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"From the Classroom"
I wrote a piece for Education Week Teacher in the fall about student blogging. (It was pretty good if I do say so myself. Check it out HERE.) in prepping to write it, I sent out a couple tweets to find out what types of student blogging projects other educators were running. I got some helpful and exciting responses, but none as intriguing as the one I got from ICT Coordinator and Class 1 teacher Camilla Mercer of Norbridge Academy in Nottinghamshire, England.
A 24 hour blogathon? Tell us more!!! MT @ccmercer: 24 hour #blogathon Class 6 @norbridgeschool c62012.norbridgeblogs.net
— Engaging Educators (@engaginged) November 14, 2012
So intriguing, in fact, that I extended a rare guest blogging invitation to Camilla to describe her school’s 24-hour blogathon, which is pretty much as amazing and awesome as it sounds. But I’ll let her do the telling…
Norbridge Academy (norbridge.org and norbridgeblogs.net) has recently invested in 30 iPads, theoretically 6 per class for y2-y6. This is in order to more easily enable children to blog as a way of improving standards in writing, as detailed in our school development plan. As ICT Coordinator, I wanted teachers to be able to plan the iPads into lessons across the curriculum, so that there could be either one iPad per table or a whole group of children using them, primarily to blog, at any one time. We already have laptops which are fine but must be shared and timetabled across the school and I prefer the immediacy and accessibility of iPads for blogging.
As a way of raising the profile of our school blogs, which were created a year ago, the head teacher George Huthart decided to hold a 24 hour blogathon, inviting all year 6 children to sleep in school and to be blogging virtually (sleep-allowing!) continuously from 9am Tuesday 13th November to 9am today, Wednesday 14th. The year 6 class teacher and 2 teaching assistants volunteered to stay in school to staff the event. (It is possibly worth mentioning that we do camping nights every months, where children bring tents & camp on the school field. These events are staffed by teachers & TA’s and are always well over subscribed, staff at Norbridge are happy to volunteer free time for events such as these). All 4 staff then worked as normal throughout the day today.
For the blogathon, all 30 iPads were pooled together. Children were given some freedom as to what to blog about as well as some directed/suggested topics or themes. Each child had 1:1 access to an iPad, as well as laptops if/when an iPad need charging. The class 6 blog, like most of our school blogs, has a visitor and flag counter, and children were motivated by tracking the visitors to their blog. On a very large world map in class 6, children stuck pins showing where visitors were based, frequently excitedly seeking out staff to inform them of a ‘hit’ from a new country or region.
During the blogathon the 4 adults who stayed in school were kept extremely busy moderating and approving both posts and comments. Staff including myself logged in from home to try to ease the backlog as children’s writing kept stacking up. The majority of school staff are on Twitter and we all used this as our primary mode of publicity. Many individuals and organisations have been extremely supportive.
Considering the duration of the event I was astounded by the quality of much of the writing being produced, and certain posts rightly received some quality and thought-provoking comments from around the world. Comments and flags are still rolling in, 21 countries at last count.
Huge thanks to Camilla for sharing her story. What an amazing endeavor! Be sure to check out the students’ blogathon posts (and their posts from a SECOND blogathon!) and leave comments as well. And follow Camilla on Twitter @CCMercer.
My curiosity about how to use QR codes in the classroom is well documented. I’ve blogged about it several times, and I love reading about how other educators are using them with students. Two articles that have inspired me lately are QR Code Quest: A Library Scavenger Hunt (and its sequel) by teacher librarian Gwyneth Jones, and Transliteracy: QR Codes and Art by Silvia Tolisano.
Gwyneth’s posts are epic and amazing. Inspirational and awe-inspiring. I aspire to her level of brilliance. But as a huge fan of art and cross-curricular projects (and a relative QR newbie), it was the latter post by Silvia that really got me thinking about a specific project.
I shared Silvia’s post with our art teacher and we decided we wanted to collaborate on an art/research/writing/technology project that would be shared during the annual school art show. Here’s what we did…
In art class, students explored the work of several different artists and analyzed their work. Then, they chose an artist and created a painting inspired by their work. After that, they did a little bit of research on their artist’s life and wrote a script for a video. Their script had to include both biographical information and their opinion and analysis of the artist’s work. Students chose whether to create a narrated slideshow or a green screen video.
For last night’s art show, the students’ paintings were hanging on the wall and below them were QR Codes. Scanning each code with a handheld device would take you to that student’s slideshow or video. (We had instructions posted for parents who weren’t familiar with scanning codes, too.) It all worked out splendidly. An interactive art show!
