Mission Patches and Time Zone Experiences

The fourth and fifth graders are busily working on their projects following the surveys.

Fourth Grade Mission Patches
I am so much happier with the mission patches the fourth graders are creating this year. In previous years, I didn't give them a planning sheet and it showed in their work. We did not vote on and analyze the NASA images in previous years.

This week we prepared to finish the project and I'm adding one new final twist to it. We exported the images as JPEGs from KidPix. It gave us a chance to talk about the word "export" (as in exporting apples to another country) and how it relates to computers. We will bring them into Word next week. In Word, they will have to describe why they included the different elements on their patch. I will be hanging up all the patches in the hallway and they will vote on their favorite classmate created image. This will be the first time they export an image from KidPix to use in Word.

Fifth Grade Time Zone Experiences
The fifth grade spent some time reading what the students in New York, Australia, and England have typed into the wiki. During the week, they found their three assigned time periods to document. Last week, they brought their class schedule to the computer lab. We have the results from the sleeping and waking survey, too. This should give them some data to include in their time of day chart.

Once that is complete, we can update the Time Zone Experiences wiki and begin learning how all the digital cameras work. I have five digital cameras and twenty-two students. If I pair them up, I can have two different teams working on two different projects. While some students are working with the cameras, I will have the other students learning to import the photos and label them. I will need one more small project to keep everyone occupied. They will be using the camera to document different time periods in the school day for the Time Zone Experiences wiki.

Quick Surveys in Fourth and Fifth Grade

I have two different projects going on in the fourth and fifth grade. It was so simple to create a Survey Monkey questionnaire for use in our discussion. The students enjoyed the quick survey and it provided us with some interesting results.

The Fourth Grade
We are continuing to work on the Space Mission Patch project. The students completed their initial research on what was contained on each of the patches in the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo programs. I wanted to quickly roll up which were the most popular patches. Last night I created a free one question survey. It was a simple "select one choice questionnaire".

Once the questionnaire was created, I posted the link to my school delicious account. The students are becoming quite adept in starting up Firefox, choosing the All Tags triangle, and selecting the fourth grade links to find the required website.

The results: The favorite patch in my first of two fourth grade classes was the Apollo 17 patch with 35.3% of the vote (6 votes). There was a tie for second with Apollo 11, 13, and Gemini 6 all receiving 11.8% of the vote (2 votes).

What We Did With the Results
We brought up each of the winning patches, I had them point out the details and try to decide why NASA included those details for those patches. We looked at which patches used Roman numbers for the mission number.

Next Steps
I gave out a simple research project to compare some of Earth's statistics with another planet. They took a worksheet to the computer to compare the diameter, high and low temperature, length of a day, length of a year, number of moons, and number of rings. They completed that research today using Windows to the Universe. They decided on a name for their ship. The missions are the Angel missions for our parish's patron saint, Saint Michael the Archangel.

The Fifth Grade
The fifth grade continues to work toward understanding Greenwich Mean Time. They learned to edit a wiki for the first time. I created a sand box area to have them edit the page and tell what GMT stood for, what it is used for, and how many hours difference there is between GMT and Eastern Daylight Time.

All but one student could tell me what the abbreviation of GMT meant. Most had a fair answer for what it is used for. They were still a bit shaky on the number of hours difference between GMT and our Eastern Daylight Time.

Survey Time
Next, we must begin gathering data for our partner classes to tell what happens during different times in the day for the Time Zone Experiences wiki. I was certain that the students all started and ended their days at different times and I wanted to be able to quickly see that information. Last night, I set up a quick, free seven question survey over on Survey Monkey. They navigated over from the fifth grade delicious links at the beginning of class to complete the survey.

Armed with our data, we are ready to begin personal bits of writing to explain what happens at different times of day in our part of the world.

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Image Citation
Comer, Clint. "Nap Time." Clintus McGintus' photostream. 2008 1 Oct. 2007 14 Jan.
http://farm1.static.flickr.com/165/356600905_b07c509dca.jpg?v=0

Space Crew Mission Patches

The fourth grade learns about the planets early in the year. As I was looking for a project at that grade level a few years ago, I found this web quest.

2008-2009 Mission
In previous years, I more or less followed the entire web quest. Some parts worked really well like designing the student's own mission patch. Some parts did not work as I expected them to, like sending the postcard.

This year, I have the fourth grade twice per week for forty-two minutes instead of once per week. I took this opportunity to use the web quest, but make the project work better for me.

Part One
The first part of the mission has taken about two classes. We still used a link from the web quest website to get to an actual collection of mission patches from NASA for the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo missions. I used to just have the students look at the patches. This year, they were armed with notepads and pencils to find the following information:

• Mercury - list the astronauts names and how they incorporated the mission number on the patch
• Gemini/ Apollo - tell how many astronauts were on the mission and again tell how they incorporated the mission number on the patch (two missions do not list names)

As the students went through each patch, they were to put a plus sign (+) next to any mission patch they really liked.

Finally, they were to go back to every patch that they wrote a plus sign and look at it again. They were to circle their absolute favorite mission patch.

Part Two
This week, I will have them take a short Survey Monkey survey to find out which were the most popular patches. Once we do that, I will give each student a printout with a set of questions comparing some statistics about Earth to one of the other seven planets. They will tell how many hours it takes their assigned planet to go around the sun, how much time it takes the planet to rotate on its axis, how many moons it has, how many rings it has, and the minimum and maximum temperatures on the planet. They will be using the Windows to the Universe website. They will have to compare the results to the statistics for Earth. Each year, the science teacher assigns the students a planet to research as a project. This year, they should be better prepared to locate information using Windows to the Universe.

Part Three
The students will design their own mission patch for their imaginary trip to the assigned planet in Kid Pix. It will give them practice in changing to the Small Kids Mode so they can stamp ABC letters for their last name, mission name, and ship name. They will use the Space stamp set to decorate the patch. Finally, we will print and compare the completed patches.They will be asked to incorporate the statistics generated in Part Two to choose the mission name and the decoration for their patch. They will use the knowledge of the real mission patches to create a mission patch of their own.

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Image Citation:
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/Insignias/merc8.gif

KidPix 4 Stickers Working

Do you use KidPix 4? Have you been having trouble getting the stickers and animations to work on OS X or Windows since Quicktime has been upgraded on your machines? Well, I have good news for you!

Every so often, I go to the Kid Pix Deluxe 4 (School Edition) support page. This week I had the news I have been waiting for. They have an upgrade to version 4.1 which fixes the problem. I downloaded the ZIP file for OS X and installed it. Everything is back and working again.

I'm so happy because now I can do one of my beginning of the year projects for third grade. We complete a ABC chart of one sticker per letter of the alphabet. It is a great exercise in placing, resizing, deleting, and flattening stickers, and using the save and replace command every few stickers.

Presenting at K12 Online

I am so excited to be presenting at the K12 Online Conference this year. When the call went out for proposals, I suggested putting one together with Anna Baralt. We were selected and will be presenting Monsters Bloom in Our Wiki in the Kicking It Up a Notch strand. It is a look at a project we did in the 2007-2008 school year.

Today the teaser was put up on the K12 Online page. I created it using iMovie 08 with images drawn by our students for the project last year. I found a wonderful piece of music, Core Meltdown, by George Wood over on podsafeaudio.com.

I used the music in a family vacation video. I quickly realized how powerful combining photos and music can be. It becomes even more so if you carefully match the image changes to the beats of the music. Those lessons learned on the family video really helped as I created the K12 teaser.