I am a grade 6/7 teacher at Summit Middle School in School District 43, Coquitlam. This blog is a journal of my path to going native. Digital native. This blog is about how I am learning ways to integrate technology into education to improve student learning. My views are my own.
I was thinking about how to help struggling writers using technology in the classroom. One thought I had was about was probably the obvious choice - MS Word. True you could use any word processor, but this is what I am given, and lots of people have it in their homes. So, I use what I have.
Kids who have problems with handwriting (or even teachers, like yours truly) like using word processors because when you strike the key, the letters always look the same time after time. But there are other ways to use the word processor to help.
As a primary teacher, I used to walk around the class, and I would help kids by scribing some of their work if it looked like they needed help keeping up, getting ideas down before they forgot them, organizing their sentences, or to just keep the momentum of their writing going. Not every kid needed help, but there was only one "me" walking around. A bit of legwork needed, for sure.
I was thinking, what if we put a struggling writer in front of a computer. Then, when I needed to help scribe, I could just type what the kid dictates. I can type way faster than I can write, and as their typing speed improves they would need less help. But, also perhaps I could change the color of my text. If they wrote in one color, and I wrote in another color, when you zoom, back you could see how much you are helping the student, and how much they are capable of themselves. Over time you could compare this with other assignments, and have a quick visual check by looking at the size of the color blocks to see if the student is writing more on their own, still needing the same amount of support, or needing more support. You could see if they always need help in the beginnings, or the endings of stories - and if that were the case, you could make that a focus in your next writing lesson.
Below I have taken 3 samples (not real writing samples at this point) and zoomed out. In the first sample we see lots of green, the teacher's writing color. The next one has less green, and the third sample has less still, with much of the green appearing at the ends of paragraphs and the story itself. This might mean the student is improving in being able to write more details, but needs help writing concluding statements.
Now if only I could find someone who could try this out, and tell me if it helped them and their students with writing.
I remember hearing something about the company Palm. Back when palm pilots were all the rage (yep, I had one) I read that there was a real concern at about how many clicks it would take to do a task. Any more than 3 clicks, and the company considered it a problem. I think this kind of thinking needs to be employed in schools as they incorporate technology. In this particular instance I am thinking about parents.
It's for the We use SharePoint websites for our classroom websites in our district. They are incredibly powerful and incredibly useful. Our district is always working at making them look better, and more user friendly. I think one of the ways we could start using our homework site is to set up our publicly viewable homework sites so that parents can rss them to their smartphones. This would mean that whenever a teacher posted their homework to their class website, parents would get it in their inbox on their iPhone, blackberry, or HTC. Any smartphone could do this. So can an iPod touch. I checked.
You don't need to have a smart phone or iPod to subscribe to a website by rss. You can do it on your computer. However I think of the power of a parent who can just pull their phone out of their pocket and say "Hey don't you have math homework today, page 197 #1-15?" Middle school students mean well, but there is a lot going on, and I want to make it easier to support them.
Yes, a parent could find my homework site. They just go to my district site, click on school sites, click on my middle school, click on staff directory, click on staff, and then click on my homework site link, and then click on Homework Calendar. That's a lot of clicks. If they are savvy computer users, they would bookmark the site. Too many clicks to do on a regular basis.
Parents might not make regular use of my homework site then.
Better just to send all my parents the rss feed link at the start of the year at parent orientation night, and walk them through putting it on their phone. I see parents using their phones all the time. They have them on their person and they are comfortable using them.
Let's make it easier for the parents to support their kids' learning at home. It might mean I don't have to chase down so many missing and late assignments.
Thomas is a grade 6 boy and has a learning diability. Actually he has more than one. He might have something called Central Auditory Processing Disorder. He has difficulties at times coming up with the right word when speaking. He has incredible difficulties writing sentences.
A sentence for Thomas saying "I am going to the store to buy a hammer and some nails" might come out like "sotre hammre buy nail".
But, Thomas has ideas just like every other kid. It has been so long since has gotten his ideas out, though, so that he no longer thinks of himself as a writer, or that he has great stories to tell.