Running at the same time as the art show was our annual Poetry Cafe, featuring an “open mic” for students to read their favorite poems, or poems they had written themselves. In addition to mood lighting and soft jazz, I had my students locate poems that they love on the website of the American Academy of Poets. They used Google’s URL shortener to create QR Codes that linked to these poems. (See either of the aforementioned posts by Gwyneth and Silvia for help creating QR codes.) We then made little slips with the codes on them for people to scan while visiting the Poetry Cafe.
And just to show you how adorable the young poets were…
An impressive and interactive night to be sure. Hopefully you’ll find some inspiration here, and in the posts that inspired me.
Student work and images appear with parent permission.
In February, I wrote about Chris Henke Mueller and Dominic Inouye and their efforts to connect their school in Wisconsin with students in Afghanistan. (Read that post here.) Recently, their students have overcome many obstacles to hold a Skype session with their friends thousands of miles away. I didn’t think my secondhand reporting would do their story justice, so I asked them to tell it themselves. It is their words that follow in the guest post below. The word “inspirational” just doesn’t seem like enough…
It is 9:30 at night–on a Friday. The beginning of the weekend when teachers and students head home to unwind, but on this night 16 students returned to school to deepen a conversation.
Seven thousand miles away, it is 7:00 in the morning–on a Saturday. Students in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, are arriving at school an hour early to connect to others.
For over four months, the C.L.A.S.S. program (Character Leadership Accountability Sustainability Service) had been building a relationship with students of the Global Connections Exchange (GCE) program. Beginning a relationship, forming an understanding, fostering mutual interest and conversation all take time. But, now, we were ready to Skype for the first time.
We were all a bit nervous. Our first Skype call had been canceled due to the Qur’an burning on the U.S. base in Bagram. Schools in Afghanistan were closed for safety reasons. We explained as best we could to our youngest students what had taken place and promised that we would reschedule, confidence none of us felt. We worried about technical difficulties, time differences (did we have that right: 10 and ½ hours ahead of us? Why ½ hour?), understanding each other, more political unrest, students who wouldn’t be able come.
This lack of confidence kept us on our toes: emails to GCE program directors both here and in Afghanistan kept communication open even after the killing of 16 people on March 11 threatened to derail our talks again, practice Skypes with friends and family helped us work out some of the bugs, questions sent ahead of time helped both sides prepare answers and overcome some cultural differences, and obsessive worrying about the time difference helped us see just two days before the planned event that Daylight Saving Time would now change our students’ time to be at school (instead of 8:30, they needed to come at 9:30). Perhaps it was just our lack of experience with this, because a Skype truly is a simple thing to arrange: an exchange of names and contact numbers, an agreement of time and date, and there you go! And, thankfully, it did go this time.
So, how did it turn out?
It is the goal of C.L.A.S.S.–now nearing its second year at The Prairie School in Racine, Wisconsin–to build character, foster leadership skills, teach ourselves to be accountable, and offer opportunities for service, all with the goal of building a more sustainable world. This Skype offered us all of that.
Sixteen students ranging in age from 10 to 15 returned to school to talk with their CLASSmates in Afghanistan. An equal number of male students from the GCE program came to their computer lab early in the morning began our Skype with the sharing of a traditional song. Our students had been singing Israel Kamakawiwo’ole’s mashup “Somewhere Over the Rainbow/What a Wonderful World” all day and shared their version, with one of the students on her ukulele.
Students had already been communicating via Nings that both programs host, and between the Skype and Ning conversations we have been able to share ideas about education, oppression, and hate, as well as simpler topics such as cultural holidays, traditional stories, favorite foods, and activities. The Skype conversation took the form of a sharing: What do you study in school? How many of you have a Facebook account? What are your perceptions of our country? What should everyone know about your country? What is your happiest childhood memory? What can we do to help each other achieve their goals? One student would ask the question, another would answer. A call and response signaling our shared desire for a sustainable world.
What will we do differently the next time?
One thing we would do differently is set up our room so that everyone can be seen by our guests. We could see all of them, but their view of us was limited; while our shared words are really what this Skype was all about, the face-to-face knowing of each other can not be underestimated. This time we used the camera in the laptop, but an external microphone and camera would have been better. And, while we did take video of our Skype, still photos would have been useful, too.
