Timelines via Prezi

I've seen people do amazing things with prezi.com and thought there would be a way to make a timeline using it, but in the end I decided to leave it up to the students. I provided them with information on four Arab/Israeli conflicts and asked them to summarize the information, decide the best choice of action given the circumstances, and add a picture from Google. The students got to decide the template they wanted to use and design the rest however they wanted to. Some students ran with this freedom, but others struggled and wanted me to confirm what they were doing was correct constantly. In terms of using the program, many were able to play with it comfortably while others were confused or frustrated at it not doing what they wanted it to do.I was surprised by the students that became leaders in the classroom and disappointed in the students that continue to think they can get away with doing things they knew to be wrong.

I have a spreadsheet set up to put all students name, period, and link to their presentations, but it is accessible to every student to edit. I did this not only to make it easy to grade, but also because I wanted students to know other people could access their presentations. I feel it is important to open the audience to make students feel more inclined to do better work. I told the students if anyone messed with other students' work in any way they would receive a zero. They are also aware that this is not the place to goof around. Unfortunately one student wrote "Hi, how are you" in the spreadsheet, quickly deleting it, and thinking he got away with it. After looking through the revision history I had a talk with him and asked him flat out "Did you think what you were doing was wrong before you did it?" and he admitted yes, but thought it would be funny. As consequences go, he lost the laptop for a week and will instead get a paper timeline to complete as did the other five who are without laptops right now due to consequences. I think students are realizing that it is serious and not fun to be the only one without technology. "Tech down, eyes up" is also working really well to allow me to be in the front explaining something and then letting students loose and watching from the back.

There are many students that are willing to help other students and then are eager to get back to work because they are engaged in the task. I was even thanked by a student for showing them tools within Drive because they have an old computer with a lot of problems and had to write a research paper,but Drive took so much stress off them knowing that their work was saved and they didn't have to start over. I'm so happy to be able to show students these tools to make things easier for them.