Thomas can talk. I put him in front of a computer, and opened up the program Audacity. It is an open-source program that can record your voice, and save it as a sound clip. I plugged in a mic and some headphones for better sound quality. Then I did some brainstorming out loud with Thomas on a topic he enjoys - dirtbikes and quads. I taught him how to record a sentence, rewind, and play it back, pausing after each couple words. He would then write the words out by hand. However, I noticed that he had some difficulties with spelling too. Thomas would spell the word "wheels" as "whelles". He knew there was a double letter in the word, but not which one. I thought that MS Word could help with this, so he began typing out two words at a time while he listened to his own sentences. This is an excerpt - sentences 5 and 6:
Three are deferent cines of quads there are some quads meet for racing and some are off road. Dirt bikes can do different tricks . you can do a superman grab on a dirt bike.
This is more output in 5 minutes than he does in his classroom in 20 minutes. He needs someone to brainstorm and rehearse his ideas with out loud. He needs practice using Audacity, and he needs practice using MS Word to spell check. After seeing his results, his teacher predicts that this is the way he will pass 6th grade. I am excited, and cautiosly optimistic. I work with him again on Friday, so stay tuned!
I have been trying to save energy in my classroom. I don't mean by turning off lights, or changing the power settings on my computer monitor. I mean I have been trying to save my own energy so I have more energy to be a good dad and husband when I come home for the day. So, now I am trying to talk less during some classes.
The approach has been thus - talk like I tweet. When I post a thought on twitter, I get 140 characters to get my message across. It forces me to be succinct, and choose my words carefully.
When I make a jing, I get five minutes for my video, and that is it. Is this a sign of the times that people are developing shorter attention spans. Perhaps, but I think it is also equally likely that some people who like to talk have always been not quite as interesting to listen to as they think, and that now there are more options for people's attention.
Be brief, and set more realistic goals for communication. Talk for less time than people expect; they will appreciate it. Repeat yourself - students often need that . Eventually the message gets through.
Hi and Welcome to CUEBC! My name is James Gill, and I am a teacher with SD43, Coquitlam School district. Today, I would like to share with you some of the ways that I have been saving time and effort in the classroom by using a classroom website.
Screencasting:
I teach computer education at Moody Middle school, and have for 3 years. Part of my job involves teaching the same lesson to different groups of kids. Also, I find that some of my students would like to be able to get help, or review the instructions, but don’t always follow written instructions well.
I use a free program called Jing (pro version is $15 dollars) and I create screencasts:
1.) I save myself effort by playing the video 4 times in a row, instead of talking 4 times in a row. 2.) Jing forces me to be brief, and no one listens after 5 minutes – I have a tendency to talk if left to my own devices 3.) Kids don’t wait for help with their arm going numb in the air- they can review at their own pace 4.) Parents can support their kids at home – when was the last time your parents did 8th grade math? Probably in the 8th grade!
But what if you have a student that forgets their homework....often!
By putting your lessons and your worksheets on your website, you can tweak your lessons on the fly from anywhere there is an internet connection. I have had students go home, and realize they have forgotten their homework. If there is a worksheet or template they are writing their responses on, they can download them from the website (or rather their parents can ;-)). While students are never thrilled to re-start an assignment, it prevents them from possibly losing marks for turning in late work. I re-use my lessons often, and re-invent them often.
I use this with my middle school classes, but I first used it with a class of Grade 3 students. It saved me a lot of time waiting for a kid to re-do lost assignments, or having to mark after they have handed it in late.
Hand In Bin – Easy Peasy Paperless:
In my first term in my position, I had students hitting print on their first assignment. Then I realized that this created organizational problems, kids not printing on time. So using our SharePoint websites, we created a list where students can hand their work in:
I see everyone’s work, they see their own. I can mark them here, or at home, or anywhere I have an internet connection. I don’t carry my marking home with me. Perhaps not all of your students will do their work on computer, but I bet a lot of them are doing it on a computer and hitting print. If you even take some of your work electronically, it could speed up your marking. Kids can hand in from anywhere there is a computer with an internet connection, which sometimes increases your chances of getting their assignments in when you are ready to mark them.