This first Skype was, like we said, a back-and-forth sharing. With future encounters, we hope to sustain a dialogue about important issues both our groups of students face. Ultimately, it is our plan to share a global read with the students in the GCE program and host further Skypes related to a shared curriculum….but that will have to be for another time.
There are two ways to dehumanize people: to demonize them or to idolize them. Meeting face-to-face with seven thousand miles, 10 ½ hours, war, language, and vastly different lives between us, Skype offered us a chance to bring humanity back into our lives.
It is a wonderful world.
photo credit: NASA Goddard Photo and Video via photopin cc
Could you capture the essence of a story in just 4 images? This task, called the 4 Icon Challenge, was issued to my class of fifth graders during reading workshop recently. They had just finished reading the classic novel A Wrinkle in Time.
After reading about the 4 Icon Challenge on the Tech Savvy Ed blog (we’ve written about its amazing author, Ben Rimes, before), I just knew I had to give it a try. This book proved to be a perfect fit. In a total of about two hours, we were able to put together a nifty Voicethread to share our work with the world.
More on the finished product in a moment. I want to describe the steps we followed, in case you’d like to try this in your classroom.
First, after explaining the challenge, students planned it out. They filled out a form that asked them to sketch ideas for photos. On this form, they also had to write about why they would use those images to represent the book. I did this for two reasons…I wanted to activate their thinking about the images in advance to cut down on searching time and I wanted them to write what they’d eventually be recording into the Voicethread. This took about 30 minutes or so.
The next day, we searched for images. We used Photo Pin, which is a site that provides photos that are licensed for reuse. When students found an image they liked, they downloaded it, copied its URL, and inserted both into a Google Doc. I led them through this and it took about 45 minutes.
I then took a screenshot of each of their image collections and uploaded them into a Voicethread for them. I then pulled them to record their comments.
Boom. Done. Love this idea. You should definitely try it. Take a look at what we came up with:
If it’s not showing up, you can click here to see it.
A fantastic effort, I have to say. And a great idea that you could try very easily in your own classroom. Special thanks to Ben Rimes for sharing this originally. Be sure to follow him on twitter (and us!) and subscribe to his blog! (And ours, too!)
Oh, and if you want to comment on the Voicethread, please do!
Could you find Syria on a map? Could you name its president? Do you know about the violent, oppressive regime’s attacks upon protesters? What about your students?
Before this week, none of my fifth grade students knew any of these things. But after exploring news stories, having meaningful discussions, and asking a lot of questions (not to mention the help of a friend), they have a much greater understanding of recent events in Syria and, more importantly, a greater sense of empathy for people thousands of miles away in a country very different from our own. Our driving question for this exploration is “Why should we care about Syria?”
Before I tell the story, I have to back up a little and introduce my friend Steve Goldberg. In another one of those serendipitous stories of the power of the Personal Learning Network, Steve and I “met” via twitter after I discovered his awesome blog, What I Learned Today. Steve is opening a middle school in North Carolina in 2013 and he often blogs about the progressive and student-centered approach that this middle school will offer. One of the ideas of his I like the most is his approach to current events. I told him how much I liked this and he generously offered to Skype into my classroom and lead a discussion about a news story.
We settled on the topic of Syria after Steve shared with me the story of Anthony Shadid, a reporter for the New York Times who recently died of an asthma attack while covering the oppressive Syrian regime’s brutal response to citizen protests.
My fifth graders, not surprisingly, had never heard of Syria nor of Shadid. But I prepped them on Monday for Steve’s Skype visit the next day by leading a discussion of the story of Shadid’s death. We got to know the geography of Syria using Google Earth and learned some background info about the situation there. They asked a lot of good questions, many of them centered around the idea of a journalist risking his life to cover a story. (Shahid had been shot and kidnapped in separate incidents earlier in his career.) They found this surprising. Why would covering the news be worth dying over?
Steve “arrived” Tuesday morning and a great discussion about Syria ensued. (We were so engrossed with the topic that we didn’t even make it to talking about Shahid.) The kids were really engaged and I was quickly able to see firsthand how much powerful learning can occur by discussing current events.
Even though we didn’t get to Shahid, there was no shortage of learning. They were surprised by many of the things Steve shared with them–Syria’s president runs unopposed in every election, he orders bombings of his own citizens, and Syria is a place where tanks sometimes roll through the streets.
Could this happen in America? Why don’t Syrians move somewhere else? Why can’t they turn in the president to authorities? Why would he kill his own people? What’s so wrong with protests that make the president of Syria mad enough to kill people? These were just some of the questions that were asked. Not all of them were answered–we certainly could have kept talking for another 45 minutes–but the fact that they were asked is impressive. So were some of their answers, connections and other comments.
