Planning for the Third Trimester

As I enter the third trimester of classes, I like to reflect on what I've accomplished in each grade and what I want to make sure we accomplish by the end of May. This month, I am including my students in the review and planning.

Revisiting September

In September, I started classes by introducing the students in sixth through eighth grade to ISTE NETS for Students. I think it is essential to get the students thinking about the goals of their computer education and assist in evolving the program. I am trying this for the first time with my seventh grade students and hope to go through the process with the sixth and eighth graders. 

The first step was to review the ISTE NETS. I introduced our New Jersey State standards which are based on the ISTE standard. The students have existing work groups. Each group received a short list of projects that we've completed to date (see Project List below).

Small Group Work

The group is dividing the standards into three parts: state standards, first three NETS, second three NETS. A group leader goes through the project one part at a time. The students search and determine what goals they believe they met through the project. They are recording their selections with x's in a spreadsheet.

Individual Work

The individual portion of the work involves creating a personal reflection in a word processor. I am trying to review old skills and introduce some new skills. This provides a great vehicle for content. 

The students will create a "proper" heading with ONE tab set following the school's guidelines. They will indent their paragraphs using the hanging paragraph setting and the ruler. There will be one short paragraph per project. They will reflect on what they felt they learned through the project, what they liked, and what they did not like about the project. They will write a final paragraph telling me what type of project they would most like to work on next with a specific example and tell what standards we would be meeting through the project. The paragraph will be double-spaced with proper spacing between words and after punctuation marks. It is to be proofread for good spelling and grammar.

Whole Group Reflection

We will end the process with a group reflection on projects suggested by the students and choose at least one project to complete in the last trimester of school. I am hoping to find great value in the process and continue to do this every year.

Project List

Project 1
A. Learn to create and animate a fish and your choice of animation.
B. Choose your license from: copyright, creative commons, and public domain.

Project 2
A. Practice creating citations for the Daughters of the American Revolution essay resources.

Project 3
A. Create “Something You Probably Don’t Know About Me” presentation.
B. Present your presentation to the group.

Project 4
A. Create “Evidence of Advent” photos and select photo for iMovie. If you did not assist in this project, explain what project you were completing and why it took you extra time.

Project 5
A. Discussion about “What To Do If You Find Upsetting Information on the Internet”.(Boys/Girls)

Project 6
A. Create Dice, Country, and Donation Spreadsheets.
B. Write Country and Donation Analysis.

Project 7
A. Learn to determine who was responsible for the DAR web sites.
B. Determine in small group and present to whole class on the value of the information on a selected web site.
C. Write a letter to the creator(s) of your web site.

Image Citation:
Photo (c) 2011 Ann Oro.

Web Site Evaluation Sixth Grade

I am working on the concept of web site evaluation. Last year I found a web site evaluation webquest by Joyce Valenza. The link I had no longer works or I would reference it here. I want to document the process as I prepare to do the exercise with the year's sixth grade students.

Teacher Pre-Work

I had a list of links to dinosaur web pages on last year's wiki page. I checked the links to make sure they still worked and then copied and pasted the wiki page for this year's class. As I reflected on what we accomplished last year, I removed a link for Barney and added three web sites. The Barney web site was too childish.


Next I break the class into multiple groups of four team members: content specialist, authority/credibility specialist, bias/purpose specialist, and usability/design specialist. Since I did not have a multiple of four students, I added the additional students to the authority/credibility team.

Introducing the Project

I will have two groups of eight students examine six web sites. Last year, I explained every project job to the whole class. This year, I will only give a thorough explanation to the specialists. The specialists, in turn, will present their new knowledge to the whole class when we have a whole group discussion. I am doing this because the current seventh grade did not seem to retain much of what I thought they had learned last year.

Jobs - Content Specialist 

These students will look at their six assigned sites and determine if the content would be valuable for sixth grade students writing a research report on dinosaurs. They will try to determine if the information is comprehensive and accurate. They will compare the sites and decide which has something unique to offer the reader. If there are links, they will try to determine if they provide additional worthwhile content. They will determine if the information was recently updated or old. Finally, they will decide if the information on this web site might be as good as or better than an encyclopedia or other printed book.

