Get Creative with Scrapblog!

I just completed my final Internet Curriculum Project today! I chose the topic of Scrapblog, an online website where you can make your own scrapbook. But instead of the regular pen and paper way of constructing a scrapbook, you can make your own online by uploading digital pictures, using online stickers, and adding audio sound. You can even share it with people you know! It's a great program.



After completing the project, I reflected on the experience and the lesson I had created to teach my classmates all about Scrapblog. I posted my lesson plan on my personal website, under course assignments. You can also view the PowerPoint I made, giving step-by -step instructions about how to use Scrapblog on Slideshare. Here is my reflection:



From completing this assignment, I learned that there are still so many technological tools and websites that exist that I am unaware of. Prior to completing this assignment, I had never heard of Scrapblog. I must admit that I am a Scrapbook fanatic and enjoy putting scrapbooks together to document and hold onto precious memories. I think it’s great that there is a virtual version of a scrapbook because it really opens up the amount of possibilities there are available. You can make a Scrapblog for yourself and post it to show and share with other people, or you can even create a Scrapblog for someone to give as a thoughtful gift. Not only is Scrapblog great for personal use, but it can also be used with students in school as well!

Scrapblog can be used in a variety of ways into any content area- especially literacy. Students can use Scrapblog to illustrate a story that they have written. For instance, they could use Scrapblog to illustrate a personal narrative about themselves. Using their own personal digital pictures, students can include pictures of important people, places, or things in their lives. Students can then present the class their stories and their Scrapblogs to the class or even to their parents during Open House night at their school. Scrapblog can also be used to document books that students have read throughout the school year. Students can include pictures of the books, of them working on projects related to the books, and then write a reflective paragraph talking about how their reading has evolved, skills they’ve improved on, and favorite books and authors. Scrapblog could also be used in conjunction with a how-to paragraph. After students wrote a how-to paragraph explaining how to perform a task, the student could take pictures with a digital camera and add them to Scrapblog to make a how-to scrapbook to complement their paragraph.

If I could do the lesson over again, I would change parts of my guided practice. For instance, I would give students in the class a theme or a specific topic for their practice run with Scrapblog. I think it may have been difficult with such a time constraint for students to brainstorm and find pictures for their Scrapblog. It would have been interesting if students had been able to make a Scrapblog page about their experience in this class using pictures of their assignments that they completed and maybe some snapshots of them hard at work using technology. I also wonder if there would have been any added benefits to having students work in their groups rather than independently. I may have tried that if I had the opportunity to do the lesson over again, because students may have learned more from one another by sharing ideas and experiencing Scrapblog as a group.

I’m really glad that I got the chance to work with the Scrapblog program. It has inspired me to think of many great ideas for my students, as well as for me to use personally. I hope the students in class gained a lot from the lesson and see the value of Scrapblog to incorporate it into their own classrooms.