I don’t like to boast in this column, but this semester my Rutgers online MLIS students are working on versions of a project that was developed by our crack (online) educational team, and I am so proud of the first results that I wanted to share them with you. The two-week assignment begins when the students are divided into groups. Group members, who live in different time zones and are bound by some complicated work and family schedules, must work together as a team. Their first job is to determine which form of social networking they will use as they work together on the project. After reading carefully through the Common Core English Language Arts (ELA) standards, and depending on the focus of the class (children, young adult or nonfiction), they then select a topic. Their job is to fill Pinterest boards with annotated pins that explore that subject, geared for a specific grade, in a way that supports the appropriate Common Core standards.
We began this assignment last semester, and are now rolling it out for all of my classes. Speaking as proud papa, I’d like to share the first two with you from a class on “Materials for Children.” The themes were Civil Rights (for a fourth grade class) and Robotics (an eighth grade unit). The second team used the Next Generation Science standards, though they also explored ELA connections. See what you think:
http://www.pinterest.com/lisaolszewski2/boards/ (ignore last board, left from another project)