Curriculum Projects that Integrate
Technology:
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JOURNEY PROJECTS Multimedia reports of trips taken by individuals or groups are one of the most
common ways of having students analyze and describe their experiences.
They all contain text (descriptions of the trip, research results) and
digital images, and may also include sound, video, and QuickTime movies. You can also create hotspots on a map that link to documents about the
places you visited on your journey. This one comes from a website on Alexis
de Tocqueville's America: VIRTUAL MUSEUMS, ARCHIVES, AND ZOOS There are also virtual museums, virtual archives, and virtual zoos--all of which have no basis in physical reality but exist only as websites. This is another popular way to present the results of student research. Virtual museums can be simple, as in this site
where students in the Lakeville/Freetown area of Massachusetts show the
results of their work researching their families: Or they can be complex, with student work added year after
year: This virtual zoo project from the Syracuse area
integrates student research on many aspects of animal life and
habitat: Many virtual archives include an oral history
component, as well as contributions from the community:
VIRTUAL QUILTS Virtual quilts provide a graphical way to organize
the results of student research: PHOTO GALLERIES Collections of photos can be organized like
quilts, as entry points to research or explanations: Collections of objects can be organized in the
same way: SEMANTIC MAPS Semantic maps, or concept maps, can be also be
used to organize links to student research: TIMELINES Student-researched timelines can also be
hyperlinked. Although these two are very elaborate, timelines can be
powerful even when simple. The first of these was created by a group of
students as part of the ThinkQuest project; the second was professionally
created by PBS to accompany a TV program: THEN AND NOW PROJECTS Many projects compare the past with the present.
This one uses the Library of Congress American Memory Collection to
compare transportation systems at the turn of the century with those of
today: The WWW is a great place to get images that can be
built into then and now projects: FICTION VERSUS REALITY PROJECTS In some projects, students are asked to compare
fiction with reality. Both of these take the form of webquests: ROLE-BASED PROJECTS Many projects have students take on roles. This is
a popular way to structure web research, as in these two projects which
have the students research a country: The following project, in which the students
produce work in the style of the artist they have researched, could be
adapted to many other kinds of artist: In some role-based projects, groups of students
compete with each other: MORE
COMPLEX GROUP WORK: In many project-based curriculum, students work in groups. The work can be divided in several ways:
In this research project, organized as a webquest,
students slice the subject twice: each group looks at a different country
and each looks at a different aspect of development: STARTING SMALL: USING EXTENDED CASE STUDIES TO UNCOVER A SUBJECT A single document or event can provide the
starting point for extended research projects. This one uses a famous
speech as the entry point into a study of a social movement: DBQs are extended case studies turned upside down:
rather using a document or event as the starting point for research, the
documents are used to frame the organization of knowledge. The web
contains a wealth of documents that can be used in DBQs: SEARCHABLE DATABASES Web-based databases can be a powerful tool for
making images or data accessible. Most web database projects are managed
by large institutions, but small databases can be created fairly easily
using FileMakerPro: |