Jobs - Authority/Credibility Specialist 

These students will learn to truncate the URL and try to determine who is the owner of the web site. They will find out if the content has sources sited or documented. I will teach the students about domain names (.com, .edu., .net, .org, .gov) and help them think about how this might lead them to think about the authority or credibility of the site. They will learn about personal web pages and the ~ in a URL. Finally, they will learn to use the advanced search to find out who links to the web page.

Jobs - Bias/Purpose Specialist 

These students will try to determine why the site was created. They will also learn about domain names and try to find out how the information may or may not be biased. They will look for hidden messages such as people trying to sell dinosaur toys. I will be having them focus on three questions: Are there facts or opinions on the web site? Are people trying to sell something? Is the web site trying to entertain? 

Jobs - Usability/Design Specialist

These students will scour the site to determine if the information is user-friendly: are there dead links, is the content well labeled, and can they find their way back to the main page easily. The students will look for misspelled words and grammatical errors. They will evaluate whether the site seems cluttered or if the links within the site are broken.


I have two handouts to assist the students in their jobs. I've placed them on my resource wiki. 

Student Group Discussion

Following the individual web site review, each specialist ranks the web sites from 1 (best) to 6 (worst). The specialists then get together as a group of four. They go through each web site and share with each other the positive and negative aspects of the pages. As a group, they group rank the sites from 1 to 6. The students will share the best site and the worst site of the six they reviewed to the entire class.

Group Debriefing

This year, I will have the specialists come up in pairs and explain to the group, as a whole, what they learned to look for when deciding on the worthiness of a web site. Hopefully this group debriefing will help the students retain the lesson in a way that I did not last year.

A New Kindle

This week I received a nice surprise from my sister...a Kindle. I've wanted to get one for a while, but wasn't sure if I'd rather wait to get an iPad. Now the decision's been made for me and I'm quite happy about it.

What To Do First?

Since I already have a number of physical books I am finishing, I did not want to spend money on a random book. I did want to test the device, though, so I went in search of some free downloads. There are a number of ways to do this. I went the route that seemed easiest to me and looked at some lists on Amazon.

On this Listmania list I found a few titles that sounded interesting:
Autobiography of a Yogi - 4 1/2 stars
Young People, Ethics, and the New Digital Media: A Synthesis From the Good Play Project - 3 stars
Living and Learning With New Media: Summary of Findings From the Digital Youth Project - 4 stars

From a second Listmania list I found:
The Rosary - 5 stars (a 1910 romance in the vein of Pride and Prejudice)

I found a couple of word games that have been entertaining. Every Word and Shuffled Row. I didn't expect to use games on a Kindle, but they were available and free so I downloaded them. They are good for the brain cells and work well.

First Paid Book

It didn't take long for me to find a book that peaked my interest. I came across a post on The Principal's Posts blog called Living on the edge. The book caught my attention through a quote about how Lyn connected people who are organizing events such as EdCamp NYC to pull:

"I can say with a fair amount of certainty that the educators involved in the passion-driven organization of these events harnessed the power of pull to make these learning experiences a reality for attendees."

I was curious about what the power of pull might be. I followed the link to the book The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion by John Hagel III and John Seely Brown. From Lyn's post I learned that the authors talk about the shift from access to attract to achieve by making small moves to effect big change. This type of thinking is in line with a lot of other reading I've been doing over the last few years.


The book, at $18.15 for the physical copy, is not too expensive. I would not have driven down to the store to pick it up until I had finished other books. The price on the Kindle was $9.34. Inexpensive enough for me to download it and start reading last night.


After having read 2% of the book, I felt comfortable with the format and enjoyed starting to use the highlighting feature. In the back of my mind I was wondering how I could use this feature to gather all my thoughts, but didn't spend a lot of time thinking about it.


It was also interesting to see highlights from other readers (which can be turned off) within the text of my book - along with a count of how many people highlighted that passes.

A Great Way to Gather Notes

While I was on Twitter today, I came across a tweet by Tim Lauer (someone I just started following yesterday). He pointed out a blog post about exporting Kindle notes and highlights. This is fantastic! It took a couple of minutes to figure it out, but this is a game changer for me.


I signed on to my Amazon account, but could not figure out where the highlights might be. I went back to the exporting post and noticed that I should be at the http://kindle.amazon.com site. Still no luck. Even though I was signed on with my Amazon user name and password, it said Hello Unknown at the top of the screen. I had to use the drop down box to Edit My Profile. As soon as I did that, I was able to click on the Your Highlights link and there were my highlights from the book. I want to look a little closer at the post about exporting notes and highlights, but already this is an improvement over having the notes stuck in the Kindle!

