IIC Competition Reflection

After watching all of the finalists' video pitches (which were actually fun to watch I might add), one that stood out to me was the one on teaching persuasive essays using Diigo and Mindmeister. It is true that teaching students to look at persuasive essays critically and outline their own essay is very possible to do using no technology. However, I think one benefit of using Diigo to allow students to look critically at persuasive essays is that they can participate in a larger instructional conversation, commenting on other students' work and gaining more feedback from their peers and teacher. Also, some students may be more visual than others and outlining an essay may be a challenge on paper. Mindmeister allows these students to have a more hands-on experience in outlining, making it more fun and, as a result, encouraging more enthusiasm on the assignment. I think this idea could work very well in an English classroom and break up the monotony of the writing process.

Another video pitch that I enjoyed was the one that set up the "Road to Revolution" class wiki. If I had to pick one that seemed the most useful, this would be it. There are countless pros to this group's idea. It was well-organized, caught students' attention, and offered hundreds of resources to students throughout their unit. Something I really liked was how each day had its own page for students and the teacher, explaining step-by-step instructions of what the students should be doing. The assignment ideas had structure, but also allowed for student creativity. As a student, if I was using a website like this, I believe I would be more excited to do my work and would never question what was expected of me in any assignment. Although this project was designed for a history classroom, I think it could work just as well in many other subjects.