Power of the Mashup

Summary: The Power of Mashup, is an article that was published in Learning and Leading with Technology. This article is about “the power of mash-up,” which is a combination of an application and other sources to create something new. Examples of the power of mash-up would be Google Lit Trips and iHistory Podcast Project. Jerome Burg who now is a retired teacher created the Google Lit Trips. In his class he combined character study in literature with using the application Google Earth. Therefore his students were able to go on virtual field trips with the character they were studying. This tool was found to help with students visual learning and accomplish an appreciation for stories they have read. Nowadays Jerome Burg has dedicated himself to sharing this idea and many other ones with other educators. Another example provided in this article was by teacher David Briggs which he created the IHistory Podcast Project. This project is used in his history class where he had students reflections put into a podcast. Students seemed to have found this project to be fun and exciting cause they are allowed to use their ipods or mp3 players. Also discussed in this article are crucial learning functions that are abled to be accomplished through these types of lessons, which are; ubiquity, deep learning, making this visible and discussable, students expressing themselves and their ideas, building a community, collaboration, research, project management and reflection. This idea of combining a technology application with other sources can open up major eyes of students and help aid in their learning process.

Reflection: This idea of a power mash-up seems really intuitive and exciting for lessons. It can help a unit that I am teaching to go from boring to more engaging. I feel the more engaged a student is in the lesson the more they want to learn. I know that the act of wanting to learn is rare in classrooms, but just having the majority of the students engaged in the lesson can change the classroom environment and learning experience. The iHistory Podcast Project and Google Lit trip are just a basis to have other educators learn new ways to use the Internet in the classroom. I truly believe being a teacher is about providing creativeness to the classroom these Teachers are great pioneers in integrating technology and using their creativeness within their own classroom. One drawback that I could see happening is not having the support by administration to use such technology tools in the school or having the equipment to perform these lessons.

Reference:Boss, S. & Krauss J. (2007) Power of the Mashup. Learning & Leading With Technology, 35(1), 12-17.