I love showing off my student’s work! I just do.

This year in my 10th grade World History classes my kids are creating their own World History websites using the Wordpress blogging platform. Wordpress has done a fantastic job making having a website easy, taking web hosting, ftp, css and other necessary, complicated website development concepts out of the hands of users and making it possible for anyone to start blogging in just a few minutes. OR, in the case of my students, Wordpress allows them to post homework assignments, essays, historical blog posts and multimedia presentations in ONE place. And the best part, it’s all free. And in this era of - ummm, like having NO MONEY - free is indeed a good thing.

Greeks celebrate after the Battle of Marathon

My students have so far had several assignments including two multimedia presentations. The presentations were created at various websites who allow users to create online presentations and host on their servers. These websites include Bubbleshare, One True Media, Slideshare, Authorstream to just name a few. (For 50 other ways to create a digital story, see CogDogRoo) What these websites have allowed my students to do is create rich historical media, often narrated by the student, and using embed codes on their own websites LINK to the movies which remains housed on the companies servers. This way, students do not have to worry about having enough space on their free websites to host their own multimedia presentations, which files can get very large. In the world of free website hosting, web space is not a commodity.

So, what does this all mean in plain English, my students have FREE websites which they created in minutes. They write on their websites. They write opinions, research… everything they would ordinarily write on a sheet of paper onto their website and publish for the world to see. They also create multimedia presentations with a partner which are also available on their websites. All is free and easily kept in one place, an online Digital portfolio if you will.

Check out a few of my students websites and presentations below. After watching the movie (especially look for the stop motion movie of the Battle of Thermopylae create using Star Wars action figures) look around at what else they are doing this semester. And if you are interested in learning more about using Wordpress in the classroom or about some of the web 2.0 websites where your students can create some cool multimedia presentations, email me and lets talk. I can’t tell you how proud I am of what the kids are creating and to be honest with you, some of them are really, really good.

Enjoy!

Love is a Battlefield (Click on picture of Imperial  Stormtrooper to view movie. This group also has a good Roman movie)

Jose and Charlie Get Into History! (Click on Aqueducts to view Movie)

House of Lanceton (Nero movie)