ejourney with technokids

Today the students were going to have a guest teacher, Mr Jeff Whipple, outlining the nature of a wiki and explaining the nature of the 1001 flat tales global project.  Grades 4 and 5 will work on the elementary wiki with China, Thailand, US, Canada etc whilst grade 6 will be involved in the middle school one. Jeff would use his laptop to demonstrate the wiki.

However this was no ordinary classroom as Jeff lives in Canada (read his blog for his version). He is the technology educational specialist for his school and is setting up the wiki for the project. With the help of our library  interactive white board, 50 odd students and half a dozen interested teachers watched with amazement, Jeff talk to us from his home, show us his pet cat, outline the project and then with the help of the SMART Technologies Bridgit tool on the IWB allowed us to view his laptop screen and walk through the wiki. His time was 10pm, ours was 12:00 midday. The weather was sunny and 25 deg C where we live, with students about to go to the pool for swimming classes. 15cm snow and -16deg C was the weather pattern where Jeff lives. Students are now fully motivated to start the project. Atlases came out and we found the city where Jeff lives. A great deal of geography was learned in 30 mins.!! Jeff was kind enough to come back to us 40 mins later to do a photo shoot for our local newspaper “The Warrnambool Standard”. The photographer and reporter had to make a 30 minute drive to our school.
How, did we get to know Jeff, you may well ask? Well, I was trying to sort out our “From Me to You” envelopes in the computer pod last week. My year 11 students were quietly and diligently completing accounting exs when I noticed my laptop flashing. Having forgotten that I was still logged into skype, I found someone was chatting to me.  My curiousity got the better of me.  It was Jeff, introducing himself as he was setting up the wiki for the project. As we chatted, he offered to demo the wiki via skype to our classes. We took him up on that offer. My twitter network through Kim Cofino, from Bangkok, had alerted me to the existence of the project.
The second interesting event of the day, occurred prior to our skype session. I had spent several hours the night before working out a cyber safety lesson. Again, my twitter network came to the rescue with lots of interesting links, url’s, wikis and online videos. I had my year9/10s for a double class first thing this morning, but to my utter dismay, found the internet was down and all my lesson plans with it. Students started writing a post for their blogs whilst the principal and I tried to sort out the internet. Some time later, it was back on. Students quickly checked out their blogs and found they had comments on them, some from our staff, students but others from Holland and the US. Well………..that was it!!! My lesson plans never went into action. Instead, the students initiated their own learning. They wanted to email back the people who commented, some of whom were similar age students in the US. Then, they checked out those student blogs. Students who are often reluctant readers and writers were fully engaged reading the various posts. The boys even found a post on cricket by one of the US students. That encouraged them to wrote a post about the local cricket team they play for.
Next, they wanted to add a clustrmap to their blogs etc. The double was finished all too quickly. An authentic audience makes such powerful learning!!!

….and to top our day,our first two cards from the US schools in the “From me to you” project arrived. Excited students will open them tomorrow morning.

Reflecting on the past year, as one usually does when the old year ends, it is time  to write up some of the observations that have been made on the impact of web 2.0 in the classroom. Associated with this are some of the highlights experienced in both teaching and learning.
The school year started in its usual manner, with the complication that I had lost an accounting class (I was devastated at the notion as I love teaching accounting) so instead, and as we are a prep to year 12 school, I picked up grade 3/4 and 6 IT. IT classes commenced and progressed as usual, with more advanced skills in using MS Word and Excel being taught to the higher levels and basic skills to the younger levels. Some Dreamweaver, Flash and other multi media software skills also commenced.

……Enter the world of web 2.0 in June 2007…….

My classrooms changed, necessary skills taught took on a different nature, our classroom walls started ‘crumbling ‘ before our eys, software types were now often online and motivational levels increased dramatically. Below, is a summary of some of the impacts noted.

• Del.icio.us started the web 2.0 journey. To our surprise and delight, google picked up one of the grade 6 girl’s page and had it on their first page when a search was made on “Penshurst and volcanoes”. This really motivated students and boosted personal confidence of those involved.

• Our backyard blog was initially created with grade 6 students. Comments were made on their work by unkown people in the USA, Hawaii, Australia etc Suddenly, there was an authentic audience for their work, not just a teacher assessing assignment work. Excitement with, and pride in their own work increased amazingly. Students researched some of the geography and history associated with these comments and self-learning became real. Motivation levels ran high and students were off taking digital photos of their backyards or scanning existing photos into their blogs. Parents and community members also became involved.

• Year 9 boys, (our most difficult motivating group) actually leapt out of their seats to help experiment within our school, the use of skype. They were utterly engrossed for 110 minutes in helping our staff who had not used skype before, learn the processes.
  The fantastic work that year 9 boys will produce when there is an authentic audience and a global one at that!!! Skype continued to excite when in the last weeks of term, we used this for videoconferencing with Korea. See my previous posts skype is the limit and  bluetongue lizards, vegemite and cricket and skype is so exciting.

•     Year 8 students, a rather ‘mottled lot’, also leapt out of their seats period 5 on a Friday, and as a group and yet quite independently of my assistance, produced clips to create a video to show those ‘Los Angeles’ kids what ‘footy’ was to the Aussies.

• I am harrassed and almost “bullied” at various times as I walk down the corroidor by students, often students who normally take little interest in school work or who rarely produce work of high quality or who suffer low self esteem, wanting to know if I have put their blogs, movies etc online yet. I even get queried when I am out in the community!!!

• Learning from students who are 9 and 10 years old!!!! When we got our webkinz Patch, my grade 3 and 4 students worked with me as a class, using a datashow and website projection, on getting started with our virtual world. They were actually teaching me even though they had no experience in virtual worlds, themselves. These, surely are our digital natives. See the collaborative blog.
  The walls of our classrooms have started to crumble, so students are talking using vokis and wikis to students in other countries and producing videos of our school, area, farms, towns etc and sharing them via a ning website with those students. We have ’seen’ inside the walls of various other global classrooms and homes, sheds and backyards. No textbook could have the same impact.

• Skype will continue to have an amazing impact on our classroom walls in 2008. When we started video conferencing with Korea, we simply asked questions of each other in the 50 minute blocks but by the fifth day, we were showing them vegemite, cricket demonstrations, aussie meat pies, blue tongue lizards, and in turn, we saw a snow clad school yard, complete with man sweeping away the snow from the school paths, Korean mobile phones/technology and Korean school uniforms. This is such powerful learning, despite the language barriers.

• Virtual and online teamwork with other enthausiastic staff in other countries is now the norm. No longer am I a lone teacher in a reasonably remote rural school, struggling to keep up with the latest in technology but am able to update and communicate with global colleagues via blogs, social networks and ning sites.

• Grade 6 and year 7 students show no hestitation in emailing me either for advice or thanks for uploading their work or getting them involved in projects. I even got emails when I was on long service leave in Europe from grade 6 girls, asking for help with their video editing software and I was able to duly respond overnight, to allow them to continue on.

• A renewed excitement and revigoration has returned to the classrooms with an overlap into other subject or class areas. Other staff are showing an interest and starting to come on board and it is hoped that this will continue and expand into 2008!

 

WEB ON 2.0 in 2008!!!!