Prensky and Our Final Project

Like most of my classmates, I think, I've been worrying about, fussing over, planning, and beginning to write down my ideas for the final project for this course. Even in my rough draft, I can see how profoundly I've been influenced by so many of Prensky's ideas -- the importance of student choice, thinking about students and their passions (instead of focusing only on content and coverage), trying to make the content real as well as relevant, creating guiding questions that intrigue and "hook" students, and using technology to let students create (chapter 8). It is this latter consideration that is keeping me very busy right now in terms of the final project. I'm working on creating a multigenre research project that calls on students to do all the research and writing associated with a traditional research paper, but instead of writing write 1500 words, but not in a traditional research paper. Instead, the project I'm working on calls on the student to create 7 different "text pieces" using the technology of their choice to cover the research topic in a unique and creative way. Of course, I am leaving open to the students who they want to research, how they want to display what they learn (e.g., through poetry, obituaries, diary entries), and the technology they want to use  (Powtoons, Prezis, email exchanges, blog post, twitter feed) to display their learning. I haven't figured out exactly how to showcase their work beyond the classroom, but I'm thinking about videotaping their presentations and having them organize them for mass consumption. If anyone has any ideas or suggestions, I'd greatly appreciate them because I'm a huge believer in Prensky's thesis (chapter 9): We, as teachers, create the possibility to continuously improve through practice and sharing.