Reflection on 629Final Project

Our final project for LIS629 was a collaborative effort to build an online educational site (ours was a wiki designed for students in grades 3-5 on myths and fables. We included the following elements in our project: digital story telling (using the online programs, Photo Story & Xtranormal); links to other sites about fables & myths, as well as links to individual stories to read, watch & listen to; a Voicethread (for comments); a Community Walk, to illustrate the country of origin of many myths & fables; a talking flower to welcome visitors into the wiki; and a catalog that included a list of myths & fable titles suggested for students in our audience & created from our combined lists in our LibraryThing accounts. Our goal was to offer an interactive, educational site for kids to learn about the basic elements of myths and fables, find out more about them in a combination of links to online stories to read, as well as video animations to watch and enjoy; and finally, to demonstrate how students can create their own original myth or fable as a digital story, using 21st century literacy learning skills.

After our initial meeting in class to create our project proposal, our main collaborative communications were by email and chat. This was sometimes hard for me to get used to but it worked out fine in the end. After the initial set-up of the wiki, a basic home page structure, and an about us section, we each worked on our own pages & posted them as they were ready. Of course, we also did many edits on lots of details up until the final day of submission. I found that my years of experience working with kids & my writing skills were put to good use but on the other hand, I had to read & re-read the help portion of a number of online programs until I could use them properly. The project was a collaborative effort where both team members contributed to the final, finished product which I think turned out to be such a worthwhile endeavor. I think both of us learned so much & together we created an authentic learning experience for students to enjoy and hopefully inspire them to create their own stories, using the examples we presented as a springboard for their own creative ideas in their own web 2.0 smack down! I have always enjoyed presenting concepts to students & then standing back to watch them "mix things up" in a creative way.

I look forward to following all of your blogs & hope to hear from some of you as well. Here is a link to our wiki on MythsandFables.