Mixbook
Mixbook is a collaborative book making site. I used this site at the end of the school year with students. Students investigated the school yard, as part of the CIESE Squares of Life project. Each group of 4 students choose a square meter of the school yard, marked it off with string and explored it. For 40 minutes students sketched and took notes about what they observed in their square. Students moved rocks to see what was under them and some scratched the surface dirt to see what else was there. The reaction students had to the project was incredible. They were very loud, hooped and hollered at each find and were stunned to see the things that until now they over looked. To say they had a good time would be an understatement. However, what amazed me was how little students knew about the things around them in the school yard. Many thought flies were mosquitoes, an immature reddish pinecone was a strawberry and while they could identify a dandelion in bloom they could not identify it from the leaves. I wanted students to remain intrigued and to capitalize on their enthusiasm. So, I combined research of students choice with nonfiction text features. The result was a student made book using Mixbook and photos from Creative Commons (I found photos for students through Flickr - I didn’t want students to come across any inappropriate photos) and some that I or students took of the items they found. Below is the book we created.
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