I was especially proud when some of my quieter students spoke up. I think there were even goose bumps involved.
I will admit to being a bit hesitant to tackle such a complicated topic. My students and I had done some preliminary exploration of current events since the start of 2012. But nothing as intense as the situation in Syria. I worried that they were too young, too inexperienced, and lacked the background knowledge necessary to do justice to such a topic. I shared these concerns with Steve ahead of time and he reassured me that all would go well and that even if students were “lost” that was nothing to be afraid of. He turned out to be 100 percent correct. My students handled the topic with aplomb. And it turned out to be a learning experience for me, too. Sometimes you just have to be a little brave and have faith in your students.
I also learned how to teach for hours using one news story and a couple of computers. Geography, history, writing, reading (we even did math!)…you can cover it all. Most important to me, though, was that they were THINKING.
I can’t wait for Steve to visit again. Neither can my students. We’re going to continue our exploration and hopefully collaborate with experts to produce a student guide to the events in Syria. Stay tuned for updates. And consider joining us by learning about Syria, too. Maybe we could make a collaborative project out of this.
Please check out Steve’s blog post about his Skype visit, too. It’s fun to read the viewpoint of the person on the other side of the camera.
I also can’t wait to try his approach to current events on my own. There’s no shortage of stories out there, that’s for sure.
From the Classroom Week, our attempt at sharing exciting stories and ideas from our classrooms AND yours, has been a resounding success. Here’s a recap, in case you missed anything:
- 60 Second Science Podcasts
- Making Indoor Recess
TolerableAwesome - Bringing Books to Life with Blabberize
- Stories From YOUR Classrooms–video story problems, digital travel brochures, and biology
- An Epic Global Adventure–connecting Wisconsin with Afghanistan
- Nobody’s Perfect–Making mistakes with technology
- QR Codes Make Posters Interactive
If you enjoyed any of those, you’re definitely going to want to subscribe to our blog. If you really enjoyed these, you should definitely contact us about webinars, workshops, and conference presentations.
Be on the look out for future projects from our classroom, which should include:
- Online book clubs
- Student created language tutorials
- Digital poetry and mythology projects
- Our take on virtual field trips
- Raising the quality of writing with digital tools
- And much more!!!
If you’re a regular reader, you know all about my interest in figuring out ways to use QR Codes to enhance learning and engage students. In this last post of From the Classroom Week, I wanted to share a recent project from my reading workshop.
It started with my objective…I wanted students to “get inside the head” of the characters in the book we were reading, Among the Hidden by Margaret Peterson Haddix. In this dystopian novel, the government limits the number of children per family to 2. 3rd children, called Shadow Children, live illegally and secretly in some places. I wanted students to think about what life is like for these Shadow Children.
So, I asked them to make “video diaries,” pretending they were speaking as Shadow Children. Then they created propaganda posters, the kind that the government in the novel might have produced. THEN, they created a QR code that, when scanned, links to their video. They glued these QR codes onto their posters. Take a look…
Here’s one of the video diaries that I really liked:
Were the QR codes integral to this project? Not necessarily. But I think they provide a fresh and unique twist to a project the kids enjoyed a lot and learned a lot from.
As we near the end of From the Classroom Week, I thought it would be fun to share a story of things NOT going right in my classroom. I don’t want anyone out there thinking that the Engaging Educators are some sort of “super teaching” team. I mean, we are, of course, but nobody’s perfect. And anyone who’s ever tried anything new in their own classrooms knows what I’m talking about. Sometimes, the best laid plans end up being far from the best.
Take, for example, my brilliant scheme to engage students during a recent absence. I used Google Docs to create a form. This form asked them questions about the previous night’s reading assignment. I had a blend of surface-level “from the text” questions and deeper “beyond the text” questions. A perfect blend, in my opinion. I thought this would be a great way to make sure they were comprehending a pretty challenging novel.
Here’s what it looked like…see if you can spot my critical error:
If you can’t view it, access the live form here.
Look closely. Did you notice how I messed up? I certainly didn’t until the next day as I was checking out the spreadsheet that contained their answers.
I know the suspense is killing you, so I’ll reveal my mistake…there’s no place for them to enter their name.
Ah, the best laid plans.
