Paper and Electronic Research in the Fifth Grade

The fifth grade students continue to extend their learning through presentations and reports. They write a report on an influential person around February and a president around April. The intention is to have the student complete all the work in class and learn how to independently find answers with a guide in the classroom.
I include links to web sites we use and my project wiki with more detailed directions.

Who Wrote This Information
We begin the year with a little research into time zones. In the fourth grade, the students practice paging forward and backward through pages. They learn to do simple searches in Pics4Learning to find images. They copy citations for images into presentations. The students review those skills as they complete a worksheet about time zones.

After they work, we regroup to review the answers and begin thinking about who wrote those pages. It is important to know that the Internet is a collection of pages that anyone can write. I chose two pages for the students. America's Story is maintained by the Library of Congress. Mystery Class is maintained by Annenberg Learner.

Digital Citizenship Skills
Every year, I attempt to have the students collaborate with another class outside our time zone to collaborate and share through Skype and Edmodo. We need to work synchronously with our partner to have a Skype call. Skype allows us to work at the same time from different locations. This year, Vicky Sedgwick and I connected our students via a Mystery Skype call. The students used their geography skills to determine where the partner class was located. The students moved from hemisphere, to continent, to state, to county, to town. It was very exciting. We will eventually work on digital citizenship skills as the students connect with each other in small groups in Edmodo.

The students learn to communicate appropriately while on a Skype call. There is a lot of learning involved in inviting another class to join ours including speaking clearly, listening well, and behaving appropriately in front of a web camera. Mistakes are made in a learning environment. After the call, we talk about how to improve our communications the next time we work together, if necessary. The students eventually collaboratively edit a Google Drawing and learn to respect the work of others by adding to, not destroying, another student's work. They communicate with posts to an Edmodo group and learn to type appropriate and respectful messages.

Research Skills
The fifth grade teacher assigns each students a historic figure in late January. This is the first time I assist the students in finding their own answers for a teacher's essay. The students receive a template in a document to collect their answers. We have tried paper worksheets over the years, but the document seemed to really help them this year.

The big skills in completing their research is learning how to build a query in Sweet Search 4 Me and Google. I want the students to begin to build on thinking about who wrote the website. The learn to use quotation marks around search terms to make sure the name of their historic figure is on the results page. They work to bookmark the actual web page so they can return a create their citation.

Citation Skills
Through the searching phase, the students bookmark web pages and note the name of their bookmark or encyclopedia in a word processing document. When the project is nearing completion, the students and I practice creating a citation for the encyclopedia on one class day, the web sites on a second class day, and formatting of the entries in a word processing document on the third day.

Giving Students Feedback
The students turn their completed work into Edmodo. I give the students feedback by marking up their documents. When they open their documents with my highlighting I ask them to reply in Edmodo with sentences about what they will improve in their next document. These are solid first steps in looking for information in encyclopedias, on the Internet, and citing sources.

Third Grade Collaborative Project

Earlier this year I saw a note posted on the Elementary Tech Teacher's ning. A teacher was looking for partners for a collaborative project. We've had a great partnership and are still working together. I wanted to write some notes to remember how the project was planned, what worked well, and what we're planning through the end of the year.

The Project's Beginning

After the teacher and I communicated through email, we agreed that the goal of the project was to create templates that the students could edit collaboratively. We would partner his second/third grade combined class with my two third grade classes. He was flexible with the content as he wanted to see how children paired at a distance would work together.


My third grade students had not yet edited a wiki or blogged. His students had been blogging and they edited a wiki last year. I used the knowledge I've gained over the last few years and the New Jersey Core Curriculum Content Standards as a guide to the content.

Learning to Edit a Wiki

In the past, I've been successful with creating a "sandbox" for the students to play in to get a feel for the wiki editor. I set up some quick, easy questions to answer in a template and then created a link for each student.


My students had not used the digital camera, so I added a "What do your shoes look like today" question. In computer class I taught one student how to use the digital camera and each student taught the next how to use the camera. The following week, I had resized the images, loaded them to the wiki, and taught the students how to find the image and place it on their wiki page.

Learning on a Local Level

The students really didn't learn too much about the state/province of our partner's country. We did learn about the similarities and differences between our schools. I believe this makes sense at the second and third grade level because they tend to be more concrete thinkers.


We set up a page to compare, via digital photos, different rooms and daily objects in our schools. The students enjoyed taking photos and comparing the images. 


Our partners were fascinated to find out that we wear uniforms every day. My students were surprised their partners ate lunch in their classroom every day. We have a cafeteria with hot and cold lunch. Their school does not. There were many other aspects they enjoyed comparing.

Comparing Weather

Many elementary classrooms have a focus on the weather. This is a daily event in the children's lives and something they could easily compare. Our classes kept a log of the daily temperature and the students took turns taking a photo from the school to show what the scenery looked like with the daily weather. 

Partner Table

We had partner pages. I partnered up the students of both schools. For each partner group, I gave them a 3-2-1 set of questions:


What three things would you like to know about Canada/the United States?
What two things would you like to know about your partner's school day?
Tell one thing you think you know about your partner's country.


I asked the students to guess how many days our weather would be the same.


As a bit of an inspiration, I gave the student groupings animal names. The students were easily able to communicate with each other through their wiki page. 


My students easily took to editing the wiki. They learned how to change the text color when answering their partner's questions. My students learned how to use Pics4Learning to link to an image of their animals on their wiki page.  I added the citations and spoke with the students about thanking the people for their images with a link.

Connecting via Skype

One of the favorite parts of the project for both classes was getting to meet each other via Skype calls. Each of my third grade classes had one call with our partner. During the call they were able to ask and answer each other's questions. Next year I will have my students do a little more prep work before the call. I'll have the students prepare questions with their classroom teacher and share the questions, in advance, with our Canadian partners.

