On the first day of school in Kevin Franklin’s world history
class, students whipped out their cellphones, scanned a bar code
taped near the classroom door and jumped to their first
assignments. During the first few weeks of school, 24-year-old
Franklin had no plans to stand up and lecture about the history
of the world with PowerPoint. That’s much too boring for teens,
the South Lake High School teacher says. Instead, he recorded
himself on YouTube, assigned the videos for homework and saved
class time for group work and students’ questions. These days,
class time is reserved for projects such as making podcasts
about the Byzantine Empire or designing a digital collage about
Japanese feudalism on Glogster, a visual social network. And
those who didn’t do the homework? Well, they can catch up using
a class laptop or their smartphone. “Rather than being exposed
to content, they’re engaged with the content,” Franklin said.
“Now we can move toward more production, so there is a creative
product.” Franklin’s appr