End of the Year Project Blues

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   So its approaching the end of the school year (at least for those of us in South Carolina) which means its time for those "end of the school year project blues". Students scramble to create posters, dioramas, papers, and my personal favorite (yes, that was sarcasm) a PowerPoint. I'm realizing that I've probably not done all that I could to prepare my students for this point in the year. I know I shouldn't have that much of a problem with PowerPoint, because it does have great features and can do a lot more if we think outside of the box with it - but here's my biggest problem:
   I was browsing over a student's work and noticed the language was that of a seasoned biologist talking about animals, not an elementary student's. When I asked if he wrote it or copied it, he said "I copied it". No problems, easy to do, learned and demonstrated absolutely nothing except how to copy and paste. This is unacceptable and its the reason why I said moments ago that I don't think I prepared my students properly. And here's why:
   I think that many web 2.0 tools like podcasts, blogs, digital storybooks, and even silly animated movies on Kerpoof challenge students to interact with their knowledge more than creating a presentation for exactly the reason demonstrated by my student. Its so easy to copy and paste into a presentation, its different when you have to add some creativity into the mix, give a personal opinion about something, or listen back to your own words and thoughts about a topic. Its more challenging, but I think if we direct our students in that direction, they'll come to find out its much more rewarding.
  The podcast associated with this post talks briefly about four potential options for projects; four tools that offer creativity, interaction with learning, and the potential for sharing online with friends, family, and the world. The tools covered are:
1) The website Kerpoof.com whose Make a Story and Make a Movie feature provide unique tools to share knowledge.
2) The program Audacity: a free and powerful audio recorder perfect for recording podcasts. If a student finishes a recording, why not host it on SoundCloud with an account for your classroom, or challenge the student to add appropriate content photos to the audio with Movie Maker and load it up to Facebook or Youtube?
3) The iOS apps Book Creator (cross-device) and Book Creator for iPad (iPad only) for e-book creation. Students can export their books as PDF's or share the e-pub file via email or Dropbox.
4) The online presentation tool Prezi: Yes, its for presentations but its setup makes it a bit more difficult to simply copy and paste text. Students would have to consider sequence, organization, and how to be concise (which gets NO consideration usually with PowerPoint).
  The challenge I'm presenting myself with for next year is to spend much more time on ethical research (yes, even in elementary school this is really important), and practical uses for the tools that we've spent time on in class.
   I think we'll have some fun with that!