I could not keep the news to myself so I shared what was written, and who shared it with the students of the class the post involved. The next ten to fifteen was a remarkable exercise in listening to students about what they want versus what they get.
I have been encouraged in the past by work being done by other teachers. The work that SCIL is doing to publish students work with a global outreach is the number one thing in the back of my mind today because my students actually ASKED if they could publish their work publicly. They wanted to know if what they're doing is valuable to others. Seeing the public response to my work made them wonder if the mark that they were getting for some class assignment was as important as the mark they are leaving behind.
In a christian institution such as the one I teach in, the value of outreach (evangelism) is certainly forefront in what we do, and yet we so rarely value our students work by saying "This is worthy of publication". Even if it is just short snippets, digital summaries, or brief vlogs it is becoming so very apparent that students are hoping their work is looked at not only for an evaluation of common learning outcomes, but for the value it has in the growing database of global knowledge, world-view, and editorial.
If I can use the world-wide-web as a place to promote strong educational practice, and curate my own sense of what counts as "good work" then I can model the practice for a growing number of students who would like to do the same.
The video embedded here is a brief example of that digital curation. It can be done so quickly and easily now-a-days. Imagine this in the hands of students who want to show what they are most proud of...
The app used to create and upload the video is Videolicious. It's free, very simple to use. The only drawback is the length of video is restricted to 50 seconds. I appreciate brevity, but sometimes it's a little restrictive.
