I’ve been tagged: Wordle Meme

I was tagged by Nedra Isenberg and Ann Oro for the Wordle Meme started by Lee Kolbert. So, I took the challenge and here’s mine:

It’s obvious that I talk a lot about student projects on my blog and that’s a good thing since that’s the purpose of my blog. You can tell that the election was a recent subject of posts … and actually of projects in the lab. It will be interesting to see if this changes over time. I’ll have to try this again every few months or so and see.

And now I tag Maddy Shapiro, Michelle Russell and Heidi Pence.

Here are the directions:
1. Create a Wordle from your blog’s RSS feed.
2. Blog it and describe your reaction. Any surprises?
3. Tag others to do the same.
4. Be sure to link back here and to where you were first tagged.

Cyber Bullying

Middle School has just finished up a unit on Cyber Bullying. Each of the classes watched and discussed Episode 1 of Adina’s Deck. All of the classes seemed to enjoy the videos though 6th grade seemed to like it more than the other grades which may have to do with the students in the class more than the video content. I plan to continue using this episode with 6th Grade in future years and plan to purchase other episodes for use later this year or next year with 7th and 8th grades.

After the discussions each class created a project about Cyber Bullying. 6th Grade created a 6-panel comic in Microsoft Word, 7th Grade created a Glog and 8th Grade created a short Public Service Announcement using Animoto. Most of these were completed well and taken seriously (even if their project was done in a humorous way) but it amazes me that some of the students still feel that cyber bullying is no big deal or that it’s okay if you’re just bullying your friends. When did bullying of any kind become okay?

This week Lori Drew was convicted in federal court in Los Angeles in a cyber-bullying trial. She may face 3 years in prison and a $300,000 fine. At this point she hasn’t been sentenced and I’m sure that if she is sentenced to the maximum that she will appeal so who knows what her actual sentence and/or fine will end up being. I just cannot fathom a mother making up a 16-year old boy on MySpace and lying to a teenage neighbor. How can we expect our pre-teens and teens to act appropriately when parents are doing things like this?

I hope that in addressing this issue with the Middle School students in my school that at least they will think before doing anything like this online. I do plan on following up with them in the next week or so about the conviction of Lori Drew in the hopes of reaching those who think it’s no big deal.

Winter Wonderland Project Announcement

The Winter Wonderland Project is now open for registration!

The Winter Wonderland Project is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities with reading, writing, and math components. Registration will open on Monday, November 17th. The Project will begin December 1st and end February 29th. Teachers who participate will share student work on their own personal page(s) on the wiki. Suggested thematic activities and resources for each month will be provided. We will have a Featured Activity each month that we hope all classes will be able to complete. We have chosen our Featured Activity to introduce you to some new tools or websites or new uses for tools you already use. We do realize that there may be times when sites are blocked at schools or schools do not have access to the programs or tools used. If you cannot complete the Featured Activity we would still love your participation in the Winter Wonderland Project.

Please visit the Winter Wonderland Wiki to register, learn about the planned activities, or to get more information about the project.

Thank you,
Winter Wonderland Project Coordinators
Amber Coggin, Nedra Isenberg, & Vicky Sedgwick

Current Events in the Lab

Last week was Election Week and not just any election but a Presidential Election. I took advantage of that and the free videos on BrainPop (probably won’t be free forever) and spent some time talking about elections, citizenship, voting, the Presidential Candidates and the reasons why this election was of major historical significance with all of my classes from Kindergarten through 8th Grade.

The youngest grades learned about symbols of the United States and colored pictures of symbols of the Democratic and Republican parties and other election related pictures in KidPix. The older grades learned more about the process of electing a president and the responsibilities of being a citizen and voting. Many of them also played some election games at Scholastic News Online: Election 2008 and Weekly Reader Election 2008. 7th and 8th Grade also learned about the Electoral College and how it works and created a spreadsheet model of an “electoral” breakdown of the votes at the school. Since we didn’t have states to use for this, the population of each class determined how many electoral votes that class received. Each class had 1 electoral vote for every 5 students in the class.

After the videos and introduction to the candidates, each student had the opportunity to vote for their choice for President & Vice President in our Voting Booth. The older students reviewed the candidates stand on issues as they waited to vote. Each student chose their class (which was used to calculate “electoral” votes) and then clicked on the picture of the candidates that they wanted to win.

Voting Booth

With 96% of the students voting, John McCain was the winner with 50% of the popular vote. 7th and 8th Grade discovered that while McCain received 50% of the popular vote using an “electoral” system resulted in his winning 60% of the electoral vote.

I was somewhat surprised that many of even the youngest students knew who the major candidates were. I was also impressed that quite a few of the older students really spent time looking at the issues site before they voted. At one point last week I was talking to the mother of one of my Kindergarten students and she was telling me how her daughter came home and was telling her all about the candidates for President. That’s the kind of thing I hoped would happen and I’m glad that it did.

It amazes me that more people did not vote in this election but it always amazes me that so many eligible voters do not go to the polls on Election Day. I knew we wouldn’t approach the 96% turnout that we had at school but it saddened me that the number of people voting did not increase significantly from 2004. Maybe in 2012 this will change.