Thing #6

On Seomoz's website, which gave awards to many Web 2.0 tools, I found one that could be particularly useful for teachers. This website is called esnips.com. esnips.com is a site that gives you 5gb of free space to upload just about anything: files, folders, pictures, words, and just about any other digital file you can imagine. Now, why would this be useful for educators?

Well, as I discussed in my last post, like it or not the world is changing and educators must keep up. esnips. com seems like a great place to start. As a teacher, you could make a page about, say, Romeo and Juliet. First, you could upload the entire play as a word document (it is not copyrighted anymore), in case some of your students misplace their book (not that this would ever happen :) ). Next, you could upload a study guide that you have prepared to help them out along the way. Then, you could upload some worksheets for them to fill out. Next, you could upload some sample exam questions. Then, you could share some "safe" links to other resources on Romeo and Juliet. Then, you could upload a video of the school's drama club performing scenes from the play, or upload scenes from a professional production (provided that you have obtained permission). Then, perhaps you could find some taped professional lectures on Romeo and Juliet that were presented at a local college that you could upload for students to consider. The list goes on and on and on...

Such a page would be a natural way for kids to learn about Romeo and Juliet, as they probably spend much of their time navigating the web, following links, and watching videos anyways. By presenting information in such a format, perhaps it will be a more engaging experience than just listening to the teacher lecture. In short, the opportunities for a teacher to use esnips.com are limited only by his or her imagination and ambition. How about you? Would you take the time and effort to construct such a resource for your students to use? (Clearly, this is not something that could be accomplished during a one-hour planning period...)