The Journey Begins

My second year in the computer lab has begun and it looks like it will be an interesting one. I am hoping to have each class do at least one collaborative online project with other schools in the US and potentially around the world. I’ve already signed up for a few and have a few others in mind. Here’s what I’m hoping to do by grade level:

You’ll notice I didn’t list 8th Grade. That’s because I have a year-long project planned with them that I don’t want to take away from with anything else. If I find that they have time for other things later in the year, I’ll try to find a project at that point and I am going to have them, along with the other grades, participate in World Math Day in March.

I can already see some challenges for this year in addition to the fact that the equipment is old and prone to running slowly at times. Many of the Kindergarteners seem very inexperienced on computers which means they’ll need more individual help and it’s hard to be everywhere at once. 7th Grade is very chatty and is difficult to motivate and to get to listen so that poses a definite challenge but they’re all very bright and I think we can do some interesting things this year if they’ll settle in.

I’m trying something all new with 8th Grade this year. They’re going to build a wiki around their Social Studies curriculum throughout the year. I hope that we’re going to be able to learn to podcast and we’ll build an online timeline of important events and add resources to help with studying and to help to bring Social Studies more alive for all of them. This has the potential to be really good or to crash and burn – only time will tell. Before we can start I need to get signed permission slips from all of the students and we need to cover Internet Safety and Copyrights.

I’m excited about the potential of this year and hope that the ideas that I have in my head work out in reality!

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