Taking It Global I am working on a Google document. I have started outlining what I accomplished with my third grade students. I am adding things I would like to include in the project next year. I want to add a collaborative component. I am hoping to find other teachers to join the document and consider having their students work with mine and others around the globe as a Flock of Researchers.
I'm borrowing heavily from the layout of the Monster Project, Middle School 1001 Flat Tales, and Winter Wonderland wikis. I will begin outlining some major components over the next couple of weeks. It is my intention to start the project around December and have students contribute through May. Work could be done as teachers have time available with their students.
General Outline I am including a link to the Google doc here. If you are interested in brainstorming more about this project idea, please let me know [AnnNJTechTeacher {at} gmail {dot} com] and I will send you an invitation to edit the document and/ or the wiki I'm developing. Please tell me where you heard about the project, too.
The younger the students are when we introduce the concept of copyright and citations, the more likely it will be on their mind as they grow older and work on reports. I think the tie-in to image citations is a nice first step.
Image Citation: Oro, Ann. Baby Robins in Nest 5. 2009 June 17. 2009 June 3. http://www.flickr.com/photos/njtechteacher/3593708408/
I'm not sure how long ago I heard about geocaching. From the first time I heard about it, I knew I had to try it with my students. I had my first opportunity yesterday. The image includes my son holding the first cache we found.
Planning, Planning, Planning This year, I had a bit of money left in the technology funding budget to purchase a Garmin etrex Venture HC. I have no experience with geocaching, so I've been collecting bookmarks for a while.
I kept trying to figure out how to arrange a field trip or a class period or two with the GPS and finally realized that our annual walk-a-thon/ field day would be perfect.
The DEN decided to have a Geocaching Day and in preparation they had a few webinars scheduled. Last week, I sat through the archived event and was really happy with the content. The event was led by Bridget Belardi. She has a nice wiki page on geocaching and it includes lots of teacher resources and her set of slides from the webinar.
I put together a short flipchart in Activstudio to get a feel for what students knew about geocaching, explain the activity, and let students register to try it on the field day.
Explaining Geocaching in the Classroom I took some photos from the web to show what a geocache could look like. I asked questions like:
What is a geocache?
What is required?
What would you be looking for?
Next we took a look at an image of satellites circling the globe and I helped the students understand the concept of needing at least three satellites to get a lock on your position on the GPS unit.
Only one student had ever heard of geocaching and that same student had found all the caches at this park with his family. A fair number of students wanted to try geocaching at the park. In advance of the field day I thought I would have to hide a geocache, but was stunned to find someone had already hidden a themes worth of caches. There are seven named after the Seven Dwarfs. Each cache has a number that will lead to the Snow White cache.
The Day Arrives After a walk from the school to the park, I got out my list of seventh grade students who expressed an interest in trying geocaching. The students were tired from the walk and wanted to sit and watch a baseball game. Some sixth grade students overheard that I was trying to get a group to try the geocaching and wanted to go instead.
As we walked, I explained what we were going to do. They had a lot of fun following the arrow on the GPS unit. I knew, in advance, that the geocaches were all off the path that goes around the park. It took a bit to convince the students that we couldn't simply follow the GPS directions to head west because we would have to walk through a pond.
I was impressed with how well the unit worked! It was a really overcast day and I heard that some GPS units have trouble with cloud cover. This unit worked like a champ. We finally closed in to within 20 feet of the cache. I explained that we may not get a better lock on the location than 20 feet, so we started looking. My son had the unit at that point and actually got within 5 feet of the cache with the GPS.
I was a little worried that the students would get tired of hunting before we found the cache. They were really surprised that I didn't know where the cache was and that a stranger hid it. Luckily, I noticed a hole in a tree and what looked like a film canaster. I asked for a volunteer to reach in and get it. Sure enough, it was the cache. It was hidden in an M&M tube that was covered in camoflague contact paper. Inside was a little pen and a scroll of paper to sign.
They immediately wanted to find another cache. We tried another. This time, it was a really tiny two inch canaster covered in black tape and attached to a tree limb with a twist tie. It took a lot of searching, but armed with the excitment of having found one, they were determined to find this cache.
