The presentations by Kevin Honeycutt, his funny, entertaining stories and examples of how students learn were great illustrations of the differences in the old way of learning compared to the learning being done by modern students. I liked the idea of letting the kids lead the way, talk together, and create freely while the teacher acts as a guide or facilitater. He seems to "get it" when he says that kids want to be the hero in their own story and want to do and learn in ways that make sense to them and the technological world in which they live.
I don't know how I could use the virtual hands theory in my work as a TA, but perhaps some of you could assist me to develope the idea I DID have. One of our English classes is reading the book THE TIPPING POINT by Malcolm Gladwell. This is a non-fiction book explaining how we are all communicators and have different styles of communicating. One is either a Maven (idea personality), a Connector (one who has lots of social connections) or a Salesman (one who is good at promoting ideas or trends). Social behaviors, biases, trendy ideas or new popular products can be developed and spread when the right collection of personalities are working together as a unit and the timing is right.
After much examination of who they each are, as individuals, the students have formed groups of Mavens, Connectors and Salesmen. The kids have decided to target the "smoking corner" near the high school by starting a "virus" against smoking. I believe that technology could be very useful in supporting their pursuit.
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I think you have the seeds of a good idea here. If the students are working in separate groups then a wiki where they could share and revise the ideas of the groups would probably work really well. They have to report out at some point and a wiki where the raw ideas could be posted and then reviewed and revised is a good idea. Feedback during the planning process is more likely to influence the result than feedback given when the groups part of the project is almost complete. I think you should run with this.
What an amazing concept of seperating into different communicatores: a Maven, Connector and Salesman. The ideas could be limitless and could go in many different directions with many new ideas. Having the ability to bounce ideas off of each other and working as a unit is wonderful and could be very important for students who may struggle when working solo. You are right when you say that new technolgy may be useful in making them successful
I think this could be a very cool collaborative project with each group adding their own special type of content, consistent with what type of communicator they are.
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