She presented me with an idea of what she’d like to do with students in regards to social studies. She is going to assign students an important figure in Native American history and they will need to “become” this person. In the activity, the student will need to gather as much information about the individual as possible (using a wiki in moodle to store and organize their research) and then begin to write in a blog (mahara) as if they were the person possibly reflecting on current situations or just describing what life would be like as a daily journal reflecting on diet, weather, living conditions, etc. with the mindset of the person they are researching. In essence they will be creating a “profile” (mahara view) for the person they are assigned with photos, text, video, and blog. Then to mix it up, I believe the teacher is going to make the students interact with eachother to debate topics as their characters or place these characters in different time periods to see what the students think they would do and how they would react.
It is a great use of technology involving Moodle and Mahara.
More Info on how I see it working in our district
I am pretty excited to be able to help this teacher out as this will be our first use of Mahara by a teacher. The results and finished projects should be nearing completion by November before Thanksgiving which the students will all share their projects.