09-10 Reflections: 1st Grade

1st Grade is such a great age. They’re still loving everything about coming to the computer lab and they’re able to do more then they could in Kindergarten because most of them are reading and are comfortable with navigating on the computer. It’s amazing to watch what wonderful drawings they can create in KidPix. They haven’t gotten to the judgmental “I can’t draw” phase and they love to explore all of the options and just create and they do a lot of creating in KidPix during the year.

One of my goals with all of the grades is to have the students work collaboratively with others outside of our school through online projects. I struggle with this every year since I feel many of the online projects are not truly collaborative but more like the parallel play that a toddler might do at the park with other toddlers. Just like toddlers though, we’re learning to walk and 1st Grade did participate in two online projects this year.

How Tall Is a 1st Grader

This was the second year that 1st Grade participated in this project. It provides a great tie in to working with non-standard ways of measuring which is part of the 1st Grade math curriculum. I also use it to show how Excel can be used to make graphs of their heights. The students love to find out who’s the tallest and how tall they are and how much they grow during the year. In addition to measuring the students twice a year (in the fall and in the spring) and drawing a picture of height comparisons, the 1st graders also had the chance to play some fun online measurement games.

2009-10 How Tall is a 1st Grader

I started using this to get 1st Grade involved in a collaborative project but it hasn’t really worked out to be very collaborative – even between teachers.  I would love it if this project had each teacher post some measurement information to a shared spreadsheet so it would be easy to do height comparisons. Only six classes ended up posting their spring measurements and most classes didn’t post VoiceThreads. I should have had my students comment on the VoiceThreads that were there but forgot about it. I’m not sure if I’ll do this project again next year or not. If I do, I’ll try to make it more collaborative for my students by commenting on the VoiceThreads earlier in the year.

Winter Wonderland

It was year two with this project also, both as a participant and as one of the organizers of the project. I struggled with the collaborative nature of this project last year but this year some of the activities were more collaborative including Holiday Traditions VoiceThreads and Describe A Snowman January Activity along with the Holiday Card exchange in December. I think these gave 1st grade a more real taste of collaboration especially the Describe A Snowman activity. They really enjoyed making and describing their snowmen and trying to recreate their partner’s snowmen. It was also great preparation for the Monster Project that they will be doing in 2nd or 3rd grade. They also enjoyed the Winter in 6 Words activity which I adapted and used to create a real book at Mixbook which is now in the 1st Grade class library.

Mixbook - Create stunning photo books, cards and calendars! | Design your own photo book with Mixbook’s easy online editor.
Mixbook - Create Beautiful Photo Books and Scrapbooks! | View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

All in all 1st Grade had a fun and productive year in the Computer Lab which included learning more about being safe on the Internet and how to use various programs on the computer. I’m not sure that they learned everything I would like them to learn in 1st Grade because I have realized that I didn’t have this well defined. Defining this, is one of the things I plan to work on over the summer.

Lessons I Learned

  • 1st Graders LOVE to draw on the computer. Luckily we use KidPix a lot in 1st Grade!
  • 1st Graders want to learn to type like older students. Of course that could be because more than 1/2 of my 1st graders have older siblings
  • Some 1st Graders are starting to become microphone phobic. They’ll record something over and over and over if you let them because they don’t like the sound of their voice or they’ll whisper instead of speaking up.

Things I’ll Definitely Repeat Next Year

  • Winter Wonderland Project & maybe some other one too.
  • KidPix drawings to support almost any theme
  • The Best Things About 1st Grade
  • Educational Software & websites – these are great for fill in time after students complete a project or activity and are waiting for the rest of the class to finish.

What are some of the technology rich activities and projects that are successful with your 1st grade students?

If Only

Do you find yourself saying things like if only I had new computers or if only our Internet connection were faster or if only we had a Smartboard or any other if onlys? I definitely do this because the equipment in our lab is very outdated or sometimes non-existent but then I have to stop to remind myself of what we are able to accomplish even with our outdated equipment! Here are some of my Wow – Look at what we HAVE or WILL be doing items.