They would have liked to have found a third, but I wanted to see if I could take another group out. Unfortunately, by the time we got back, it was almost time to walk back to school.
Ideas for Next Year A lot of teachers were really interested in what we were doing. I want to find a grade level and do a really thorough job of tying geocaching into the curriculum. There are so many ways to do this: longitude and latitude, measuring feet and fractions of miles, compass points, or hiding our own cache with a travel bug inside.
One of the many benefits of summer vacation is the luxury of planning time. I can't wait to do this over the coming years with many more students.
Last year, I explored Kerpoof with my students. As the year wraps up, I wanted to revisit the site. This year, I signed up for a teacher account and I'm learning how that can help me in the classroom.
It was very easy to create a class id and add student ids within the account. A really nice feature is the ability to print login cards. It lists the web site address (www.kerpoof.com/student), student nickname, student password, and class id all in one convenient card.
The students had no trouble signing in. At this point, I have the Group Chat and the Group Message Board turned off. After working with the students on the website this week, I now realize I will have to turn on the Group Message Board in order to post drawings and comment on projects within the class.
Student Discoveries We followed the same project that I created last year. I had the students all select the same background shown on the right. It forces the program to display storybook characters in the list of images that can be selected for the story.
The students add characters and dialog bubbles to build a story of what happens in Storybook Land. Last year, the students would become frustrated when they wanted a particular image. As images are dragged on the drawing, some disappear and are replaced.
Today, one of the students pointed out the search box beneath the images. I'm pretty sure it was not there last year. He demonstrated typing princess and clicking Go brings up princess images. He even tried it for ninjas and had success - much to his delight.
It works well with the flat screen iMacs and even runs without too much lag on the older 600MHz Power PC iMacs. I will try this program again next year, with the message boards, so see if we can privately post our drawings and leave comments for each other. The message board is moderated on the teacher side, so it will give us a safe place to practice appropriate messages.
I continue to be happy with this program and look forward to generating more project ideas in the 2009-2010 school year.
This past week, my sixth through eighth grade students explored Google Docs for the first time. I learned a lot working with the students. Early in the week, I noticed a lot of confusion with the editing. There were some problems with work being overwritten. There was also confusion about signing on to the system because I had two different types of email - some at mrsoro.com and some at gmail.com. I think I had found some great solutions by Friday's class.
Too Many Editors Spoil the Soup I had eleven questions and up to eighteen editors. When everyone tried to answer question one, a bit of chaos ensued. By Friday, I set up the document a little differently. Instead of a list of questions with blank spaces between the questions, I typed the mailbox ids.
For example:
1) What did you do with the tablets this year? Social Studies mailbox1: We wrote reports on different places in the world. mailbox2: reasearch mailbox3:Looking up stuff mailbox4: geography mailbox5: researched mailbox6: we used them to type our where in the world and where in the U.S.a are you mailbox7: We use them to do "Where in the World?" (geography). mailbox8:research mailbox9: printing a little paragraph mailbox10: we did the where in the world am i? sms200701: sms200702: where in the world report sms200703: 5 themes of geography
How Did This Help? Everyone knew which id they used to sign on to Google Docs. They simply typed next to their id. There was no problem with work getting deleted or overwritten. Earlier in the week, I heard a lot of frustrated voices. On Friday, everyone just worked!
Multiple Mailbox Solution I am really excited about the solution I now have for multiple email mailboxes. In my last post, Vicky left a comment about how she was planning on working around the ids. This morning, I opened up my doteasy account to see how mailboxes could be handled. One of their options is setting up email aliases.
Under the email section, I selected Manage/ Create Email Accounts. There, I found a Domain Settings link for Email Aliases. When I chose Add Alias, I was given a screen to set a new email id and a pointer to a destination email. I had been able to set up mailbox1 through mailbox10 [at] mrsoro.com. I added mailbox11 and pointed it at my main mailbox at mrsoro.com.
