November 13, 2012 by plemmonsa

Paul Revere Transliteracy: A Third Grade Collaborative Project

Back in September, third grade took a transliteracy approach to exploring rocks and minerals. After participating in this experience, Mrs. Shealey, 3rd grade teacher, had some ideas for how the transliteracy approach could inspire the Paul Revere standards that 3rd grade was about to work on. She scoured the internet for resources and developed her own Sqworl pathfinder to share with students. She also developed a menu of projects that students could choose from. After introducing the idea to her team, we all met together to continue brainstorming and think about how technology could be incorporated with the menu ideas.

Ideas included:

Make a map of Paul Revere’s ride with important events, photos, and videos using Google Earth & Google maps
Create a newscast of Paul Revere’s ride with eyewitness accounts. Use the iPad to film the newscast and iMovie to edit.
Use Museumbox to create various cubes about Paul Revere: his ride, his character traits, events leading to American Revolution, etc.
Create a piece of art related to Paul Revere. Use Photo Story, iPad, or Glogster to display the art and talk about it.
Write a poem or a song about Paul Revere. Use the iPad to film a performance of the song/poem.

Ideas continue to be added to this menu. We decided to narrow the technology focus to just a few tools: Glogster, Museumbox, Photo Story, Animoto, iPad & iMovie, and Google Earth/Maps. Many of these tools were new to students so we wanted students to have a chance to explore each tool before committing to a project or tech tool. We decided to have a technology fair where each class could come and tour through the tech tools to gain some familiarity with each tool to inform their decisions. I saw this as the perfect opportunity to bring in student expertise, so Ms. Hicks, a spectrum teacher, helped identify students who could teach other students about each of the tools. Google Maps and Museumbox were new to all students, so I led the station on Museumbox and Todd Hollett, technology integration specialist, led the station on Google Maps.

The students and adults setup their stations, and each class came through the library for about 30-40 minutes to see mini-presentations and play around with each tech tool. Students freely moved from table to table and at times needed encouragement to move on. Many students wanted to stay at one table to become an expert in a tool, but that was not the point of the tech fair. Expertise will develop later. We just needed them to be familiar enough with each tool to know what it was capable of doing. Even though all students did not make it to all stations, each class had a good representation of students who visited enough of the stations to be able to share back in class.

Our next step is for students to decide on their project and tech tool. The teachers will then group these students into groups based on their tech tool. Then, during a block of time each day, students using the same tech tool will meet in the same room so that they can support one another as needed. I’ve seen amazing things happen when a large group of students using the same tool are in the same room. They discover things that I would have never had time to figure out or teach to everyone and they willingly share their learning with other students. I think we will be pleasantly surprised by the knowledge that students gain about these tools during this process.

The teachers and I will also support students with the technology, but we also want our focus to be on supporting students in locating quality information for their projects. We will rely on the pathfinder as well as books from our library for this endeavor. I can’t wait to see what students come up with!

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February 3, 2012 by plemmonsa

How to teach 3 social studies units covering over half a century in 4 weeks: A 5th Grade Glogster Project

Last year, I began a journey with 5th grade that integrated multiple social studies standards into one big project. The teachers put students in cross-classroom groups and assigned them social studies topics for a unit on the turn of the century. Each group made a glog about their topic after using print and digital resources to gather information. We were amazed by the leadership, collaboration, and innovation that took place in that project, but we made a lot of mistakes along the way too. You can read more about last year here and here.

This year, we almost didn’t do this project. The teachers were feeling even more overwhelmed by the content this year because they had to teach 3 social studies units and 2 science units in 9 weeks. You would probably feel overwhelmed too if you knew you had to teach these units in that amount of time:

Even the district planner recommends a total of 12 weeks for the units, but requires that it be done in the 3rd quarter (9 weeks).

