I was asked for ideas for technology projects for a couple of social studies classes for end-of-the-year or review projects before the SOLs. Here’s a few possibilities that may be helpful for teachers. The first three are ones that I’ve worked with a lot recently and have had very positive reaction from students and teachers. At the end are links to more web tools for student projects.

1. Glogster

Glogster lets students create a multi-media “poster” that can include images, text, url links, audio and video. Students can add images they find on the web, add a text summary of a unit, or record their own audio narration to go with their poster here are couple of examples:

Here’s a glog on air pollution:

A student’s glog on the Revolutionary War. It shows how images, text boxes, and video clips can be used in a glog.

A “glog” on learning to use Glogster. It includes a nice video of Glogster in a high school science classroom.

Here’s a 15-minute video on creating glogs with students that shows each step from adding images to publishing the glog:

Glogster has free edu accounts that allow teachers to sign up and then invite up to 100 students. Having students create review “glogs” before the exams would allow other students to quickly browse and see videos, images, and key review terms for each topic from the school year. You can use arrows and symbols to show a timeline or cause and effect. In the end, glogster is basically a web2.0 version of your basic “poster” project, but now it can include audio, video, and links to other informative sites.

2. Prezi

Here’s my post on Prezi. Prezi is a zooming presentation tool that allows you to create non-linear presentations. Basically, it’s one big page that can include images, text, video, links, and attached files (pdf, ppts, etc). Prezi then can zoom and jump from item to item on the path that you set, or viewers can move around the prezi as they like.

Here’s a great example from a middle school history teacher on the Arab-Israeli conflict. It’s a great use of a timeline with text and images and movement to capture the viewers interest.

Prezi offers free edu accounts to teachers and students. Select the “Edu Enjoy” account type to create your free Prezi acount. It allows you to set your prezis (or your students’ prezis) as “Private” and provides 500mb of storage to host your prezis online.

3. Animoto

Animoto is a very quick way to create online videos. You can upload photos, images, videos, text, and music and Animoto mixes it all into a 30-second video. Students could pick a review topic or important term and pick a handful of pictures and annotation to go with it and have a video created in under 5 minutes.

Here’s an example that I just created (it literally took less than 2 mintues) with images, video, and music that Animoto already has loaded on their site. To use as a review, I think using more text would be useful, but I just grabbed 10 images and video clips of world travel and set it to some classical music:

Animoto also has educator accounts that allow you to create longer videos and remove the animoto logo from your videos.

Tags: animoto, glogster, prezi