Internet Safety Glogs

We have come to the end of our collaborative Internet Safety unit with students from Moose Jaw, Saskatchewan, Canada.  Our final project was to create a glog using the website Glogster.  Glogs are multimedia posters that allow for the inclusion of text, video, sound, and animations.  Students were partnered either with a student in Canada or with another student in a separate section of Integrated Technology.  They had to use their 21st century communication skills to create one final product.  View some of their finished work below to see what they learned about Internet safety and to learn a few new things from them as well.

Zooburst Pop-up Books

Mrs. Dachelet's READ 180 students created their own pop-up books using the website Zooburst to illustrate the personal narratives that they wrote in class. What fun they had! View their work below.

Famous Person Scrapbook

After reading a biography of a famous person, students in Mrs. Dachelet's class created a scrapbook for that person using a tool called Beeclip.  Students included information about the famous person's childhood, family, and accomplishments.  Check out their work below:

Where in the World? Our First Mystery Skype

Today Mr. Wegner's class practiced their map location and deduction skills by participating in a "Mystery Skype."  The task: we needed to figure out where in the world this other class was located by playing a game of 20 questions.

We started with some very broad questions such as "Are you in the United States?" and "Are you one of the original 13 colonies?"  Our questions continued to narrow throughout the Skype based on the mystery school's answers.  Our student "interviewers" were responsible for asking the questions and answering the questions asked by students in the other school (who were also trying to guess our location).

Once a question was answered, our "scribes" carefully kept track of the information that we knew.

Finally, our "Google mappers" used the iPads to zoom in on the location and develop new questions for our interviewers to ask.

What did we conclude?  Our Mystery Skype was with another fifth grade class from Hays, Kansas!  After guessing the correct location, students had some time to ask one another questions about their respective cities, including population, climate, size of its schools, and football teams.

This experience was a great opportunity for our students to practice their geography skills as well as meet some new kids from another part of the country.

Imagine...Texting your Favorite Author!

Mrs. Dachelet's class had a great time wrapping up on their unit on Dear Mr. Henshaw.  She wanted to find a fun project that would engage the kids right before Thanksgiving break while also relating to the style of Dear Mr. Henshaw.  We had our old stand-by tools, but Mrs. Dachelet is always willing to try something new.  What would be the right new tool for this experiment?

Days prior to my conversation with Mrs. Dachelet, I came across this cool website: ifaketext.  This website lets users create imaginary text message conversations.  The finished product is a screenshot of the fake text message.  This can be saved, linked, or embedded into a website.

To put a 21st century spin on writing to an author in the spirit of Dear Mr. Henshaw, we decided to have the kids do a bit of research about one of their favorite authors.  After learning a bit about this person and imagining the author's real voice, the students created their own fake text conversations using ifaketext. 

The students were eager to work!  The results were creative and impressive.  View our example below.

Internet Safety Discussions with Canada

Last week Thursday, fifth graders in my Integrated Technology class met in small groups over Skype with their Tech Teams partners in Canada to engage in their first Internet Safety discussion.  The library had three Skype stations set-up.  Each group discussed a list of Internet safety questions with another small group in Canada.  The conversations allowed the students to not only discuss the topics we are simultaneously learning in our individual classrooms, but also gave the students a chance to share any personal stories that they may have experienced online.  We continue to converse daily through our common Edmodo classroom space.  We look forward to our next Skype discussion with them!

Talking Life with Taiwan

We are ready to share part two of the connection between Mrs. Winton's seventh graders and students from Taiwan.  After Skyping to talk weather a few weeks ago, they continued their conversation via VoiceThread.  Daylight Savings Time made it impossible to find another common time to talk live, and with so many unanswered questions, we felt it important to find another creative method of carrying on the conversation.  VoiceThread to the rescue!  We began a VoiceThread with our students asking a specific question.  The students in Taiwan answered our questions by inserting their own comments on each slide and also added new slides with their own questions.  See our results below and check back to see the conversation continue!