Students reading?

Creativity coupled with Web 2.0 tech is finding a way into our classwork, and changing it. In one of his latest posts (How to get students to find and read 94 articles before the next class) Mike Wesch (Digital Ethnography) proves how fun it is to experiment with this. He devised a method to have students read academic papers and discuss them. Remember cafeteria chats on how difficult it is nowadays to have students read? (Remember how our fathers complained the same thing about us?)

Wesch’s method goes like this:

Each student was required to find 5 articles, read them, and summarize them; uploading their summaries (or the author’s own abstract) into a ZohoCreator form.

All the summaries were instantly available to all the other students, and they all got fed from the database and formatted into a nice Web presentation.

Says Mike Wesch:

By the time of our next class, all 16 students had read 5 articles and been exposed to the main ideas of 94 articles.  This created an amazing foundation for deep conversation.

Wow!

I have a feeling we teachers may sometimes be the bottleneck to our students’ learning. Wesch shows we can change! And students do read!

About Antonio Vantaggiato

Professor, web2.0 enthusiast, and didactic chef.
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2 Responses to Students reading?

  1. Antonio says:

    Orlando, saludos!!! Y feliz 2009!!

    Antonio

  2. orlando says:

    Le envío mis saludos Dr. Vantaggiato,en estos momentos no estoy activo en mi blog y tengo que reparar varias entradas en él.Me encuentro tomando 3 cursos así que concentro en teorías de Archivología.Pero siempre entro tanto a su Blog, como al de Mario Nuñez, dode encuentro artículos muy interesantes sobre educación y conocimiento.
    Sin más:Saludos,gracias y afectos.

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