The theme in the Computer Lab this year is It’s A Small World and in addition to learning the basics like: Internet Safety, Parts of the Computer, Word, Excel, Powerpoint and Keyboarding, we are participating in collaborative projects with other students around the world. This is where one of my If Onlys definitely comes in. Google Earth is an amazing way to introduce a project like this because you can fly around a 3D world to all of the places where schools are located. Unfortunately, the computers at school do not have new enough graphics cards or enough memory to support Google Earth. I have been able to use the 2D version of MSN’s Live Search Maps to show where the other schools are located. It’s not as impressive and doesn’t run really fast but it does at least give the students some idea of the scope of the project and where the other schools are in the world.

Kindergarten and 2nd Grade are working on a project called Online Autumn which is a project to have students in Kindergarten through 4th Grade share art work and creative writing about Autumn. 2nd Grade started this project using an on-line brainstorming tool and are currently working on pictures of the things they like most about Autumn. We will be creating either an interactive book or a VoiceThread from the pictures. Kindergarten will also be creating some art work and creating a book or VoiceThread too. There are schools from all over the United States and Canada participating in this project.

1st Grade will be participating in a project called How Tall is a First Grader with schools from all over the United States, Australia and Lebanon. This will be a fun project because 1st Grade will get to explore Excel and read some on-line interactive books and do some writing too and will be able to compare how tall they are to other 1st graders all over the world.

3rd Grade will be participating in a Monster Exchange project later in the year that will let them draw an original picture and write a description of it and then exchange their descriptions with another school to see if the other student can recreate their drawing. This is a project that can be done with or without computers but having computers adds an extra zing to the project because you can see the drawings compared and read the descriptive paragraphs right online.

Last year I discovered the collaborative project called Voices of the World and thought at the time how I would love to participate in it. Schools around the world record the voices of their children singing or saying something – for example: Introducing themselves, singing Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, singing their National Anthem, etc. These are all shared on a wiki each month. This year 4th Grade is participating in this project along with other schools from the US, Scotland, Australia, Poland, Sweden, Lebanon, Greece, Norway & more! 4th Grade is really excited about this one and loved listening to some of last year’s projects before we worked on our first project for this year. Yes, this one brings an If Only too – we are limited on microphones in the lab and it would be great for every computer to have it’s own microphone. We are recording a lot in both this project and other things with our limited resources but it would be nice to have more.

5th Grade is just getting ready to start their collaborative project called TimeZone Experiences which includes schools from NJ, NY, IL, England and Australia. They will be learning all about Greenwich Mean Time and reporting on what they and their classmates are doing at each hour of the day and during each month of the year and getting to see what other students around the world are doing at the same hour of the day and/or month of the year.

6th Grade has joined a really fun year-long project called A Room With a View with over a hundred participating classes. The project was introduced using Live Search Maps and will involve taking a picture of the campus each month and reporting on the weather and other information about what they observed on the day the picture was taken. All of the 6th graders will also be reflecting on each month in a VoiceThread. I think it will be very fun to look back at the year once we are done. All of the parents can follow along during the year since the entire project will be posted online in the VoiceThread and on a wiki page that will be maintained by the 6th graders. This project and the 5th grade project might have a tiny If Only associated with them since both projects either need or should have a picture taken each month and another thing that I’d love to have is some digital cameras for student use. Now, I just bring in my camera and it works but it would be great to have some in the lab for projects like this.

7th Grade’s project, Human Genetics Project,  was chosen because it ties in with their Science curriculum for the year. They are currently learning all about Google Docs and how to collaborate with others on a document while they write part of the Introduction Letter for this project. They will then be collecting and analyzing data based on certain observable traits and then downloading and analyzing world-wide data about the same traits.

8th Grade isn’t participating (at this point anyway) in any specific collaborative project because they are creating their own Social Studies wiki. This project will hopefully enhance their Social Studies knowledge and help them to learn new useful and fun tools. Of course there are If Onlys with this one mainly because of the low amount of memory and limited amount of bandwidth available. There are times we run into roadblocks because of these things but that just means I have to think creatively or pair students up in order to accomplish what we want!

