Instead of a Worksheet...

Have students…

Create an iMovie to show their learning.

Conduct a Mystery Skype with a region you are studying. 

Use todaysmeet.com in your classroom as a backchannel when watching a video.  Make it interactive.  Periodically ask questions during the video.

Use the iPad to create a product that you have to be able to "see, hear and see text" somewhere in/on the finished product. 

Have your students blog. It's just as easy to click on publish as is it to turn in a worksheet.  I like to use Kidblog for blogging.  

Participate in chat on Twitter.  Show them how to use Social Media to learn instead of just sharing.  #scistuchat and #spanstuchat are held once a month and are a great way to get started. 


Studying about an area in geography?  Have your students use a template in Pages and create a travel itinerary as if they were going to travel to that area.  Have them use Kayak to plan their trip (they will be doing this in the future...start teaching them how to do it now).

Conduct a Google Hangout with an expert in something that you are studying.  

Create a product using Popplet Lite.  Right now, our 1st Graders are studying about the life cycle of a Butterfly. Students are creating a Popplet including their own images and text listing all the stages of the life cycle.  

Create a Tellagami that relates to your topic. You can use this app for about anything in your classroom. Use Pic Collage or Skitch to create a custom background within Tellagami.

Share a Google Doc and Collaborate. Make them share the document with you.  You are now the "air traffic controller" in your classroom.  Watch all of the collaboration that is going on and chime in on a Google Doc or two using the chat feature. 

Create their own "I Wonder" projects. 

Create a podcast.  One of my favorite assignments while teaching World History was to have students create commercials for the time period that we were studying. Let's say we are studying Ancient Greece.  Have students create a 30 second commercial and it has to be for a good or service that would have been sold during that time period. 

Create an iMovie analyzing a topic.   I did this with my Freshmen World History class and they had to analyze one of the events in Billy Joel's song "We Didn't Start the Fire."  They absolutely loved it, and created some amazing products! 

Create a Word Cloud using the Cloud Art app.  Have them use the background of their Tellagami.  Have the Gami analyze their product. 

Create a Wanted Posters for characters you are studying.  I like to use the Pic Collage app to create these. 

Create a Haiku Deck INSTEAD of a PowerPoint.  Don't let students use the bulleted lists within Haiku Deck. Force them to summarize in 8 words or less per slide.

Just a few ideas for you. Ready, Set, CREATE!