Giving Feedback that Motivates Kids to Listen:
Another problem I have wrestled with in the past is that kids don’t read my feedback. Students are only interested in the mark. I can ask a student what mark they got, and usually they will know the answer to that question. But when I ask a student what I had to say about their work, hardly any students were able to tell me. I am not alone in this struggle. Apparently, students will not read your comments unless they are surprised in a negative way about their mark.
One of the ways I have found around this issue has been to have students turn in their work to my classroom website. We currently use MS Word on all our school computers, and many students have this program at home too. Rather than write on their work, I will record a comment on their work. By embedding a voice recording in their work:
1.) I can save myself time and energy by “talking” my comments into their work- I can say in 35 seconds more than I can write 2.) Students listen to my comments- listening comprehension is higher in my middle school students than is reading comprehension 3.) There is no way to fast forward the comments – as long as I say their grades last, they have to listen to all my feedback first.
Improving Student Writing:
I thought that using the Document Libraries on SharePoint would create a great way for students to share their work with each other . Basically kids upload their work to a common folder on my website. Then, they sign out the document, read it, and post comments in the margin.
After teaching the class about how to give useful feedback, and what are some ways to phrase it to not offend others, I asked kids to then read, and make use of any feedback they felt would help when writing good copies. I decided to do an informal poll which is something built in to our SharePoint websites. You can also survey your students on SurveyMonkey. The results were quite telling:
I hope you have enjoyed my workshop on using the virtual classroom to save time, and money. I would like to leave you with a final thought. Sir Ken Robinson, a college professor and internationally renowned speaker and writer on the topic of education said recently that schools are at their most elemental an interaction between student and teacher, and so we must only make changes to school that improve this dynamic (sic). My two bits - use technology, but not because it is shiny, new, or trending on twitter. Only use it if it makes your life better.
Yesterday I created a screencast to help students in a math tutorial class designed for kids who are struggling with math. The topic was integers. Turns out the student who planted the seed of this idea became confused with her schedule, or chose not to show up. But for the kids who did show up, I created this screencast as support for them to use at home and at school:
When I ran into Susan later that day, I showed her the video. She was surprised and pleased that I had taken an interest in her academics, but I don't know yet if she checked out the video. But someone did.
Jeffrey, another student from the class caught up to me in the hall. He told me he watched the video last night.
I asked if he thought it was helpful, and he said yes.
I asked if his homework was complete - another yes.
I asked him if he always completes his homework, and he replied no
Finally I asked if he would like to see more screencasts about his homework - definitely yes.
I guess the question remains, with other staff adopt the idea of screencasting their lessons? I went around and informally shared my screencast with other staff, and told them what it was for. Most were hesitant, perhaps dreading an awful learning curve associated with learning how to screencast with Jing. Or, perhaps they don't believe that students will go to the video.
It is my goal this week to support one person who is interested in learning how to screencast their lessons.
20 minutes ago, a student in my class named Susan (not her real name) told me she was stupid and that's why she couldn't do math, but that it didn't matter. Holy cow - I told her that she lied to me and herself 2x in the same sentence.
1.) I don't believe she is stupid (but I do believe she finds math hard)
2.) It does matter if she doesn't do well at math.
Currently students are creating their own designs for the school that will eventually replace this school here at Moody Middle in 2014. We discussed it in class, then on a discussion forum, and now we are taking these ideas and using them in sketchup. Susan was having trouble coming up with a concrete idea that she could create, and I think she was close to giving up and just looking for a way to go and talk to her friends out of my line of sight. Unfortunately for her, there is no such place in my room.
I asked Susan what she was doing in Math right now. She told me she is learning about integers. She finds her math class distracting because her friends are talking about other stuff around her. She also told me that she only understands some of what the teacher says, but none of what she reads in textbooks.
I showed her this video:
I then said if the front of her "futuristic" desk had a computer screen in it, and all the instructors lessons were on youtube, and her desk had privacy screens on the sides, then she could watch the videos, pause them, do one step at a time, and review them as many times as she would like.
Susan asked if you don't have to practice math to get good at it. I asked her if you could practice something when you don't understand it. If the lessons were on youtube, she could watch it at home, and practice it there. She would be getting some support at home. She said that these ideas made sense to her, and that she would be more likely to learn math skills, and to do her homework.