After multiple combinations of meetings between me, the 5th grade social studies teacher, the gifted collaboration teacher, and the instructional coach, we developed a plan for how this year’s content might look. Each of the 3 social studies classes were assigned a unit. Within each class, topics were assigned to individuals as well as groups of students. These students made plans of how to divide the content among their group. On Mondays and Fridays, the social studies teacher and gifted teacher did direct teaching of some of the content from all 3 units. On Tuesday-Thursday, students came to the media center to research their topics in online databases, websites, and books. Last year, students just took notes as they read, but this year we wanted students to have a better structure that was based in questions that came from the standards. The gifted teacher combed through the standards and created 2 different graphic organizers with questions for students to consider. The organizer also had space to document resources used. Some students chose to use digital copies of this organizer while others chose to print it out and write their notes.

Once again, I pulled together a pathfinder divided up by topics. This pathfinder gave each student a handful of websites about their topic. I also showed them how to search the databases found in Georgia’s Galileo collection. My paraprofessional took the topics and searched through our print collection. If a book matched one group’s topic, she put a post-it with their names on the book. If a book spanned multiple topics, she put it in a shared stack.

To begin our journey, I briefly introduced the pathfinder, graphic organizers, and how to take notes (not copying and pasting entire paragraphs of information from websites). I also showed a glog from last year’s students to give them an idea of what they would ultimately be doing. We chose not to introduce how Glogster works at the beginning. We also chose to not give students logins and passwords to Glogster. Students then began a week of research. The social studies teacher, gifted teacher, student teacher, my paraprofessional, some college students, and me began working with students as much as possible to support them in their search.

After a week, I introduced how Glogster works by showing a very basic run-through of the kinds things it can do. Students continued to research, but as they finished, they checked in with one of the adults. Most of the time we offered additional guiding questions and support so that they had the most complete information possible. Once students reached a point where they had enough information, they received their username and password to Glogster.

Most students began Glogster with deciding on their wall background. Then, they moved to adding text from their organizer. Eventually, students branched out to include photographs from public domain searches and linked their pictures to the sources they came from. Some students also did audio introductions to their glog or recorded audio for various parts of their glogs. Some students used Screencast-o-matic to do screencasts of timelines from PebbleGo or tours in Google Earth. A few students used webcams to record themselves talking. One group even did a webcam video of their resource list rather than just creating a text box for it.

You can view some of the finished or in progress glogs here:

Recovering from the Great Depression

Black Cowboys

Wright Brothers

George Washington Carver

Alexander Graham Bell

US Contributions and Treaty of Versailles

Lusitania and Other Ships

Stalin, Mussolini, Roosevelt, & Churchill

Holocaust

Presidents of WWII

Bombing of Japan

Changing Role of Women

Tuskegee Airmen

Cold War

Khrushchev & McCarthy

D-Day, VJ, & VE Days

Pearl Harbor, Iwo Jima, & Hirohito

Panama Canal 2

Once students finalize their glogs, they will present them to the rest of the 5th grade to share the responsibility of teaching and learning this massive amount of content.

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February 1, 2012 by plemmonsa

Digital Learning Day @David C. Barrow Elementary Media Center

Today was National Digital Learning Day. I honestly didn’t plan anything specifically for the day, but rather looked at what we were already doing today and highlighted it. Using technology as a natural part of learning to both consume information and create it is a big part of our media center vision and mission. I appreciate this day to highlight the great work going on around our country, but I didn’t feel like I needed to go over the top with planning digital learning, when it’s already a part of what we do. Here’s a glimpse of the kinds of learning that took place today in the Barrow Media Center.

