Middle School Students Engaged in Their Learning

In previous posts, I've written how tools such as Google Apps are having a powerful impact on student learning.  To be more specific to those not directly involved with teachers and students, I reached out to several teachers and asked for examples of student transformations.  Though some activities may seem similar to pen and paper, the key idea with these digital projects is that they are shared with an authentic audience and are often an online collaborative effort.  Below are several examples of work being done by students in Ms. Quinson's English classes at Felix Festa Middle School

• Seventh grade students have recently completed their writing of short stories on Google docs.  Quinson also added, "They also typically do their homework as blog posts, in lieu of writers notebooks."  The flexibility is there for students to choose their medium, a significant difference from past years
• Ninth grade honor students (at the middle school) have just finished making mythology presentations, which took various forms:  websites, performance which included original movies as well as songs written and sung in class, and Google presentations (similar to PowerPoint, but allows for up to 50 students to collaborate on the same presentation at one time).  
• The ninth grade honor students have, as Ms. Quinson states it, "attacked the opening lines of The Odyssey in an inquiry-based model, using the laptops and the internet as research tools."

It is my hope that by providing a window into the activities of students in one teacher's class, community members are able to have a sense of the wonderful things that are taking place in our schools.  These examples really aren't about technology, but rather how schools are working to further engage our students and provide creative and purposeful learning opportunities for the students we serve.  

As I continue to regularly contribute to this forum, I wonder a focus such as today's blog is of interest to the community.  Please comment and let me know your (civil) thoughts.