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.

Creatitivity in Schools

 

When you think of creativity in school, most people refer to the arts. Budget cuts across education have forced many schools to reconsider the necessity of these areas. In a world of continually growing demands of standardized testing, creativity has been forced to take a back seat in our schools. I have heard multiple teachers share the idea, "If it's not on the test, there's no time for it in our classroom." As a first grade teacher I do not have quite as many demands on me as teachers in the upper elementary and beyond do when it comes to standardized testing, but even without that demand, I feel a pinch for time with district expectations for core subjects. So what is the school's role in the creative process, especially when the arts are slowly being eliminated from our schools?

Do schools kill creativity?

In his Ted Talks, Ken Robinson states that students "don't grow into creativity, they grow out of it" (Robinson, K, 2007). According to this belief, it is  our job as educators to not develop, but to foster creativity in our students. It is much more difficult to encourage creativity than it is to encourage the already creative mind. So how do we do this? Ken Robinson believes that, "If your not prepared to be wrong, you can't be creative" (Robinson, K, 2007). As a first grade teacher, its easy to witness the fearlessness of failure, and along with that the phenomenon of natural creativity. Students at 5,6, and 7 year old salivate over the opportunity to express themselves through art and creativity, but as the demands of our rigourous curriculum get their hands on them, they slowly experience that wrong answers and mistakes are common in education. I believe that it is important for students to experience failure and mistakes, but how we help our students deal with that and overcome those mistakes will have everything to do with their comfort levels in creativity. So how do we help students incorporate their desire to express themselves artistically while meeting the demands of a content heavy curriculum? I believe that technology holds the answer.

Digital media and creativity in the classroom....

With a plethora of online software and applications available through computers and other media devices, opportnities for students to be creative with technology is everywhere. Writing in first grade is a detrimental part of our curriculum, and because of this it is very time consuming. Every year I have a decent percentage of my class that will write, but demands a high level of motivation from me to fight through the difficult process. This year was the first of my three years that I decided to incorporate digital storytelling in my classroom. Students were informed that their writing would be turned into a digital story, but this would take some creativity and a lot of hard work on their part. There wasn't a student in the class not willing to take on the task. There was one particular day when students were doing some final touches on their illustrations for their story and it was time to stop to move to recess. The students literally asked me if they could "do recess later so they could work on their projects." I don't know if this is common, but this was completely a new feeling to me. In an area where my motivation to students was required to help them through, ALL students were not engaged in order to finish their illustrations so we could scan them into the computer. Creativity was present and the students were in love. They knew that right around the corner they would be on the computer narrating their stories and adding their illustrations to their words on the screen. This was their story, and their creation, and even though it was writing it didn't matter.

I know this is just a single example of how creativity motivated my students, but I have other since this project, and I am sure many more to follow. There are so many ways to incorporate creativity and the arts into our core subject areas, so they no longer need to be viewed as seperate entinties but as collaborative tools that our students can use. Digital media and technology has made it easier than ever to allow students to express their creativity while demonstrating their understanding of the necessary areas, so why not let the two go hand in hand so we can continue to aid students creativity and not kill it.

  

Robinson, Ken. (2007). Sir Ken Robinson: Do schools kill creativity? – January 2007. Retrieved May 27, 2013 from YouTube Website: http://www.ted.com/talks/ken_robinson_says_schools_kill_creativity.html

Media Infused Project

As part of my EDIM 508 class, we were asked to create a Media Infused Presentation. The purpose of the project was to help us to learn to foster the development of the disciplined and synthesizing mind. Because this was my first time using Prezi, and I teach at the lower elementary level, it was difficult to create a project that focused on these skills while creating something that could be used independently in the classroom.

My favorite part of using Prezi was that fact that it allowed me to create a presentation that a student could use independently at a learning center. The content of my Prezi was based on the Life Cycle of a Butterfly. Before and after each section of the presentation, students were asked to think about what might happen, and follow up with what happened throughout the life cycle. Although this did not necessarily foster the development of the synthesizing mind, students would be expected to make connections to other life cycles that we have looked at in previous units of study. They would have to draw on prior knowledge and understanding in order to make predictions of what would happen in the life cycle of a butterfly.

By allowing students to be exposed to multiple forms of media and complete the lesson independently, it would also allow for me to work with other small groups to follow up on the lesson. This would be an opportunity to connect other activities that would help me to encourage the use of the disciplined and synthesized mind.

The hardest part of this assignment was trying to develop a presentation that could be completed in parterships of independently with 5-6 year olds while trying to foster the disciplined mind. Now that I am gaining more undertanding of what types of lessons this would entail, as well as understanding how to use Prezi, I think future projects will be much easier to create and implement with this age group. I look forward to creating many of these over the summer to use in my classroom for the upcoming school year.

You can view my Prezi on "The life cycle of butterflies" by clicking here.

The Synthesizing Mind

Working through this unit was difficult for me because I realize that I might not be reaching the needs of my students for developing a synthesizing mind. Although I see my students doing this, it is not an active practice for us in the classroom. After reading through Howard Gardner's "Five Minds for the Future",  I realize I need to be actively engaging my students in this practice.

In order to synthesize, Gardner names four components: A goal, a starting point, a method or approach, and a draft.

One way my students completed these four component this year was through a project involving robots. We read both science fiction and non-fiction texts on robots, We watched an informational fiction film on robots and spent time discussing many advantages and disadvantages of robots. Our goal was to decide what life would be like with robots, we started by gathering as much legitimate information we could on robots, then we decided we would create a narrative to share our thoughts on how our personal life might be different if we had a robot. The final step (draft) came through a digital story. 

I feel that due to the age level of the students, the amount of information, and the difficulty of the final project, students had to use a synthesizing mind in order to demonstrate their understanding of how life would be different with a robot. I have shared two stories below for your enjoyment. 

Gardner, H. (2007). Five minds for the future. Boston: Harvard Business School Press. Kindle Edition