November 3rd and 10th Service Learning.

November 3, 2009

This week we met with Sandra Roby the Director of Instructional Technology/Library Media. The purpose of this meeting was to get the program back on track. As I have talked about in previous posts, it has been a bit of a struggle getting this program up and running. A lot of the problems come from poor teacher participation and an unclear definition of what Bentley University Service Learning Students are at the Middle School for. One of the resources that we talked about at this meeting is the Cluster Challenge Wiki.

This wiki services a repository of information about web 2.0 tools for both teachers and students. Since a wiki is never really ever “finished” it is hard to say when this wiki is nearing completion. However, now that people have started inputting information into the wiki it is starting to become an excellent source of information about Web 2.0. In the following weeks we will assign each of our students a web 2.0 tool and have them add to the wiki. A key factor to web 2.0 is collaboration and by getting the Bentley students in my program to participate in the wiki, it will give them a better understanding of what web 2.0 is. My students have also created their own Blog and posted some of the tutorials and work that they have done to it. These will serve as presentations for the students at the middle school. Another one of me students created a short presentation to give to the class he works with because the teachers want Bentley students to inform the middle school students about web 2.0 tools to use for their Ancient Rome course projects.

The tutorial i have been working on is a step by step walk through of how to create a blog using blogger. You can view this Here. Another class is using a home building program. Through this program the students create a house from the ground up and then try to sell it. For their final "auction," we are suggesting they use Voicethread. By using this tool, students can upload pictures of their home along with information and then other students can leave their bids for the home around the picture. This is both interactive and fun for the students.

Summary of Service Learning as of October 26th 2009

Things have been a bit slow while getting the Cluster Challenge Program up and running. A big part of the success of Service Learning is communication with your community partners. Unfortunately, communication hasn’t been the best and in the beginning visits to the high school, we basically had nothing to do in relation to web 2.0. Now that the channels of communication have finally been established, real improvements in the program have been taking place.

On our first visit to Kennedy High School, we were presented, along with the middle school students, the course project that we would be assisting on. Before the next visit to the High School, my co-project manager and I taught our Bentley Students about Web 2.0 and gave them examples of things that are web 2.0 such as blogs and wikis. After we instructed them on how to use a variety of these applications, we went to the high school. During this visit we worked with the middle school students and helped them find ways of implementing web 2.0 tools in their projects. For example, instead of making a diary on old fashioned paper they could use a blog, or instead of making a poster board they could use Glogster (web 2.0 application for creating digital posters).

To help the middle school students learn how to use blogs, I created a step by step guide of how to create a blog and make posts to it. The teachers will use this tutorial as a guide for them, and also for their students. Another project that two of my students is working on is creating a video tutorial with voiceovers to inform and illustrate how to use Glogster for the teachers and students.