We Have Ignition! (Rocketing AP Gov into Cyberspace)

I am preparing to rocket my AP Government and Politics course into cyberspace. A number of factors have converged to make this possible and desirable:

* This year's group has just completed its experience blogging on vlogs. I think the results have been terrific. Students were allowed to produce 3-5 minute videos on a political opinion or observation. Then classmates blogged on the vlog. (If they posted at least five blogs they were allowed drop one of their 2 page analyses). My Flip Mino camera was used to produce the video and iWeb created the vlog/blog pages. We completed seven of these, second semester. A representative group of the girls (and their parents) gave permission to me to share a small slice of our activity with you: Click to visit.

* In an upcoming post I will describe my second fling with podcast/blogging mini-project. It produced excellent results last year and is even more tightly organized with the help of iWeb, this go-round.

*I just discovered that David Canon, the marvelous professor at Wisconsin-Madison, who co-moderated the AP conference that initiated me into this course, has published a text with an impressive ebook option. Additionally a very cool blog serves as a companion to the text.

*Next year, all the students in the course (seniors) will have laptops, meaning they can more reasonably do online collaborations and use the money-saving ebook at school.

*I'm embarrassed to admit that on recently have I begun foraging in the political science section of iTunes University. I will definitely dip into the free lectures provided by Stanford for some aspect of my curriculum.

My ambition to send the AP course into full cyber-launch is contingent on having my preps reduced from four to three as I have requested. (Big "if" at this point). Regardless, I intend to continue designing curriculum that employs blogs-on-vlogs and podcasts for my studetns and the ALI. As always, I welcome your suggestions and reactions!

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Screen capture of Emily's vlog page.