Next, I went to Google Apps and created a new account for mailbox11. Once the account was created, I received a message that I needed to sign on to my email and follow a link to confirm the account. There, in my main email account, was the email for mailbox11! Now with aliases, I believe I can set up the full 21 accounts I need. In truth, I can probably set up an account for each student! I'll have to see if there are limits to aliases.
Now, I'll have one way for everyone to sign on and we'll really be able to explore Google Apps next year. I'm so glad I gave it a test run because I have all I need to begin planning new lessons for the 2009-2010 school year!
Weekend Preparations I've wanted to use Google Docs with students for over a year, but the logistics kept holding me back. I have not wanted to create a bunch of email ids in Google and I'm not sure if the gmail trick works with Google Docs. I am especially intrigued by the possibility of Google Apps for Education, but have to figure out how to get a large quantity of school email addresses. I'm not sure if it's even an option.
In the meanwhile, I do host a website at www.mrsoro.com and it gives me the ability to create up to ten email ids. This past July, I signed up for a Google Apps account with my mrsoro.com email id. It was easy to do, but I never took the time to use the account any further.
I've also been setting up a few gmail accounts here and there to give students access to Google Reader while working on the Middle School 1001 Flat Tales project. When all was said and done, I had enough accounts for everyone to work.
The Plan for the Class I wanted to introduce the concept of Google Docs and collaborative editing. All the students have experience editing a wiki. I started a discussion with the students. We talked about:
how they would describe a wiki to someone who hadn't heard of them before
how they would describe Microsoft Word
how they could work on the same document with a school partner from home
the limitations and problems associated with sending a document as an email attachment
The students did a great job explaining that a wiki is an editable web page. They felt they would send the document as an email attachment. The problems included the possibility of sending a virus through the attachment, not having a personal email id and needing the help of a parent, and multiple versions of the same document.
The Student's Reaction Overall, it was a bit overwhelming having between eleven and eighteen students answering the same twelve questions at the same time. They got a bit frustrated having work overwritten at times. The questions were related to the tablet pcs we have on the second floor this year. I asked them to talk about the types of projects they did this year, what caused trouble as they worked on the tablets, how Open Office Impress and Writer worked as compared to Microsoft Office, projects they'd like to do in their subject classes next year (with the tablets), and things they would like to learn in computer class next year.
The last question asked about their experience using Google Docs today. The responses were more positive than negative and included:
I thought it was pretty cool...great...fun and easy...fun, easy, and awesome...it was fun...it was cool...it's like instant messaging your friends what you are editing...I like it. It's fun because you can see other people's thoughts...I liked it. I had fun working on it...It was good. I didn't have a problem with it...it was fine...it was easy...it was funnnnn and easy...it was very easy, honestly, not that fun...it was confusing so I changed my color...I didn't like it...people kept deleting stuff and changing it...it was ok.
For the Future I will definitely use Google Docs next year. I will not have such a massive, simultaneous edit, though. I can especially see using the spreadsheet in class. It will be a time saver in populating a spreadsheet with a lot of individual data. I used to question the students around the room and each student would type each answer into the spreadsheet. Now I can set up all the names and titles in the spreadsheet and the students can fill in their individual row or column. Afterward, the students can save the file as an Excel document on their local drive. We will be able to open it and then they can manipulate the files individually.
I will certainly use the Google presentation with the eighth grade. I have had the students create a Time Travel agency PowerPoint in groups, but it leave a lot of students sitting while one student does the bulk of the work. This year, I had each student create their own Time Travel PowerPoint, but the number of slides and research really took longer than I wanted when the students worked alone.
The overall experience was good. I now have concrete experience with the students that I can build on over the summer as I prepare for the 2009-2010 school year.
I am a K-8 computer teacher. I have taught sixth and seventh grade math. I primarily teach with Mac desktop computers. I use a combination of purchased and open source applications, as well as web-based tools.
My main website is www.mrsoro.com
In the 2008-2009 school year, I participated in a Winter Wonderland project. Three teachers put together a really nice wiki. It ran for three months. I completed the January winter song project with my third grade and was about to continue on to the February penguin project when I became interested in working on bird research with the students.