I wonder if she would go home today, and watch a youtube video on math? This week?
My grade 6 and 7 Computer Class students are doing research about fast food by using the nutrition calculator on the McDonalds website. We are learning about calories, fat, protien, carbohydrates, vitamins and minerals. But this is only the activity that keeps them interested. What I have been trying to get them to do is to be able to read charts, and find information. Of the 10 questions I have asked the student, it has been about reading and recording information from the Nutrition Calculator.
But the last 2 questions are what really interest me. I have asked very broad questions for them to tell me "what have you learned from playing with your food?" Then I asked the kids to compare two fast food chains with similar items, and to draw conclusions based on data.
I asked them do you know who looks at information and then makes sense of it in words? Scientists! Engineers! Financial Analysts!
This sounded good to them. I pointed out that while memorizing that the capital of Alberta is Edmonton is somewhat useful, this is something they could just google. Their education should focus on being able to demonstrate the thinking they can do with the facts that they learn.
This Friday I will be brainstorming with a middle school principal the ways and howto's of using iPod touch's in their education. She is buying a class set, and going to use these as a mobile lab. Accordingly I have given this assignment to my Grade 8's.
Cell Phones and iPods in Education
The purpose of this assignment is to figure out ways to use Personally Owned Devices (POD's) in education. They are a powerful tool, many students have them already, and they are becoming more common as time goes by.
Step 1 - Identify all the things you can do with your cell phone / iPod / SmartPhone / Netbook / Laptop
Step 2 - Choose 3 features of your device and figure out a way to use them in education. At least one of these should be a well detailed paragraph that really showcases the cell phone's ability as an educational tool.
Step 3 - Identify and clearly explain ways that students can mis-use with a POD in class. Be prepared if questioned to justify why you consider some acts to be cheating /mis-use, and some are not.
Step 4 - Model one positive way in which a POD can be used in an educational setting. This can be done with a video / audio recording / interpretive dance.
I love the Internet. I love teaching my students the importance of being accountable. But using one to facilitate the other? That's like a bowl of "awesome" covered with "awesome sauce!"
I have been using my computer to email parents directly from class, and as so many parents are working with computers as part of their daily routine, they get the update on their child's progress, (or lack thereof) really quickly. I find parents are more likely to respond using email than they are by phone, or at the very least, respond the same day.
Taking it a step further, one of the teachers on my campus has installed skype. I have skype. When I was teaching his class, and I needed to discuss with him about students that had not completed work for my class, I skyped him. Good idea too, as we have six buildings on our campus, and he and I are about as far apart as you can get and still be on campus. It takes about 3-4 minutes to walk across campus.
Not every teacher wishes to be disturbed on their prep period, but we work quite closely together, and he addressed the class over my speakers. I was able to get work turned in to me the next day, instead of spending a week chasing stragglers.
I wonder if I can get other teachers on skype? I wonder if I could set up a conference call between teachers and parents over skype and cell phones? It would save time and effort, and have a much more immediate effect on the students who are....reluctant, to get their work in on time. I will propose it to other teachers, and see what they say.
This week I had my students share their writing assignments with each other over the Internet. Our purpose was to improve the quality of our writing through peer editing. I created a document library on our SharePoint website for the class, and taught the kids how to check documents in and out of the website. This is not unlike what the teachers at our school do for our report cards. Here is the result of a survey I asked the kids to take. It was an anonymous survey, and 39 of 57 students answered:
The results may be a bit hard to see, but if you enlarge the image you can read the results of the 3 questions I asked the kids.
97% of the students in my class who responded to a short survey feel that using a SharePoint document library to share their work for peer editing improved the quality of their own written work.
About half of them feel it improved the length of their written work.
97% of them feel that they had something to offer their peers in the form of editing advice that would make a measureable improvement in their work “some of the time” to “almost all of the time.”
I also felt that interest was high during the days we were editing each others' work, and that behaviour problems were virtually non-existent. I feel that the students were interested and engaged in their work.