While Finishing This Post

As I was re-reading the post to check for grammar errors, I looked back at the Your Highlights page and noticed a link that said "Read more at location 125". I wanted to see the effect and was presented with a link to download the Kindle for Mac (OS 10.5 or later) app.

Once the app was installed, I clicked on the link again and was presented with the actual page in the book complete with yellow highlighter.

I can't wait to play some more!

Image Citation:
Kindle picture by Ann Oro.

Spreadsheets and Reflections

During the past couple of weeks, I have been working on spreadsheet reviews and extensions with the sixth and seventh grade students. Both groups of students have been working with spreadsheets since the fourth grade. 

Hands On Work

I wanted to have the students generate their own data and tie into the curriculum in the school. Having taught sixth and seventh grade math, I know that they work with probability and decimal numbers. After some thought, I resurrected some projects I used to do with the students in math class as a more computer-centric operation.

I started with a probability project. The idea is to examine what probability is as a theory and give the students the ability to experiment to see the actual outcome. I've written the project up on my wiki and have handouts on the page, too.

The students enjoyed rolling the dice and choosing where to do it. They were sitting at tables and on the floor. Once they gathered the data and typed it into the spreadsheet, we discussed the difference between rolling the die a few times, seventy-five times, and over 1,000 times.

Making Choices While Gathering Data

In the second project, the students use the CIA World Factbook to gather information about countries. The students use a spreadsheet to calculate the percentage of land area versus the total area of a country. They calculate the number of people per square kilometer. I have a full write up on the lesson here on the wiki page.


Reflection is important when I use spreadsheets in my personal work. I wanted the students to not only gather the data, but then reflect on what the numbers mean. In order to accomplish this, they are following up the spreadsheet work with two reflection paragraphs. It gives them practice in setting up several document features in the word processor. 


The reflections are as follows from my handout to the students:
The reflection should have one paragraph that tells me how you went about deciding on which countries to select. Did you just learn about some countries? If you just learned about the countries, like Christmas Island, where in the world is it? Have you known about countries already? What led you to choose the countries? With the countries that you knew about already, did the capital sound familiar? Did you think a different location would have been the capital? Were there capitals that you never hear about before?
 
The second paragraph should have a reflection on the calculations. What do you notice about the % land area column? Please be specific. Which country had the largest population? Did it also have the biggest number of people per square kilometer? If it did not have the biggest number of people per square kilometer, how many countries had more people per square kilometer? Did this surprise you? Which country had the most people per square kilometer? What can you deduce about the country that had the most people per square kilometer?
 

Ten Days to Make a Difference
Following the idea behind the blog post at Make It Interesting,I created a project in which the students imagine being given $10,000 per day for 10 days. The question is: How will you make a difference to your family, school, community, state, country, and/or the world. 


They are enjoying looking up the prices of items and deciding on charities. I think I will do this project with the seventh and eighth grade. The lesson is written up on my wiki with the student handout.


I'm still trying to decide how I will tie it into the real world. I may simply start a jar for coins and let the students decide what to donate through Heifer International. I'll probably make some sort of matching donation. I'll post another note eventually to share how it worked out.

Changes From Previous Years

I've always worked on spreadsheets with sixth through eighth grade, but the lessons always felt contrived. We created spreadsheets with school lunches, imagined class trips, and magic squares.


My hope is that these projects will make a deeper connection with the students.


Photo Citation:
Ann Oro: Family of Cows

The 30 Goals Challenge

If you are looking to expand your investigations on small ideas in education, you might want to look into Shelly Terrell's 30 Goals Challenge. While it is not really a technology project, there will be different web sites mentioned through the thirty days.

Goal One

Shelly is posting a daily video and is suggesting a different idea each day.

Today's small goal was to be a beam for someone and find a way to privately support them. The larger goal was to find a way to support a student. I was able to do something in both these areas today.

More Background

Shelly wrote an eBook about the 30 Goals she shared in 2010. You might want to take a look and see what she did last year. She said the thirty goals will be different from 2010, so you might get something totally different out of reading the eBook and participating in the 2011 challenge through her blog.

Image Citation:
Ann Oro
http://www.flickr.com/photos/njtechteacher/5209207353/