Every year my students participate in a project-based learning (PBL) unit on the 13 Colonies. (For more on what a PBL is, go to: http://www.commoncraft.com/video/project-based-learning, or read Suzie Boss's blog on Edutopia: http://www.edutopia.org/spiralnotebook/suzie-boss.) This year's 13 Colonies PBL culminated in students using Photo Story 3 to create digital stories about each of their team's assigned colony. Pictures were courtesy of Flickr and music loops were exported from GarageBand.
Students were tasked to do the following:
"It is 1700. You become a recruiting agent hired by one of the colonies to attract new immigrants. Your task is to educate and persuade settlers to come to your colony. You will be able to do this by making a TV commercial. Your commercial must reflect the attributes of the assigned colony. You must address the issues of natural resources, economy, religion, relations with Indians, and reasons for settling."
Each student worked in a team to divide up the research. They were each personally responsible to write "copy" (their lines) and narrate their slides. All of the videos were uploaded to the class YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/SuperSocialStudies. Feel free to view them all and help them "go viral!"
Embedded below are some examples of student work:
South Carolina:
New York:
Virginia:
