Week 4 Reflections

Most students are not that interested or excited about writing a book report. Kim Blomqvist’s article in Teachthought.com entitled “Instead of A Book Report, My Students ‘Wrote’ A Video” caught my attention right away. She shares how her students were not that interested in writing book reports, so she began her search for a method of book report writing that would spark her students’ interests. She found it when she came across mysimpleshow.com. She still has the students write their book reports first, and then they may create their video.

            The video is created using a four-step process. She has the students write an outline of their book report, and then they begin using the “Summarize literature and movies” template. The templates help the students in precise writing because they are provided word limits in the Draft and Write stages of creating the video. She mentioned how they enjoyed the Visualize step since they got to select illustrations according to their text. They were also provided with the option to upload and combine images. Once they had completed adding the images they moved on to the Finalize step that allowed them to choose a voiceover or use their own voice. They presented their final products to the class, and Blomqvist then had the students publish them on YouTube so that they could share the videos with others outside of their classroom.

            I think that using mysimpleshow.com can make book report writing fun for students. I also think that maybe this tool could also be used to bring compositions to life especially for those students that are not that interested in writing.

            Another article I enjoyed reading was “A Principal Plays Pokemon Go: Lessons Learned So Far” by John Robinson in the21stcenturyprincipal.blogspot.com. In this article, Robinson shares how he was enticed to download the Pokemon Go app due to all the publicity about it and his curiosity to see if there was any educational value to it. He admits that he did not know anything about the game and learned as he went along in the game, and that took him out of his comfort zone. He has now gained knowledge of the Pokemon world and app, and adds that playing the game may be a time waster, but now relates to some of his former students that may have thought the same thing about the course he used to teach.

            I respect him for learning a new popular game that most of his students are playing and sharing the discomfort he felt in the learning process. He ends the article by saying that he is not sure when he will ever use what he has learned. I think that the fact that he plays Pokemon Go is an advantage because that will allow him to connect to his students.