How To Redefine The Wheel

Sometimes it doesn't pay to reinvent the wheel, but sometimes we need to redefine what that wheel is. This is what technology is doing to the classroom, it is opening doors to students that previously weren't available. So how do we as teachers build upon old ways of teaching to create modifications or even better redefine the assignment altogether to excite students today. In my class I would like to at least modify if not redefine a classic assignment I'm sure we all have done with doing a biography of a grandparent. I want to take this to a new level where the students will use twitter and the #comments4kids to reach out to students in a completely different country that they have never met, and then create a living biography of these newly met students. They can interview each other through some type of video conferencing, and then instead of just writing a biography, I would like to have them create a video time line of the biography they just wrote. This would allow the students to learn and work on a variety of lessons and technological skills, while developing new friendships.