I’m really excited about some of the sites that the students are using as they complete projects and wait for others to finish. They allow the students to compete with other students around the world or contribute to worthy causes. If you haven’t visited Tutpup, I’d highly recommend it. All of the students love seeing which country they are competing against and don’t even seem to realize that they are practicing spelling skills or math facts. I really like the fact that the students can register but they really are safe because their screen name has nothing to do with their real name and there’s no chatting or anything like that to worry about having to monitor. Both Free Rice and Free Poverty donate to worthy causes based on correct answers in various quizzes. The students love that they’re donating to a good cause and have fun with the quizzes too.

So there you have it some of my Wow – Look at what we HAVE or WILL be doing items. Would these be better If Only? Well they would definitely be faster and there would probably be less outages and some things might be more engaging but better? Not necessarily. The learning going on and the things being achieved can be done (usually anyway) with even our outdated equipment but … If Only … you can’t blame me for wishing now can you?

Frustrations, Triumphs & Plans

Frustrations:
This week over on the Elementary Tech Teachers Ning there is a discussion about Frustrations in the Computer Lab. I didn’t start it but I definitely empathize with it. It’s very hard when you get asked the same questions over and over and over again and no one seems to be listening. That discussion thread got me to thinking how best I can try to head this tendency off at the pass:

  • I am going to start classes out with a presentation on what we are doing for the day away from their computers. I do find that once they are sitting at their own computer they are too easily distracted and don’t listen to instructions. I have been doing this with the younger grades but not the older ones. I am going to start it with the older ones too and see if that helps things.
  • I will remind classes daily that they should read their screen and ask their neighbors before asking me.
  • I will also remind them that if they do want to ask me a question that they must remain seated and just raise their hand and I will get to them. It seems that a lot of teachers use a red cup to indicate trouble and I may try something like this. If they have to keep their hand raised they can’t continue trying to work so they become more impatient. If they could put a cup up and then try to continue that might cut down on them calling out my name or getting out of their seats. I have not used this up to now for fear the red cups would become a distraction themselves.
  • I will stop talking and start over if they begin talking over me. Some of the classes are just chatty and I don’t mind if they talk while they are working but they need to listen while I’m talking.
  • I often remind the older grades that if this were a new video game they would just be trying it and I want them to use that same approach in computer class.

I have also had some frustrations this week due to problems with our Internet connection. More and more of what we do in class depends on the Internet so when it’s not available that can be a real problem. For the next few weeks, I am going to have alternate plans available for each day so that if there are issues I don’t have to try to figure out what to do at the last minute. Our provider did come out and look at what was happening this week but they said there was nothing they could do – of course at the time they were there it was up. Isn’t that always the way it happens?

Triumphs:
I’ve been using some of the ideas that one of the teachers that I have met online has posted on her Kid Pix Projects pages and the kids have really enjoyed them – thanks Ann. Kindergarten was introduced to the pencil tool in Kid Pix and asked to draw a picture only using that tool. A few of them really wanted to use other things available in Kid Pix but did do the assignment. 1st Grade reviewed the pencil tool, Uh-oh Man and eraser and then created Self-Portraits only using the pencil tool. I did let them use the flood fill bucket at the end to color in the background but they had to have finished their portrait with only the pencil tool first.

2nd Grade started an ABC Chart of Initial Letter sounds using stamps that start with the initial letter sound. 3rd Grade also started an ABC Chart of Initial Letter sounds but they are using stickers instead of stamps. 3rd Grade really liked learning how to move things around and about flattening stickers and how to use the scissor tool to delete things. They have a hard time with the eraser and often end up erasing more than they want to so they think the scissor tool is wonderful.

The teachers are starting to ask me if I could integrate with certain things more. I’m happy with that. All of Middle School has to turn in a crossword puzzle as part of their Book Report next month so I’m working with the Middle School students on how to create crossword puzzles in Excel and I’m giving them some web sites they could use too. I’ve also started putting spelling lists into Spelling City and a few grades have played some of the games there with their spelling lists.

Plans:
I just found out that Voices of the World is starting up again this year. I had just signed up to have 2nd Grade do the Online Autumn Project (Kindergarten was already signed up to do this one) so they won’t be doing Voices of the World but I will have 4th Grade do it. 4th is a small class this year so I can teach them how to record their own voices for this. I’m hoping that our Internet connection doesn’t give us problems again because I really would like to finish the book reviews on Voice Thread this coming week.

And how is your school year going so far? Share your frustrations, triumphs and plans!

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!