Movie Making

Both classes had students who were disappointed that they did not get a chance to meet their partners on the Skype call. The Canadian teacher and I had each student make a little 20-30 second video recording. In the movie each student shares their group name, pseudo name, real first name, favorite subject(s) in school, favorite thing to do outside of school, favorite toy, and favorite thing about the project.


The students wrote their answers in advance - giving them some time for introspection. I set up the camera and had their scripts on a table. While not recording their part, students quietly watched the Canadian video with headphones. When a student finished recording their part in the movie, they quietly told the next student to get their script. We recorded the entire class in about 15 minutes. 


Afterward, I edited the movie into one finished project.

Finishing Up the Project

We started working in the beginning of March. We'll continue editing and adding to the wiki. In April, the students will find two tall tales from their country. We will have one Skype call with all of the children in May. Each class will take turns telling a tall tale. It will be a nice way to close out the project.

I've given all of my students a unique user name and password. I sent a note home to the families. It's really fun watching the students add little edits to the wiki page from home. As with all projects, I've subscribed to the RSS feed for all changes and notes. It's been a great experience and a real way to practice digital citizenship!


Please enjoy looking at our Canada-US wiki.

Reverse Photo Search

I always learn something on the Tech Chick Tips podcast. Several months ago, I heard about www.tineye.com and tucked the idea away. I got a chance to try it last night.

The Set Up

I was speaking with Vicky about potential projects for the coming school year. The conversation drifted to digital citizenship on the Internet. I wanted to share a lesson idea with her, but it was in ActivInspire. As I captured screens and put them into PowerPoint, I realized that I didn't copy the citations onto the flipchart when I made it. I wanted to upload the PowerPoint to Slideboom, but needed those citations first.


I always search for Creative Commons licensed photos and usually look for Attribution 2.0 Generic first on Flickr...but how to find it.

TinEye Reverse Image Search

I decided to give TinEye a try. Anna and Helen made it sound like you just take any image and send it to the website, so I removed all the extra words and buttons that had been on the page and took a screen shot of the image on the Mac. It turned into a simple PNG image. I uploaded the image to TinEye and WOW there were several sites that had used the same image.

An even bigger wow is that as I wrote this post I was on a different computer. Rather than go downstairs to load the image to Blogger, I opened the PowerPoint I had put on Slideboom and captured a screen shot of just part of the image. Tineye found it again! It wasn't even as sharp as the original.


There was still a little work to do. On some of the sites I found, they didn't cite their source. On others, only http://www.flickr.com/photos/emeryjl was cited. I had to use the logic that I would have used when I originally found the photo. I thought I would have typed Facebook, so I entered the word facebook into Flickr's search bar for the user hoyasmeg and it turned up!

No So Lucky the Second Time

I had a second image and was not so lucky with TinEye. I imagine TinEye does not search Flickr. I went to Flickr and tried to remember what I would have typed to generate the image. I don't know what my original search was, but I tried patrick parade boys since the image I wanted had two boys who were at a Saint Patrick's Day parade. No luck. Then I tried patrick parade boy and there it was!


What I Learned
First, it's easier to cite your sources when you find them. No surprise there. Second, TinEye is a great way to do a reverse image search. Third, know your patterns. I usually look for images in Flickr Attribution 2.0 Generic. Finally, think through keywords you might have used and if that fails think through keywords pertaining to the image as you are looking at it.


Sounds like a good lesson for the students this year.

---

Image Citations:
Emery, James. "Looking at Facebook photo_2008". hoyasmeg's photostream. 2009 May 9. 2010 Sep 5. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/emeryjl/3495302347/




"Kids in the Parade". greenmelinda's photostream. 2007 Mar 18. 2010 Sep 5. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thegreengirl/426156665/


"Boy watching parade". greenmelinda's photostream. 2007 Mar 18. 2010 Sep 5. Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/thegreengirl/426147755/


Murphy, William. "I REFUSE TO MOVE". infomatique's photostream. 2007 Mar 17. 2010 Sep 5. Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.0 Generic.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/infomatique/425315081/

Be Cyber Smart and First Grade

Every year I work through several Internet safety and citizenship concepts with all the various grades. This week, I am reviewing a computer ethics topic titled "Is This Yours?" at the CyberSmart web site.

Be Cyber Smart

In general, I like the CyberSmart! Student Curriculum. They have lessons in:

• Safety and Security Online
• Manners and Cyber Citizenship
• Cyberbullying
• Authentic Learning and Creativity
• Research and Information Fluency
• Twenty First Century Challenges

When the link is clicked on the menu on the left side of the screen lesson plans and student activity sheets are revealed. The lesson plans are great. They walk the teacher through an overview, objectives, NETS standard, and provide a list of materials, an introduction, and step by step lessons to teach.

From Simple Concept to Analysis

The simple concept behind the lesson on Is This Yours? is that children have to realize that computers in the school are property that must be respected. It comes with a little coloring sheet for use in the discussion. I've rearranged my room and it will be harder for the students to color than in previous years. I've modified the experience by putting together a template in Kidspiration.

Kidspiration Template

This week we will use the template to find three pictures representing items the student may or may not need permission to use. I've placed the template on my wiki. They will then switch to the writing view and add a sentence for each image telling why they do or do not need permission to use the item. The final work will be imported into Word and turned into a single paragraph. I think this extension should help them analyze the lesson using images that might more closely represent their personal experience.

CyberSmart's lesson is a great beginning discussion in digital citizenship. I am looking forward to the complementary Kidspiration template enhancing the content.