What post has gotten the most views and comments on my blog and continues to be a traffic-generator over 15 months later?
Definitely my post on the Gatsby Facebook project, which is one of the reasons I started posting more about teaching, and also shows the incredible interest teachers have in teaching with technology and especially Facebook.
It’s been really wonderful to see such enthusiasm and to send documents out to teachers across the country. The project’s genesis was in a lesson plan I found online, and then I worked on turning it into a project with our tech coordinator. I posted about it here, then we presented it to various interested parties and then wrote an article about it and other projects.
The most common question teachers always have for me about this project is about assignment sheets and rubrics for Facebook projects. I’m posting the documents here, and anyone reading has permission to use them to create a version of the project for their own classes. I’m not entirely thrilled with my rubric–these days I would probably try Rubistar and make sure it was available to students at the beginning of the project. But it may serve as a good jumping-off point for other teachers, and thus I am including it.
If you are interested in implementing this or a version of this project, you’re welcome to read these blog entries and download the documents (linked above), but also, it should really be helpful to read the article on digital scaffolding we wrote, which gives a great overview of the project and both times I used it in a class, with information about the students’ reactions, what I would change, and why I think the project was so useful. If you’re looking to have students create just Facebook profile for characters, you might be interested in the Profile Publisher tool, which is printable also.
All that I ask is that if you do end up using what I’ve done to inform or inspire your own project, PLEASE let me know how it goes! Nothing has inspired me more as a teacher than what I have learned from other teachers, and I would be honored to think I have served the same function for others.
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Thanks! I could seeing doing something like this on people in history.
LSM, one of our 8th grade teachers did something similar with Romans, and I think it was a success! It would work out really well for a “Founding Fathers Facebook” kind of thing too–imagine what Jefferson and Hamilton would write on each others’ walls!!
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Hi,
I teach AP English Language and Composition in an AP American Civilization course. I teach with an AP US History teacher. We see the kids each day for an hour and a half. We have between 45-60 kids in each class. I was looking at your Gatsby Facebook idea and I am intrigued. I am always looking for fresh ways to engage the students. Upon reading some of your notes on the blog, I saw that you have about 9 students…do you think I can actually do this with a class of 45-60? Any comments you have would be welcome.
Thank you for your time,
Claire