Schoology Media Folders across subjects

By Kim Miklusak

This is a follow-up to Linda Ashida's post about Using Videos to Transform Learning

This week my students worked with Schoology's media folders for the first time.  The students have watched and annotated Martin Luther King Jr.'s "Other Ameica" speech and then read and annotated Arnold Kling's "Libertarianism and Poverty" article.  We did other activities with both texts; the culminating project was to put the authors in conversation with each other.  What would MLK agree/disagree/qualify with Kling or vice versa?  Instead of doing this as a written paragraph as we had done in the past for similar assignments, the students recorded themselves presenting their argument using their Camera Roll.  They then posted the video in a media folder in Schoology.  Finally, their partner watched the video and responded in the comments--first paraphrasing the argument and then evaluating it.

I was originally inspired by this when I went to observe Kirsten Fletcher's AP French students work with media folders to make commercials and practice verb tenses.  I like a few things about media folders: first, the students have an authentic audience.  While I didn't require them to record their faces, the fact that their voices were on there somehow made it more real to them.  They could hear what they would normally write.  I think students revised what they were going to say more times than they would normally have done in their writing!  I also liked that it was completely controlled by them.  I did not have to handle any of the uploading.  This helps students continue to take ownership of their learning.  When they were both done, I was able to go in and give my own feedback to both partners.

I can see many uses for media folders across so many subjects: recording speeches, practicing foreign language, giving presentations, performing science labs/experiments, or even just explaining their thought processes for an article or a math/science problem.  Do you have other suggestions?  Leave them in the comments below!