This March, I was invited to present an hour-long session at SXSWedu in Austin, Texas. I talked about student-created content, making the learning ‘real’, and bringing innovations in on-demand media into the classroom. Here are the slides:

Meet the choir of Public School 22, from Staten Island, New York. On the surface, they’re like any other choir from any other school, made up of students who perform covers of popular songs. But what makes them remarkable is that they’ve become worldwide sensations – having performed on Oprah, at the Oscars, and alongside many of the artists that they’ve covered.

This all started in 2007, when their director Gregg Breinberg started to share their videos online. Word of the choir started to grow, and their popularity skyrocketed after high-profile bloggers like Perez Hilton turned the spotlight onto them. This choir of fifth-graders from Staten Island have now clocked up over 35 million views – and as students leave and new choir members join, their popularity continues to grow.

With nothing more than a camera, a piano and an internet connection, these children have been given the experience of a lifetime. Watching their videos is a joy – and if ever there was a picture of what great learning should look like, this is it. They’re engaged, they’re having the time of their lives, and the quality of their output is phenomenal. And all of this is because they’ve been given an audience, and the chance to create something ‘real’ and of genuine value to the world. The simple act of sharing their work with the world has transformed their experience of learning.

All too often, school work is simply done ‘for the sake of it’. Questions are answered in exercise books, essays are written, and presentations are given at the front of the class – all to be forgotten about once the bell rings or the term ends. But there are a growing number of schools around the world who are realising that by giving students a chance to contribute to something real, and to share their output with the world, learning can be so much more effective and engaging.

Students from San Diego’s High Tech High produce a constant stream of books, videos and articles as a result of the school’s project-based approach to learning.

New York City’s iSchool has students solving real community issues, alongside real community members – such as students working with a local pizza chain owner, using their math, geography and economics knowledge to put together proposals for the expansion of his chain.

Students at Clintondale High School in Mississippi are creating their own video content to teach the world – with student-created learning videos being shared publicly on the school’s MediaCore site.

And at Heathfield Primary School in the UK, the number of students achieving high scores in a national writing test rose from 9% to 60% once students created their own public blogs and wrote on them regularly as part of their school work.

For the first time ever, students everywhere have access to a global audience for their work, and teachers have the tools to safely share it with the world. Give them the chance to perform to real audiences, work on real problems and create real content, and they’ll rise to the challenge and produce great work that adds real value to the world.