Thanks for following along during From the Classroom Week, an entire week dedicated to sharing stories and ideas from our classrooms…and yours. We hope the things we’re sharing this week will inspire you in your own work with children.
Today it’s time to switch it up a bit. We’d like to shift the focus of [...]
Thanks for following along during From the Classroom Week, an entire week dedicated to sharing stories and ideas from our classrooms…and yours. We hope the things we’re sharing this week will inspire you in your own work with children.
Today it’s time to switch it up a bit. We’d like to shift the focus of From the Classroom Week from OUR classrooms to YOURS. We recently asked readers to submit stories about their students’ work. There were some great responses and today we’d like to share three with you…
Ben Rimes is a K-12 Tech Integration Specialist right here in Michigan, in Mattawan to be precise. His amazing blog, the Tech Savvy Educator, is a must-read source of ideas and insight. You should follow him on twitter, too. What’s he been up to lately? Three words: Video story problems. Awhile back, I discovered the video story problems that he created himself. I found them engaging and challenging. Here’s an example:
I thought this was such a great problem. I like it more every time I watch it. BUT, my students are too young to handle the complicated math required. So I decided to have them make their own. I found that kids had trouble writing problems, and I was surprised by this. Even students who are good at solving word problems had trouble, for example, writing a multiplication word problem. This worked great for helping students see what these mathematical operations really mean, as opposed to just memorizing algorithms.
Their problems weren’t complicated, but I liked them. Here’s one:
You can view all the video story problems that have been submitted to Ben’s vimeo channel here–66 and growing!
Another teacher who shared their story is Alison Anderson from Portland, OR. Alison teaches fifth grade and she shared an awesome science project. Her objective? Create a “field guide to the planets.” Here’s her description:
This year we transformed a planet travel brochure group project, into a green screen movie project in which small groups created a travel show for each planet in our solar system. Instead of just research, writing, editing, illustrating and then putting them on display, the students did all those same steps, PLUS, performing, practicing, performing for an audience, listening to each groups performed, and finally having unlimited access for sharing and reviewing it on the website at school and at home. Turning this project into a multimedia one not only raised the students level of enthusiasm, but more importantly, engaged them in a much deeper level of learning.
Wow. I told Alison I’m definitely stealing this project. Her class doesn’t have a lot of technology access, but they made it work using their school computer lab for research and her own Mac laptop to do the video editing and production.
But why make the move from a great “pencil and paper” project to a digital one? Again, Alison’s response:
Ultimately, I decided to change from a paper and pencil project to a multimedia one because it allows the students to engage in their learning at a deeper level. Now instead of just researching, writing, editing, illustrating and displaying, the kids are researching, writing, editing, orally practicing MULTIPLE times, performing, and then reviewing. They review by watching it in class and, when I post it on line, they watch it again at home to show their parents, etc. I love taking advantage of the fact that they love to see themselves… they review the material over and over because they are excited to see it and very proud to share it! Everyone gets excited about it- which spurs conversation in the classroom and at home. The learning continues and ends up at a much deeper level of thinking.
This, my friends, is a fellow engaging educator, for sure. You should follow Alison on twitter @tedrosececi.
We were also lucky enough to hear from Deidre Bailey and Amy Park from Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Their lucky students explored biological cycles in an engaging way. Here’s how they described it to us:
This project began with a conversation on how best to develop deep understanding of biological cycles. When we considered simply slicing fruit and vegetables in half and leaving them out in the open to observe the resulting changes, we never anticipated the smells, the new life, or the learning that would ensue.
The suggestion that we use Google Docs to facilitate collaboration and data management through the scientific process provided an excellent opportunity for introducing students to the incredible value of facilitating collaborative research and documentation through technology.
Although our decomposed specimens are now carefully buried in soil, the memory of the experiment is alive and well among our grade 4 students. From Day 1 to Day 12, these young scientists were engaged, excited, and passionate about their discoveries. Throughout the process, students developed deep understanding of decomposition, the scientific process, collaboration, problem solving, data analysis, and so much more.
Deep, meaningful learning…did we mention these are fourth graders?
To see a video that outlines the process and the learning, click HERE. As Deidre and Amy put it, “Kids are awesome.” We couldn’t agree more. You can follow Deidre on twitter @deidrebailey.
Thank you so much to Ben, Alison, Deidre, and Amy for sharing their “From the Classroom” stories. We found them inspirational, and we hope you did, too.
There’s still more left this week, including an epic global adventure, fun with QR codes, and a blooper reel. Be sure to subscribe so you don’t miss a thing!
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