Two Questions that can change your students’ lives…

I just saw this video about Two Simple Questions that can change your life in 2010:

Two questions that can change your life from Daniel Pink on Vimeo.

I immediately thought this would be a great way to open up class in 2010 and since I have been trying to digitalize classroom projects and tasks, I have added my digital ideas below.

What’s my sentence?slideshare

Have students write their sentences, then create a PowerPoint slide with their sentence. Take the slides, combine them, post to SlideShare, then embed into a class blog or wiki.
OR take their slides and ‘save as’ an image format (gif or jpeg) and put them into a video editing software like Windows Movie Maker, iMovie, Photostory 3, JayCut, or VideoSpin to create a movie of your sentences.
vocethreadOR take the slides you saved as images from above and create a VoiceThread, then have students leave comments and questions for each other.

wordleHave students send their sentences to you and put them into a Wordle to create a class ‘What’s my sentence’ Wordle. It will be neat to see what words rise up to the surface.wallwisher

Have students post their sentence on Wallwisher to create a wall of your sentences.

Was I better today than I was yesterday?

Add a wiki page that starts:  I was better today because I…  Students can log on and edit your class wiki, adding ways they made today better than yesterday.  I was better today because I shoveled the sidewalk for my neighbor.

Get your frewikispacese wikis at wikispaces or pbworks.  As I’ve stated in earlier blog posts I am partial to wikispaces, especially since educators can now upgrade to pro for FREE.

What a great way to get students to reflect on who they are and how they can make themselves better.  Have any other ideas of ways to use these questions with your students?  Please, share them here!

10 thoughts on “Two Questions that can change your students’ lives…

  1. Dodie,
    Sorry the comment I wanted to put here ended up on your “About” page.

    I went ahead and copied it here too.

    I saw this video yesterday and ordered the book for my PC Kindle. I have read just a little bit of the book but am planning to finish it before my 4th graders return to school on January 11th. I love the ideas you shared here. I definitely want to use them with my kids. Do you have a classroom? I thought instead of just stealing (I mean borrowing) your idea that maybe we could do it as a collaborative project. Please let me know.

    If that is not possible, I hope you are okay with me “borrowing” your ideas and crediting them back to you.

    Happy New Year.

    1. Borrow, use, modify, change… that is why I post here. Right now I don’t have a classroom, but instead mentor teachers in my district to improve their teaching practice while integrating technology. Hopefully I will be able to encourage my teachers here to do some of these activities.
      Good luck, and let me know how it goes- I’d love to hear about your experiences!
      Dodie

  2. These are great ideas. Thanks for sharing! I’m going to try the “What’s my sentence?” activity with my advisory group tomorrow morning and encourage my colleagues to do the same. BTW, The other day I listened to a teleseminar with Dan Pink (notes are here http://21stcentliteracy.edublogs.org/2010/01/01/dan-pinks-new-years-preview/), and I just finished reading Drive (blog post here http://21stcentliteracy.edublogs.org/2010/01/03/the-motivation-to-strive-for-mastery/)–I highly recommend it!

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