Mystery State Project

Today, I was catching up on my ISED listserv digests and came across a link from Jayme Johnson over at the Village school. She recommended the Mystery State Skype Project. I LOVE IT! In this innovative Skype project, students sign up to meet with another class to guess which state they are from. Each class comes up with clues to share at the first meeting. From the site:

"Have your students come up with at least 10 great clues about your state ranging from easy to hard. Make sure to stress to your students that the clues need to be fact based and well researched. You want to make sure you include topography. Great beginning clues would be who the Governor is or showing a picture of the state capitol."

It's a bit late to be signing up, so get on the ball!

Mixed Ink: Does it work?

I read about Mixed Ink in the March/April Learning and Leading with Technology. Now, I've TRIED to use several real-time document sharing tools, such as Skrbl. I led an interesting fifth grade technology class one day in which we were all brainstorming ideas for a potential project with our partner class in Turkey. It did not go well. The site was overwhelmed with so many folks trying to log in at the same time so it was very slow and the entries went right on top of one another. It wasn't a disaster, but it didn't work the way I wanted it to. Mixed Ink supposedly does this better. It's like a google doc but more streamlined for collaborations between multiple parties. No invitations needed. What's different is that the group "rates" the best edits and the very best "version" is the one that is featured. It's free, but if you get the educator version, you get it ad-free and password protected. Otherwise it's very public. I'll letcha know how it works. Has anyone tried it?

Collaborative Writing: Etherpad

Our fifth grade teacher is starting a Poetry Unit this week and is looking for some ideas for ways to innovate. I thought of this new tool I just read about in February's Tech & Learning Magazine: Etherpad. In the article, "8 Free and Easy Ways to Begin Educating Innovatively" they feature this "group writing" tool. As a part of my keyboarding unit, I always run a "round robin writing" day, which is like a combination of musical chairs and choose your own adventure stories. Kind of. Students start at their own desks and write a title to a story. Just a title. Then, they move clockwise around the room to the next desk and sit down, read the title, and they have two minutes to type the beginning to that story. After two minutes, we switch again and the students change the color of their writing (so I can tell who wrote what) and continue what the person before them started. Since our periods are only 45 minutes long, we only get to switch about 10 times. But that's 45 minutes straight of keyboarding and creative writing.

So, what does all this have to do with Etherpad? I had this idea that the teacher could create perhaps five or six rooms and give students in groups those URLS. The students could each interactively, in real-time, write a poem together. The teacher could assign a topic for the poem or it could be an open subject.

Then, perhaps 10 minutes of class could be the editing time and instead of writing the students must collectively edit their poem. Finally, the poems are shared. Of course, there would have to be some pre-teaching on certain elements that must be included: maybe the poem has to rhyme or use iambic pentameter. Whatever. You get the idea.

We'll see if she will go for the idea.

All Atwitter for Twiddla

This month, I start a new job. I'm really elated about this new job, as idealist-type folks like myself are wont to do. I'm still teaching technology next year, but only part time. The other part of my time, I'll be consulting with US and international schools on distance learning. Basically, teaching folks how to use cool Web 2.0 tools to connect and collaborate on projects. In an effort to be the very best I can be, I'm checking out a bunch of new tools (thus the last, like, four posts) and I have another new crush. This time, it's Twiddla. According to their own site you can:
"Mark up websites, graphics, and photos, or start brainstorming on a blank canvas. Browse the web with your friends or make that conference call more productive than ever. No plug-ins, downloads, or firewall voodoo - it's all here, ready to go when you are. Browser-agnostic, user-friendly."

I have tried it out with a colleague who I had asked to help me edit a lesson plan. All I had to do was click a SINGLE button that says "start a meeting" and send my colleague an invitation. She joined me in about 10 seconds and bam! we were editing the document and chatting about it as well in real-time audio.

Later, by clicking My Account (which I don't even recall creating--wait, is that scary?) I was able to see a TRANSCRIPT of the whole gosh darn event!! I'll say it again: It's a crush but it could be true love. This could be the tool of which I've been dreaming that will allow our students in developing nations to collaboratively develop projects and presentations. We shall see.

Cereal as a Cultural Indicator?

I'd like to think I know a cool project when I see one, so when my school's social studies teacher came to talk to me about a sociological experiment involving Breakfast, she had me at "coffee." Her idea is to have her students collect data about what people in various countries eat for breakfast, and then to analyze that data for social, economic, cultural and even religious significance. Awesome, right? We've got the 4 Breakfast wiki for the project set up and initial emails sent out to our World Village partners, it has been posted in various places, now we play the waiting game. Won't you come and play with us?

Jottit

Thanks to Kathy Schrock, who recently posted on her blog about a new wiki site called Jottit. What makes it great is that it will allow you to create a wiki in about five seconds flat that does not require an email address. You can set it up so that anyone who knows the password (which you set) can edit the site. The home page is so simple that I almost didn't know what to do...there is only ONE button and ONE box. My brain almost could not process the simplicity.

Here's the catch--yes there is a catch. It's not easy to format the text, add hyperlinks, or add pictures. I had a tough time figuring it out myself. It's not HTML, but there is some kind of formatting coding that they use to get things like headers and bullets. Kids could learn it, but it's not as simple as the wikispaces wiki. If you want a class blog that is text only, this is YOUR TOOL!