Going with the moment ...

I had a great tech moment yesterday. I had my students for homework find websites that had particular information about Shakespeare based on a list of topics. They then posted to our blog a write-up of the info with hyperlinks to the sites. One of my students who was to research producing Shakespeare went to You Tube and embedded two videos of casts working out their understanding of the scripts with a great explanation of how he had not realized how text/word-heavy the analysis was. I read the blogs before class and was so excited to see the work this student had done. I adjusted my plans to show the video he had found. I thought having a little video would be interesting, but it turned out to be the foundation of what we then did today as we tackled our Othello text. We referred back to the video, and I could remind my students that those actors always went back to the text for the meaning. Hence, so did my students ... and in a way they had never before in previous classes doing this lesson. Whether the video inspired my students or whether it inspired me to explain our analysis better -- I can't say for sure. But it sure went well, and it goes back to bringing into the lesson what a student had found to add to our learning. That is the great equalizing effect of the Internet and technology. The "teacher" role is always shifting, and I LOVE it when this happens.