11 students used e-readers to download samples of multiple books and read them to make decisions about what e-books they will commit to reading
Two enrichment clusters used iPads, desktops, and laptops to explore different ways of using these devices. These 2 groups (one younger students and one older students) are trying to explore as many ways these devices can be used so that they can promote their use throughout the school among students and teachers. Two Kindergarten teachers are leading these groups and working in the media center.
A 1st grade class learned about the Athens quilter, Harriet Powers, and created a digital quilt using the iPads.
Three 5th grade classes worked on collaborative projects encompassing 3 units of social studies standards. They are taking research they found and creating glogs in Glogster. At this point they are linking their glogs to videos online, embedding screencasts of Google Earth tours or timeline reviews, and creating audio segments introducing their glogs.
A kindergarten group used the e-readers to listen to picture books and/or practice reading the books independently and doing summaries.
I held a professional learning session for teachers on Google docs so that they could learn how to begin collaborating on documents. Our teachers do a lot of collaboration, so the use of Google docs is going to help them share multiple documents and streamline their time.

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How do you celebrate digital learning day every day?

May 21, 2011 by plemmonsa

Young Imagineers Digital Workshop

For the past few months, I’ve been working with 20 second graders on a project using Glogster. These spectrum students have been studying inventions and have taken existing inventions that could be improved upon or invented their own creations. As part of their study, they talked about costs, benefits, risks, and more.

None of these students had used Glogster before, so I started them out with a brief overview of what Glogster could do. Then, as I’ve done in other projects, I let them explore. As students had questions, they were more comfortable asking one of the adults (myself, Ms. Hicks, and Ms. Saxon). Over time though, we pushed them to begin asking each other questions and sharing expertise with one another. Students discovered things such as:

how to capture audio with a microphone and embed it on their glogster
how to use a webcam at home to video themselves talking about what was on their glogster
how to search Schooltube and embed a video
how to create a photostory and upload it
how to scan images of their invention and upload it or use it in a photostory

Each time a student learned something, the other students immediately wanted to do that too. It was another great example of the power of students collaborating with one another and taking risks in their learning by diving into the unknown and figuring things out. These students will now go into 3rd grade with a better understanding of how this tool works. I just finished collaborating with the 3rd grade team and the art teacher on a project that will call upon these students as the experts who will teach the other students in their grade level how glogster works when this project launches next year.

I invite you to check out their work on the Spectrum Webpage.

February 23, 2011 by plemmonsa

Bigger, Better, Faster: Our Changing Nation

This week me and three fifth grade teachers are working with about 60 5th graders in the media center as they create final products for the Bigger, Better, Faster unit. Students have spent several weeks researching their topics using a variety of print materials and online resources, including multiple websites and Galileo. Students have also created their own united streaming accounts and watched videos about their topics. Now students are working to create their final products using a variety of digital resources. Most students have chosen to do Glogsters or Power Points, and a few have opted to make Animotos that they will link in their other products. We explored Creative Commons as a resource for finding images to include in products, and students got to work creating.

This was my first venture into Glogster, and while it hasn’t been a perfect experience, I’ve been amazed at what the students have figured out how to do by just going in and exploring. I showed them Glogster as one option for their final products, but I did not go into great detail about how to use it. Students quickly figured out the features of the tool and began sharing it with one another. The most frustrating thing for them so far has been that the free basic educator account does not allow them to upload files. I’ve temporarily fixed that by subscribing to a one-month trial of the premium account so that we can see how well we actually like using Glogster.

All in all, using tools like Glogster to create a final product has been a motivating experience for most students. Instead of creating tri-boards and paper brochures and posters, they are creating digital content that can be easily shared with a winder audience. They have worked collaboratively in groups of 3, and we’ve seen that each student is bringing his or her strengths to the groups. I’ve stood in awe as I’ve watched one student pull up a double entry journal from the research phase of the project, which contains both quotes directly from the source and information in student words, while the other students had the final product pulled up to input the information. I’ve watched students split themselves between 3 computers to do individual work, email their work to one another, and then find ways of putting it all together. It has just reaffirmed the power of doing initial instruction and then giving students a space to create, at which point the teachers and media specialist become facilitators and supporters of learners as students need guidance or run into barriers.

I’ll spend the next 3 days working with these students to finish their products, but in the meantime, you can enjoy some of the early versions of their work and see how they progress.

Glogster 1

Glogster 2

Glogster 3