Panwapa - Treasure Hunt

We continued our work at the Panwapa website in the first grade. We had taken a break from directly working with the site for a few weeks. The students enjoy the website and have asked to use it after they finished other tasks in computer class. They definitely have an attraction to it. I sent the user names and passwords home. Several students have told me that they have used it at home, as well.

I wanted to show the students how to use the Treasure Hunt option this week. This time, I had them work in pairs. It allowed me to have half the number of computers active on the Internet at the same time which sped up potential bottlenecks.

Before doing this in class, it's a good idea to run a couple of treasure hunts yourself. I found that it was easiest to show the students how to do the first hunt, one item, by clicking on the single category around the magnifying glass.

When the second hunt moves on to two categories, it's time to use the magnifying glass. It is useful to go over all these examples with the children before setting them off on their own.

Using the magnifying glass opens up a map color key feature on the various little islands. For example, categories in this example were: electric guitar and tennis lovers.

You can see by the dark brown shading that this category has many children who like electric guitars and tennis. When you click on the tennis island, it only shows those houses of children who also happen to like the electric guitar. The shading becomes even more important when you have three categories to match on the last treasure hunt.

When you find three matches, you are rewarded with a Panwapa card. The first graders worked happily in pairs for the entire 35 minute time period and want to do it again next week.

Panwapa - Machine Intensive Website

Today began class two with my first graders and Panwapa.com. I am beginning to see that the website is rough on older machines. It runs very nicely on the newest (one or two year old) iMacs, but it is slow and troublesome on the PowerPC iMac and iBooks.

I took the time to download the lastest version of Flash since I worked with the first grade last week. I thought that would solve some issues I had with script errors in Flash. It still has not entirely solved the issues.

We reviewed starting Firefox, getting to Panwapa.com, and signing in with the user name and password. I demonstrated how to change the Panwapa kid's clothes, house, and flag. I also demonstrated how to click on the big globe to the right of the screen and zoom in to see how many Panwapa kids were in a particular country. Next I zoomed in to see the actual houses of the Panwapa kids in that country.

I showed the students how to send a message to a Panwapa kid. We compared what a child in Uruguay liked to one of our students who was absent from class today. Next I chose to send the child a message. We saw how to click on each message to hear what it was programmed to say.

We also saw how the Panwapa card collection begins to build. At that point, my students spent about 20 minutes changing their Panwapa settings and sending messages to other Panwapa kids.

They were really excited. They were happily telling each other what countries they had visited, how their choices matched other children's, and what messages they left behind.

I have 8 newer machines out of 16 in the lab, so I strategically set the children at the best machines. There was one little girl who was at a PowerPC iMac. It would not let her click the yellow Change Me icon. It kept reloading the screen over and over with no way to stop it but quit Firefox. So I switched her to an iBook, figuring it was a newer machine. It still didn't work. Next week, I will have her work at my MacBook. I know it works on that machine since it's the one I test things on at home.

All in all, I really love the website, but it's limits on my PowerPCs will force me to consider how many children I have in the room at one time before I use it.

First In School Panwapa Day

I had the pleasure of introducing Panwapa to my first graders this week. I consider myself lucky in that the two classes are split between library and computer class. I only have 10 children at a time on the computers.

The formal Lesson 1: Who Am I? calls for two classes and a total of 90 minutes. I borrowed several ideas from the plan and added some of my own.

I started the class by asking the students how they were exactly the same at this particular moment in school. Some responses I received were that they were all first graders, they were all wearing a uniform, and they were the only ones in computer class at that moment. We talked a little bit about what each student's favorite food was and then they raised their hand if they liked the same food.

Next I took it out a little. I asked them if they could think of a place that was a little bigger than Saint Michael School - could they tell me where the school was. They identified the town of Cranford. I asked if they could think of a place where we were that was a little bigger than Cranford. We proceeded to talk about our state, our country, our continent, our world, and our universe. One child mentioned that they heard there was a Cranford in England.

I told them that we were going to visit a website that allows us to tell what we like and see what other children in the world like too. I handed each child the Parent Welcome Letter with a pre-written name, user name, and password.

This was a great, real-world opportunity to discuss what a user id and password is. I asked them if they had a user id and password for anything at home. Certainly, a majority of the students had Webkinz accounts. I wanted to get at the difference between a user id being a word that keeps your identity private - a nickname you use online. I wanted to make sure that they knew a password is secret. Something you only share with your parents and other trusted adults who help you on the computer. Some students have older brothers and sisters who help them and we discussed that too.

I had put together a PowerPoint to go through the screens they would see as they built their Panwapa profile. It made it very easy. I included screen shots of the sign on screen, a map of the world with our country and the African continent circled so that we could discuss the meaning of the word Panwapa - here on this earth, and each screen for the avatar, house, and flag choices. I will update this post later today, point to a Slideshare of those slides, and embed the slides here as well.

They had used Firefox to go to the Dance Mat Typing website. I have our home page set to a del.icio.us account, so it was a matter of pointing them to the 1st-grade set of links. Everyone was able to start Firefox, get to the link for Panwapa.com, and click the globe on the main page to get to the sign on screen.

Before the first graders left the chairs in the center of their room for the computers, I demonstrated the sign on process. It confused me the first time I tried. They needed to:

1. Click the blue "My name is not on this list" icon.
2. From the drop down list, choose USA.
3. Click in the box below USA and type the five-digit number.
4. Click in the password box and type their password.
5. Click the green "Sign on to Panwapa World" icon.

For reasons unknown to me, most of the time, the user name and password I set up worked. In a few cases, even with typing the proper user name and password, I couldn't sign in with the pre-assigned information, so I had to quickly click the orange Join icon and sign them up again. When I did this, I wrote the new user name on the Welcome Letter and kept the same password.

