Virtual Field Trip - Google Earth Assignment

For our final assignment in my EDIM 508 class, we were asked to create a virtual field trip using Google Earth. I have used Google Maps before in my first grade classroom as part of our map unit and introducing maps. The only prior experience I have had with Google Earth was just browsing, and things have changed very much since the last time I used it.

 I chose to take my students on a virtual field trip to see different volcanoes in the United States. The main purpose of this field trip was to expose them to volcanoes and help them to understand what they are. This would lead into further lessons of the layers of our earth and how other land forms are formed. I think the Google Earth assignment comes with both pros and cons.

The obvious pro of this activity is that this gives students an opportunity to see the actual location of each of these volcanoes and what it looks like. I do like the ability to add information to the locations and its very nice to have the ability to add pictures or even overlay them directly on the map. It was nice to loop our field trip back to our school to finish up the assessment and it felt, to me, that we really completed our field trip by coming back to our original spot.

One very big con to this was the user friendliness of the software. I feel that it does not present the tour/trip in a way that a new user could just pick up and run with. Even in the upper elementary I feel that the students would need serious direction, and for my first graders I would have to lead them through this adventure.

After completing, I don't know how often I would use this type of field trip in my own classroom at this time, but I do want to stay close to this idea because if it were more user friendly or primary friendly I might be more apt to use it frequently. Again, it does create a nice opportunity for students to be exposed to the actual locations of the landmarks.

You can view my virtual field trip on volcanoes here.

Unit 6 - The Respectful and Ethical Mind

When it comes to activating and developing the respectful and ethical minds in my students, I like to think that I begin this process at the beginning of the year in first grade. During the first week we read a book about good decisions and manners in school. At the end of the book, it shares some rules and manners that students from other countries follow during their school days. The students are immediately very intrigued by many of them. It gives us a good conversation starter on how important it is to follow our own rules but to be respectful of others rules or traditions/routines that we may not be familiar with or accustomed to. We follow up with this story by creating our own set of classroom expectations and procedures as a community of learners in our classroom. After reading and looking a little further into epals, I would like to add technology to this experience by giving my students or the class as a whole an opportunity to communicate with classrooms from other areas first hand in order to better understand what types of expectations and cultural traditions are commonplace in their learning environments. I could see this continuing throughout the year with many other areas for learning, but I do like that this could set the tone for understanding others points of views and cultures from day 1. Although engaging the respectful and ethical mind is commonplace in our classroom, I do feel that my students need to be exposed to many other views during a young age. Many of my students have little exposure to anything outside of our small town, so by allowing them to work, talk, and collaborate with others, this would better prepare them to accept and understand others much better. I see that incorporating technology will allow me to not only expose them to others, but also allow them to be a part of the conversation and answer their own misconceptions as well. I look forward to seeing this play out in the upcoming school year.

Glogster and the Creative Mind

As part of my EDIM 508 class, we were asked to create a glog to use for instructional purposes. The most difficult part of this assignment was finding a way to create an assignment that a first grader could complete independently while still fostering the growth of the creative mind. I decided to create an opportunity for students to learn the difference between fiction and non-fiction texts. In my glog students had the opportunity to listen to a few different stories and then take a short self-assessment on their ability to delineate between the two. After having the opportunity to hear different stories, students will focus on the fiction texts. Students will watch a video where other students around their age level give a book review of fiction stories. A final assignment will include the student choosing a fiction book from our class library and writing a book review of the story.  This will allow me the opportunity to assess their ability to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction based on their book selection. It will also allow me to understand their comprehension and retelling skills.

 One of the main concerns with this project was the students ability to understand how to use the glog and their ability to complete the assignments independently. Now that I have used Glogster, I believe it will be much easier to create glogs when the opportunity arises. I would have liked to add voice to the instructions but I struggled to get the "Grab" option to cooperate with me. With more practice this would be a highly beneficial tool to use, especially with this age/grade level. I look forward to creating more of these throughout the school year as the opportunity presents itself, and I would like to have the opportunity to see how the students respond to such an activity. You can check out my glog by clicking here.

Content Creation - A student's take.....

In order to understand how my students felt about creation during their year in first grade, I decided to make it a group discussion. Instead of a one on one interview, the students seem to be more eager to share opinions once the conversation gets going.

I started by discussion the word "creating" with my students and then asked them what their favorite thing was that we created this year. The most common answers all had to do with something related to art. We used a site called "Kerpoof" this year and this seemed to be the most common answers. Because we just learned how to use the site near the end of the year, I allowed for the students to create something with very little rules and restrictions. The students shared that they enjoyed adding "speech bubbles" and giving their characters and comic a "voice." There favorite part was that they could print their comic when they were done. After more conversation, the students shared that even though some of their comics looked the same, they were very different from their friends when they gave their characters voices.

What I really took from this and students like to learn technology through practice. They also seem to be very adamant about having something physical to show upon completion. With our digital stories on robots, students had to view their story online, and some did not have this opportunity at home. With "Kerpoof", students had the opportunity to have something physical to show off. I think this is something that commonly gets lost during digital creation and something I will definitely keep in mind during digital instruction and the early elementary level.