09-10 Reflections: 2nd & 3rd Grades

This year both 2nd Grade and 3rd Grade were very small classes so they came to the computer lab together. This presented a few challenges but worked very well for the most part. I think it really helped the 2nd Grade students do their best work to prove they could do what the 3rd Grade students were doing. Both classes really enjoyed using the Jumpstart series for their grade as their what to do when you are done activity during much of the year and everyone was really excited when they got to use next year’s version (Jumpstart 4th Grade for 3rd Graders & Jumpstart 3rd Grade for 2nd Graders) at the end of the year for a few classes. I wouldn’t want to use these programs as what the students always did during computers but they do supplement what the students are learning academically and the students enjoy them.

Keyboarding & Microsoft Word

Starting in 2nd grade, students begin to do some real keyboarding lessons. This year I used some of the levels of Dance Mat Typing with 2nd & 3rd Grades. The students really enjoy this site but many of the students don’t have time to finish a level during the 30 minutes that they are in the lab. I think next year I may do my own directed lessons teaching the keys in alphabetical order that way I have more control over the length of a lesson. I’m still working on how exactly I can present this but I hope to have it figured out by the time September rolls around.

As I look back on the work that 2nd & 3rd Grades did with Microsoft Word, I feel that I need to take a slower approach to Word Processing. Even though they, used Microsoft Word for a variety of writing projects, many of them continue to struggle with where to find things and how to format sentences and paragraphs. We do not have the most current version of Microsoft Office on the computers in the lab and won’t be getting an upgrade any time soon. This means I want my students to understand the basics of any Word Processing (or Spreadsheet or Presentation) software so they can use newer versions at home or use Open Office of Google Docs and still accomplish what they need to do.

Collaborative Projects: Winter Wonderland & Monster Project

2nd & 3rd Grade also participated in the Winter Wonderland Project again this year during December and February.  They completed the Holiday Traditions VoiceThreads and the Holiday Card exchange in December which helped them to understand the collaborative nature of the project. They absolutely loved seeing all the cards from the other classes and enjoyed hearing other student’s holiday traditions. In February, they participated in the Winter Olympics poll and got some practice using Excel by doing Candy Heart Graphing.

The Monster Project was a big hit again this year. Based on my experience with the project from last year, I did involve the classroom teachers this year. They students drew their monsters during computer class in KidPix and then I printed them out and they wrote their descriptions during their writing time in class. They then came back into the lab and typed their descriptions which were then added to the Monster Project Wiki. For some reason this year, things just seemed to be rushed and there wasn’t time to have the students record their reflections; instead, I just compiled all of the written reflections into a single file and shared them in a book format.

09-10 StM Monster Project Reflections

I love this project in that the students do get that they are working on something with another class far away. It was disappointing that no one seemed to post reflections this year and again I would love to have had a Skype session with our partner class but that didn’t happen either. Oh well, there’s always next year!

Lessons I Learned:

  • 2nd Graders hands are really small and it takes them a lot longer to type things than I think it will!
  • Students don’t instinctively know the toolbars in applications. I really need to take the time to explain toolbars more and point out the similarities.

Things I’ll Definitely Repeat Next Year

  • Winter Wonderland Project
  • Monster Project
  • 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 successes you’ve had with 2nd Grade or 3rd Grade in the computer lab or with technology infused projects?

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?

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!