Computer Teacher, Teach Thy Self!

I actually started to build a Del.icio.us account for my students! Right now this will just be an assignment on “Tagging“.  I may start with having the students access technorati first to see how certain blogs may contain Tags that they are interested in. Next, we will move on to del.icio.us where the kids will access the account I made for them “VHScompapps”. Once we go over “tagging” in general I am going to have the kids tag content by the following criteria:

1.  Actual subject tagging- for example: Internet, Student_blogs, Computer_history

2.  class period- P_C (for period C)

3.  Student Name- “Janie” So a tag entered by Janie in Period C will give credit to her, her class, and still have relevant tags like Computer_History.  The best way for students to get credit for their tagging would be to have them create del.icio.us accounts, and adding them to the “VMHScompapps network”

a.  Once a student is part of the VMHScomapps network they can alway tag their bookmarks with for:VMHScompapps/period_c this way the link is now saved for the student and for the class

This is totally in the idea process and I don’t even know if it will work, but I am hoping to have the principals and other teachers judge for the class that containes the best content, consistant tagging, and annotations. Please, any feedback or suggestions are welcome!

 One of my most recent assignments has to do with hyperlinking text in a document. I am doing this to build my students blogging skills before we actually start blogging. The assignement is to use wikipedia to answer some of the following questions and then to hyperlink a word back to the page the answer was found on.  Surprisingly, many of my High School kids have never hyperlinked at all.

The assignment starts with us finding the first answer together and a brief overview of wikipedia and hyperlinking back it . The overview is no where near doing justice to wikipedia, but it does motivate them to learn more. From this point the class continues to respond to the questions and provide a link per question.

To turn in the assignement I have created a thinkfree for the class with a common username.  The major problem with this is that the integrity of the assignment is questionable.  Any student can then download another’s assignment, change the name and the student name and upload it as theirs.  I would never us this for important projects that I would want secure.  I would love feedback on how to make this activity better!

thanks!