USB Flash Drive

Originally uploaded by Ambuj Saxena

Following my recent post, I’m now pleased that I received delivery of my new flip ultra video camera on Friday.

So why does this post have a picture of a USB flash drive?  Because it has everything to do with what I’m now going to do with my flip ultra.  The children in the class have speeches to present in the next couple of weeks (it’s an annual, whole-school initiative).  Mine will be the first class where the students’ presentations are recorded (using the flip).

This will not only provide us with a record of the speech to support our assessment data, but I’ll also be sending home each child with their speech on a USB flash drive.  The parents can then see exactly how their child went, and even copy the file to their home computer.

Now yes, I know, this could be very easily posted to the web in this Web 2.0 world.  We could even provide password-restricted access to them if we wanted.  We have given the parents some access to the Web 2.0 world this year, with our class’ homework blog, Travelling Trevor.

This project, however, may help to ease our parents in a little at a time rather than confront them in a huge way.  The way I intend it at present, it’s all pretty easy and non-threatening – play it on your computer, praise your child, save a copy if you want, and send the stick back to school.  Next term, I intend (with some colleagues from other grades who also attended the IWB conference), to prepare a much more technologically-rich learning unit with a digital portfolio as part of the deal.

So, for the rest of this term, I might work bit by bit to lead them up to that.