Barbara, Dean and I have been having a blast sharing student projects with teachers on our Knowledge Sharing webinars and various other podcasts like the recent Classroom 2.0 podcast. Since student binders are a real interest during these podcasts, it occurred to us that we should make a top 10 list of some great example binders that students have created for their classroom projects.
As the year progresses we have been seeing some really creative uses of binders leveraging other web 2.0 applications to make some incredibly compelling projects.
Here is a list of top 10 binder projects :
1. Trip to India:
Remember those trip projects we used to do in elementary school and the only resource we had were Michelin Guide books and sending letters to the embassy or state tourist office. Here is a student’s trip binder where they use the internet to figure out their airfare, hotel, restaurants, sight-seeing tours and budget. Just as they would if they had to plan a trip on their own.
2. 20th Century Decades Project:
Ok – we have to admit – we break our own rules here and show you two examples for an English project that covers an analysis of the 1940’s through the 1990’s. It is a great project that gets the students to conduct research on different aspects of social culture – like music, literature, film, politics, etc. We picked these two on the 50’s to show the different ways in which students interpret the same time period and the different styles in which they can express themselves.
For example, one student describes the 50’s as a time of denial and the other as a time of freedom.
3. What would you do? – Group Survey Project:
This is an example of a group project where 5 students are assigned to work together on a single project collaborating on a single binder. The project revolves around issues going on at their high school and they have to state the problem, come up with survey questions, conduct interviews, display results and analyze the results. Although the project is not yet complete, you can view how far the students have gone in their binder. I would imagine there will be a paper on the concluding results for this project. There were many great topics such as drug use, student parking lot issues, and food prices. Below is one on school gossip.
If you want to see more on this topic – here is the shelf link for ‘what would you do?’ binders:
http://tiny.cc/0w5d1
4. Mythology Project:
Here is a student binder project (still in the works) looking at the role of mythology and interpreting it into today’s social figures and icons. This student is taking each mythological character and comparing it to a celebrity of today. The student has to understand the role and meaning for each mythological character and does that by interpreting social characters that we know of in today’s society. The Antinuous tab is a favorite!
5. 3rd Grade Forms binder:
3rd graders learned how to create forms in google docs and learn about the cycles in life for their science project. This student binder reflects each groups ‘cycle’ quiz. It was impressive to see 3rd graders learning how to create forms in google docs, but it was also nice to see them learn a subject by posing the questions and collating the results in class.
6. Breaking down a recipe binder:
Students in this class have taken a recipe and broken it down into meaningful steps using the tabs and subtabs in the binder. It is a great example of how students can read instructions and then be able to translate it into their own steps for other people to follow. Here is one of our favorites:
7. Senior Project Binder:
This is an example where a student used livebinder as an eportfolio of her essays, resume and projects that she has done for the year.
8. Les Miserables project:
Interpreting the story Les Miserables is a pretty ambitious project – here the student uses metaphors in music and images to help them with their interpretation of the story.
9. History Hunt in the Bronx – group project:
Another group project where students find places of religious practice in their neighborhood and document their finds. Great project for getting the kids outside and exploring and understanding their neighborhood.
10. Senior End of the Year project:
This is a little different than the previous eportfolio binder – it reflects a more personal reflective approach to his senior year with video and image montages as well as his pecha kucha project.