Almost every child managed to create their Panwapa kid, house, and flag. There are four students (out of 38) who will need to finish that project up next week. I told the students finishing early that they should click around the screen and see what happened.

Next week, we will finish up the four accounts, plus the one child who was absent will need to get started. I did not have the children's cards print out to save time. I have to do that today at school. We will compare the cards and learn who chose which particular items on the Panwapa flag and learn how to visit other children around the world and leave messages.

I collected all the Welcome Letters and updating my spreadsheet. I will also photocopy the letters before sending them home with the children next week.

If you try Panwapa in your class, please leave a link to any blog posts you write, so that I can learn and improve this program at my school. Thanks!

Setting Up for Panwapa

I am planning on introducing the Panwapa website to my first graders on Monday and Tuesday. I was having all kinds of visions of the difficulties of signing up twelve children at the same time. My plan was originally to ask volunteers from the upper grades to help for a few minutes, then I started looking at the Apple Learning Interchange - Learning with Panwapa - Formal Lessons online. It was pointed out in the comment section of a previous post by Brett Pierce. He is the Executive Director of Panwapa for Sesame Workshop.

Step three in Lesson 1 - Who am I.PDF says "Each student should log on to Panwapa using the username and password created by the teacher". So I realized that I could sign up each child without having to worry about being required to set up the Panwapa profile.

It took me a while to accomplish this. I wonder if they would set up multiple accounts for a teacher the way that Wikispaces does in step five of it's help screen. It would be a huge time saver.

Tomorrow morning, I plan on printing out the Parent Welcome Letter found at the bottom of the Apple Learning Interchange - Learning With Panwapa page. The students will be able to use the paper to sign on during class and then bring it home. Most of the students have access to the Internet at home, if not all.

When I signed on to Panwapa and created ids I found it useful to create a list in Excel to keep track of student id, password, first, and last name. I for each password I used sms2015##. SMS stands for Saint Michael School, 2015 is the year the first graders will graduate from the eighth grade, ## is a number in series from one and up. This way each student has a unique id so they don't sign on to someone else's account by mistake. It will give us a chance to talk about keeping private sign on information private, as well.

Once the list was set up, I checked that each id would log on. This is essential to having a smoothly running 35 minute class. I learned that when using the site with students, if the name is not on the list, you have to click:
MY NAME IS NOT ON THIS LIST.
Select the country (USA) from the drop down list.
THEN Type the student id number (15729)
Type in the password.
Click Sign in to Panwapa World.
It was not apparent and I spent a lot of time typing USA15729 into the white box. I couldn't understand why it was saying the user id and password were wrong.

The system will remember certain things if you sign out early. It will remember the character’s body attributes, home, and flag when each section is completed. I tried to put a couple of items on the flag, then sign out and sign back in, but the flag was reset.

There are a variety of movies to show in class. I don't know if I will use that feature, but it's nice to know it is available. I tried the option to download the files (much safer in advance than worrying about connection speed in class) but the download wouldn't start. I don't know if that is a Mac issue. I didn't try to download it on the Windows machine yet.

I will write up the actual lesson once I work with the students tomorrow, but I will follow Lesson One from the Formal Lesson Plan for the most part. I'm looking forward to seeing the student's reactions.

Planning for Panwapa World

I listened to a new Bit by Bit episode by Bob Sprankle featuring Kevin Jarrett and Maria Knee. Initially, they were speaking about how Maria used Webkinz in her Kindergarten class last year. It seems Kevin was interested in the possibilities of doing the same at his school. Emails were exchanged an a podcast was set up to speak more in depth.

I am interested in doing more within my Kindergarten program. I was pretty sure that I did not want to use Webkinz, but I am always fascinated with new approaches. As always, I have a new plan developing for K-2 after listening to the whole podcast. I may even extend it to the third grade. The plan is based on a web site sponsored by Sesame Workshop and Merrill Lynch Foundation called Panwapa: Where Kids Shape the World.

I spent some time last night with my eleven year old helper son, Stephen. I didn't want to just set up an id for myself. I wanted to see how he'd interact with the site. It was evident that it's too "babyish" for a fifth grader.

As Kevin mentioned during Bit by Bit, it is a fantastic site as far as keeping student's private identity information private. When we signed up, it simply wanted to know where in the world (USA) we were located. Stephen then created a character choosing body shapes and clothes. Next he created a house. Finally he created a flag with his favorite food, game, craft, activity, sport, and musical instrument.

We spent a bit of time trying out the various options. We learned that you could look at the "world" of children who have created a "Panwapa kid" as they are called by each of the categories. It's going to be interesting for the primary children. We can see what the world would look like broken down by the foods enjoyed by all the children who have signed up. It looks like noodles are the favorite right now with 2520 Panwapa kids having that choice on their flag.

Another big part of the web site is visiting the houses of other Panwapa kids and building a card collection. For instance, he clicked on Mexico where there were 859 Panwapa kids. It zoomed in until he saw the various houses. He found a house that he wanted to look at. We then saw the card of the child who created that house.

You can choose to leave a card for the child to let them know you have visited. It gives you a preset choice of messages you can leave the child. Some examples of messages are: "Awesome", "Come visit me and my groovy house", and "Guess what? We both like the same instrument! Come and visit me and I'll show you".

It is a great site for pre-readers. While the messages are shown in text, they are also read to the child.

I will continue to explore the web site and write more about it later. There is a For Caregivers button with some background information. They have a grayed out "Teacher's Guide PDF" so I'm looking forward to those resources. Now I'm off to determine how to arrange each class.