

I instructed the students to form groups of two or three, create accounts at Nota, and then collaboratively produce a poster. In theory, one user creates a new page and then invites editors to join.

About half the invited students were not able to edit the page. They simply received a message that said, "You are not allowed to edit this page." For everyone else, the changes they made to the page did not appear on the other students' screens. For whatever reason, the collaboration mechanism did not function.

I was obliged to abandon the assignment.

Photo by Vurnman.

Moonfruit

The students used a website called Moonfruit to author their own web pages.

Moonfruit has a nice interface, simple yet with many options. The downside is that Moonfruit only allows users to create a single website. For me, this is not problematic, because I prefer to have the students utilize as many different web authoring tools as possible, as opposed to specializing on a single platform.

Our topic was "Protected Territories." There are six categories of protected territories. On their websites, the students created a title page, and then a separate page for each of the six territory types.

Each page includes a description of the territory, plus a video representing the territory.

I did not want the students to embed the YouTube videos directly because anything longer than a dozen seconds is redundant. Therefore, they used a website called TubeChop to shorten the videos. TubeChop allows users to chop a smaller section from anywhere in a YouTube video and then embed the resultant clip. Rather handy, indeed.

Here a few student productions:

Website 1

Website 2

Website 3

Pixton

The students used Pixton to create a comic, set in the era of history that they are studying: either, Ancient Rome or the Industrial Revolution.

The students all had fun with this activity.

Here are two exemplars:



Industrialization:

YouTube Playlists

If you have a YouTube account, then you can create playlists.

To add a video to a playlist, click on the "Playlists" button beneath the video.



I wanted to use a video to introduce the topic of the Industrial Revolution to my students. I found a few good videos, so I grouped them together as a playlist and named it, "Industrial Revolution."

Youtube allows you to adjust the order of the videos and then play all the videos sequentially.



If you have young children, a playlist would be a good way of bookmarking their favourite videos.

YouTube does not allow users to embed their playlists. However, this website, called Embedr, does allow users to create embeddable playlists. Furthermore, Embedr allows users to collect videos from many different websites.

What Are You Doing Wrong?

GoAnimate

GoAnimate is a good site on which to create animations. It is easy to learn and there are many options, props, soundtracks, actions, and so on. The students enjoyed using it. Here is Sam's creation:

GoAnimate.com: Dancing with the stars. by null


Like it? Create your own at GoAnimate.com. It's free and fun!

History Glogs

The students created Glogs in History. Some students are studying Ancient Rome; others are looking at the inventions of the Industrial Revolution.

I am continually endeavouring to teach the students the importance of citing sources. They utilized photos from the Flickr Creative Commons collection. Then, they indicated the author of the photo and included a hyperlink to the photographer's Flickr page.

Enjoy these two examples.