Reflections on Hypermedia Models

I have decided to reflect on the hypermedia models created by Josh Richards and Mike Brown.  Josh Richards chose to allow his student's to create Voki characters in order to discuss a topic that is often of debate especially in the news.  The topic of evolution in comparison to creationism, which allows students to use principles that we know about in biology in order to discuss what we know about regarding the two in relation to one another.  This is quite a hot topic for discussion in many Texas classrooms, and I feel like you would need a parent waiver in order to create this lesson plan in any way.  However, aside from this I think using a Voki that allows a user to be anonymous and participate in their side of the debate, while letting go of their reservations would be a good call.  Maybe it could be posted to an asynchronous discussion board or embedded in a Glogster that you might check in order to discover all the different responses.  These could be gathered and discussed in class with a bit of tweaking in order to not divulge who said what in regard to responses.  Your experience was interesting, and I agree with you that Voki's have a perfect place in the classroom especially when it comes to topics that may cause some disagreement or apprehension.

Mike Brown decided to make a hypermedia model that used Storybird to create a graphic novel that was representative of Edgar Allen Poe's short story The Fall of the House of Usher.  I feel that the use of text and pictures that Mike chose was very well done to create a summary of this classic Poe story.  The pictures all coincided with the eerie mystique of the story, and this hypermedia tool could be used in a secondary classroom to help young adolescents learn how to properly summarize stories.  This can be a challenge for many young readers, whom often either try and write the whole story again or retell in their own words instead of summarizing the main idea and pertinent points that constitute the story.  I think you made a wise choice to stick with Storybird to convey your project and hypermedia model.  I experimented with Pixlr and it is more for graphic editing a project that you have created in regard to artistic design.  In closure, your model was very well put together Mike and also quite interesting to read.