New Projects: Busy as Little Bees

What am I doing? Busy as a bee. I thought I'd just share some recent projects and tools we are using:

Preschool: We visit PBSkids Games section. Not exactly ground breaking, I know.

Kindergarten: They just started learning about patterns so we visit the National Library of Virtual Manipulatives and complete their various patterning activities.

First Grade: They're learning about money/making change/selling items so we use Jump Start First Grade, The Money Challenge and The Lemonade Stand to reinforce those skills.

Second Grade: We just finished a several week unit using Scratch programming to create animations of the bean plant life cycle. Here is an example of one. Now, we are beginning Martin Luther King Jr timelines using Timeline Maker or SumoPaint (the kids choose).

Third Grade: They just finished a Microsoft Word unit (not terribly exciting) and are now beginning keyboarding. We use Type to Learn 3 and some old school keyboarding drills as well. I even have a very old word processor I show them and give them a chance to try out!

Fourth Grade: They just finished a copyright unit that I designed and described here. Now they are starting a keyboarding unit of practice.

Fifth Grade: These students just created blogs for the book Kokopelli's Flute. Each student chose a character from the book and composed one blog post per chapter as if they were keeping a journal. They were graded on creativity (did they use a song or poem instead of just text?) and communication skill. They were also graded on their commenting skills with other kids...they had to comment on at least 10 other blogs. We used Kidblog. They're set to private at this point. So we can't share here.  Now they are using Masher to create short travel videos for South Africa. It's our very first time using this tool and I'm nervous. Our tools in this year have not always gone well (Glogster shut down mid project, MyFakewall functioned horribly, Nota had glitches). Kidblog was awesome so I'm hoping for another score.

New Social Studies Interactives: Mission US and Life Without the Bill of Rights

This Spring, our fifth graders are introduced to the American Revolution in their Social Studies classes. They even have an overnight trip to Gettysburg, Pennsylvania. Each year, I do my best to help integrate technology into their studies and I am really excited about two new online tools, both discovered thanks to Learning and Leading with Technology.

Mission US is a free, online role playing game in which students act as either loyalists or patriots in 1770 Boston, Massachusetts. They act as apprentices and interact with locals, being asked to choose sides as tensions rise. Our fifth graders ADORED this activity. They were constantly getting up to go visit each others' characters and discuss what should be done. Teachers can even manage classes and track student progress through the game. Students can play at home if the teacher sets it up that way--and our students certainly did. There is a classroom guide with ideas for multimedia projects and other classroom activities. I knew it was a hit when the Social Studies teacher said that the kids were bringing up connections in his class, a la "Oh, like in Mission US!"

The next resource is "Life Without The Bill of Rights" from the Bill of Rights Institute. In this free click-and-explore game, students imagine what life might be like if there were no, say, freedom of speech in America. It's not anywhere near as engaging as Mission US since the kids cannot make choices, but it is a graphic representation to which they can connect, something that may be difficult when just reading about, say "freedom to petition." It clarifies some of the more nebulous rights.

I'll be using these again next year.

DIY Space Exploration Podcasts

NASA is now offering Do-It-Yourself Podcast Kits online. From the site:

Are you looking for a new approach to engage your students in science, technology, engineering and mathematics? NASA's Do-It-Yourself Podcast activity sets the stage for students to host a show that features astronauts training for missions, doing experiments in space or demonstrating equipment. We'll provide a set of audio and video clips along with photos and information about a space-related topic. You and your students may choose as many items as you want to include in your project and download them to your computer. Students may use the information we provide or conduct their own research to write a script for an audio or video production.

There's also an accompanying blog for help: http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/diyPodcastBlog.
Image credit: http://www.nasa.gov/audience/foreducators/diypodcast/index.html

Google Earth and Novels

In the March/April issue of Learning and Leading with Technology, there was a great article called Traveling the Novel. Two teachers at Harpeth Hall School in Nashville put together a step-by-step guide to how they use Google Earth to enrich their literature studies in English classes. The article specifically discusses their projects for The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini and one on the Iditarod. These seem a lot like Google Earth Lit Trips, but with the added dimension of requiring students to post quotes/photos and other responses directly on the .kmz file. I've sent the teachers an email asking how they evaluate success on the project and I hope to hear back from them. In the meantime, their wiki "Harpeth Hall Uses Google Earth" has links to the Google Earth files they have already created. Incidentally, they also include directions for using Google Earth!
Image source: http://historytech.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/sam-is-dead.png

Tech Integration Online Curriculum NOW Free!

A parent at our school sent me a heads-up from a company called SAS that has now made their online curriculum available free of charge to all schools. Here's a blurb from their site:
"SAS Curriculum Pathways is a free Web-based software designed to enhance student achievement and teacher effectiveness by providing online curriculum resources in all the core disciplines: English, math, science, social studies/history and Spanish. Appropriate for middle schools, high schools, community colleges, virtual schools, home school, and other teaching and learning environments."
I requested a free subscription for our school and their online lesson plans and web resources look pretty great for a school looking to get serious about technology integration. The Writing Reviser is a particularly neat feature, as well as the Math Interactives. You can watch demos of these features here: http://www.sas.com/govedu/edu/curriculum/demos.html
It has won several awards, including from Technology and Learning, a resource I trust.

