I was speaking with @kimsten earlier this month about her year with our 1:1 iPod (Touch) in the classroom project. I was really impressed with the ‘Sound Track of my Life’ project that she planned for her students and wanted to share an overview.

Project Overview: Students were asked to identity 8 important events or experiences in their life. Next, the students were required to find songs that suitably represented each of the identified events. Students then authored a written description explaining the connections between the events and songs. Students also produced artwork for their project. Sample artwork included a CD cover design and a concert flyer for the event sequence. The project culminated with a presentation to the class of one selected event and the artwork.

iPod Integration: The iPods were used for song and lyric research via the wifi connection in the classroom. Students also had options to use the iPods for project details using the Notes app and creating the artwork. Apps that could be used to create artwork were listed in an earlier blog post.

Teacher Perspective: The project integrated research and writing skills, creativity through the artwork creation and presentation abilities. The iPod was used in a natural integrated manner as part of the learning process. This project also created a learning situation allowed the teacher to learn a lot about each student in a very individual way.

Student Perspective: My daughter, Charlotte, has had the good fortune of being in @kimsten’s classroom the past 2 years. Wearing my ‘parent hat’, I was quite interested to see the level of student engagement with this project outside of the traditional school day. She also felt the learning situation was designed to allow personal choices within the learning process. On the iPod side of things, search engines such as Google and Bing worked well on the device. Charlotte  indicated many students used the iTunes,  Tune Wiki and Lyric Wiki in their research.

Hat’s off to @kimsten for designing this effective integrated project. Based on her success, you might like to try this in your classroom.

Related Resource:

The WRDSB iPod project wiki. Thanks @susan_watt.

~ Mark