A Fully Integrated Experience

This week at our school is International Festival/Multicultural Fair week. For about two weeks in the winter, our entire school learns about various countries and that learning occurs across subjects and grade levels. It's one of the most exhilerating times for me as a teacher. There are those who complain about how much work it is, but they do acknowledge how the level of immersion is maximally effective at helping children learn. I wish every day could be like that in our school. Here are some of our activities in Technology classes, along with some videos of classes in action:
http://wearetheworld.pbwiki.com/TECHNOLOGY
And here's one of the videos:

Effectiveness of Technology in Education

Great article from T.H.E. Journal about The Effectiveness of Technology in Education. Basically, she says it's an irrelevent question. Check it out:
http://www.thejournal.com/articles/21544_5

Monke Ain't No Monk (No Matter His Disguise)

It's one of the blessings of my life and occupation that interesting folks are always sending me interesting things: books, music, movies, magazine articles. This week, I received in the mail at school an article from Orion Magazine (September/October 2005) called "Charlotte's Webpage," by Lowell Monke. The subtitle: "Why children shouldn't have the world at their fingertips." A parent I met at one of my speaking engagements wanted to know what I thought of it.

Well, I have to say, I can't really comment objectively about it. Of course, before I offer any opinion at all, I always consider the source, so I Googled him. Lowell Monke is a notorious critic of technology education--after having spent 15 years in the field himself. Here's why I can't really comment objectively (but, oh yes, I will comment...later): Imagine you're a chef who really loves her job. You get up in the morning psyched to go to your restaurant and you feel fulfilled at the end of the day. Imagine someone hands you an article about how all of society's ills are caused by folks eating out too much. You're going to have quite a difficult time reading the article, but you'll do so because you know you can't (shouldn't) just block out things that don't reinforce your worldview. Then, you'll concoct a brilliant defense because, after all, debate is nothing more than making the other person wrong--not necessarily to show yourself to be right. You just end up being "right" by default (which is why typical debates bore me.)

Here's where my opinion of the article begins. At it's core, behind all of the stinging rhetoric and giant leaps of logical fallacy, I agree with Monke. He's not the iconoclast he appears to be. After we get past all of his false comparisons (placing a sentence about a decrease in the number of minutes children get for recess these days right before a sentence about the national increase in technology spending--proximity in language does not equal correlation) and all of his self-righteous, didactic rants that only serve to demonstrate how his thinking is radically different from 21st century learners, we get to what he really thinks. He thinks the real problem lies in the fact that schools often try to substitute computers for inspired teachers. "Poorly trained, unenthusiastic teachers, using poor methods based on faulty philosophical foundations to teach irrelevant material makes for boring education. The computer has sounded the alarm for all to hear, but that does not meant that in it lies the solution to the problem."

Monke is right. Without question, the largest challenge I face as a technology educator is helping teachers to understand how to design curriculum that requires students to synthesize information--not just to report it. The world is a different place than the one in which Monke grew up in (rural Iowa), where it was considered a skill to be able to locate information in the library. We are all awash in information. Thinking critically about that information is the skill we need to teach children. Admittedly, most teachers have not yet begun to design their curriculum differently to suit "digital natives."

Monke's real thesis comes in after six needless pages: "It is crucial that we increase our efforts to help people recognize and accept the immense responsibility they have to use those machines for the good of humanity." He is absolutely right and this societal responsibility applies to more than just computers...it applies to all media. Not to get all esoteric, but isn't this the primary struggle of humanity? To overcome our baser instincts and rise to the challenge of creating and sustaining a peaceful and honorable community? Monke references a Descartes quote about his desire to "seize nature by the throat." It's really man against himself, not man against machine.

Near the end of the article, Monke concedes that "it's not necessary or sensible to teach children to reject computers. What is necessary is to confront the challenges the technology poses with wisdom and great care."

Now, if Monke had just started out with that thesis and dropped the inflammatory rhetoric, I would have answered with a resounding, "ABSOLUTELY." Most technology educators would. But then, that wouldn't be quite as sexy or alluring in the age of sensationalistic media, hmmmmmm? Wouldn't sell as many articles, hmmmm? He's just an idealist in disguise as a naysayer. Guilty as charged, I judge.

(Thank you to D.T., the parent who sent me the article...it was great fun to read and consider.) Image credit: www.jupiterimages.com

Ahhhhhhh Summertime

It's finally over. All the children who attend my school are now whooping it up in summer camps, European vacations and on couches with thumbs firmly attached to game console controllers. I changed the BIOS settings on all of the computers in my classroom so that they do not automatically come on every weekday morning at 7:45. I put all the CDROMs back in their cases and sent out emails to several teachers at my school asking them to arrange a time to meet with me to discuss curriculum over the summer. My strategy for solving the integration issue has shifted to a purely project-based approach and that's tough to hammer out in a 10 minute hallway meeting. Thankfully most of the teachers have acquiesced to meeting me this summer so that we might be able to lay the groundwork for those projects this summer. When September rolls around, we'll have only smiles to exchange.

In the meantime, I'm off to Boston tomorrow for a roadtrip with my cousin. She and I have taken three roadtrips in four years, once a summer. This year, it's Boston, Salem Massachusetts and Portland Maine--all in six days. Yes, we're ambitious. I'll be taking along my digital voice recorder so that the children in 5th grade who read "The Witch of Blackbird Pond" can hear the Salem tour guide's witticisms and insight. I'll also be taping a discussion about Episcopal School identity with the former Reverend of our school to bring back to the current administrative team. As we grapple with what an Episcopal School identity might be composed of, his words will certainly provide valuable input. So, I'm not leaving it all behind, but it's also not the driving force of our trip. I guess we all take who we are with us, as integrated individuals. Isn't that the whole idea of what we're all doing here anyway?

Image credit: www.photo.net