When I showed these results to one class' homeroom teacher, she said "Ok, but now where do we get a class set of computers for my class?" While I admit we don't have the class of computers on wheels, I think we know that kids enjoy and benefit from peer editing, and that perhaps other classes will book our second computer lab 1 period a day, for a week. Perhaps a teacher will assign it as a homework project. Like that old baseball movie says "If you build it, they will come."
This year I will be teaching all the students in my school. 780+ students. I only get 7.5 weeks with the grade 6 and 7 students. A student teacher dropped by my class yesterday, visiting from another teacher's classroom, and she made a great observation. During my introduction to the class, she picked out an ESL student who has some real difficulties with the english language. She had trouble understanding what I was saying. How could she do her work?
I went to Google Translate. I then cut and paste my assignment into the text box and translated my assignment from English to Simplified Chinese. My student could read it! That and pairing her with another student who speaks Cantonese (not Mandarin which would have been ideal) will enable her to do her work.
I bet ESL students could use this site, or one of the many other sites like it in conjunction with a netbook to do their work in class. They still will be learning english. It just supports their learning while they are learning a new language.
Don't most of us as teachers type our work up on computers already? Stop hitting print so often I say, and start giving our ESL kids the digital copies to work with.
Yesterday my students and I were using sketchup. This is a free 3d architecture program that I really enjoy. But, we ran into a problem. We thought we knew how to do something with the program (for those of you who know sketchup we were trying to create "groups" and "components", but it doesn't really matter what we were having problems with). I had taught the basics of sketchup using video tutorials from the Sketchup YouTube Channel.
I knew the answer was in this one video tutorial that I embedded in our classroom website. I told three students at the end of the period to review this video (approximately 7 minutes long). I reviewed the video myself and found out what I was doing wrong. When I asked my three students the next day who reviewed the video to solve their problem, here is what I found. None of the students had reviewed the video. Only 1 student went home and did some experimentation to see if he could solve the problem, but didn't review.
This tells me either:
A) My students are used to being told to find answers but have realized that if they wait someone will find the answers for them and tell them.
B) They don't understand review is an active process where you seek out what you need to know because you don't know it yet! They view review as a passive process, like waiting in line at the grocery store.
Either way, this is not good. 21st Century learners have to figure out what they don't know yet, and how to go and find the knowledge they need.
I reviewed and I learned. I have to teach them to figure out what they need to learn. I have to teach them to review. That is the real lesson I am teaching.
Drives me nuts that people think I am teaching "computers."
I just had the most interesting conversation with a guy who make games for a living. Computer games. He was a programmer who helped create the FIFA series of video games. He recently left EA, and I asked him why leave Electronic Arts? They are among the biggest and best in game design. They make NHL, NFL and FIFA video games just to name a few of their big titles. He replied "to start a new company."
I asked him what advice he would give to younger kids looking to get into game design. While he didn't specify any particular school subject, he said math was a strength of his, and there is lots of math in programming.
What he emphasized was that kids who want to make games should take some programming courses, and then complete a project. It doesn't have to be fancy. They have to start something and take it to completion; The ability to finish what you started.
Also he said you need to have communication skills. These games are worth hundreds of millions of dollars, and the team for FIFA had about 150 people working on it. Communication skills and teamwork are key.
Finally when I asked how he felt about the future of programming and he thought it was really good. Games are semi-recession proof. They provide a lot of entertainment for only a little money, and people are always buying games.
Some of my kids work strange times and hours. Just like me! I have been using a new hand-in "bin" on my virtual classroom. It is set up so that students can submit their homework via attachment to a folder, providing me with a self assessment. I comment back, and check it off. With each checked off assignment it is moved to the "done" folder and kids read the feedback. It has made my workload with marking so much more manageable, with no cluttersome papers. But, I wish I didn't get all the assignments at the same time.
So perhaps I should let the kids work and turn in work at their own pace. This would mean I wouldn't get 120 assignments in at the same time. This makes me think of some more advantages too...
I could show the kids the whole curriculum, and tell them when the term ends. Then, I tell them to get to work, and be there to provide support.
What about more self-paced learning. To prevent speedy workers from doing poor work, I need to:
1. Provide samples of different qualities of work (just in my first term of the job, so second, third and fourth term will get the benefits of the examples I get from the first term)
2. Provide a minimal amount of acceptable work to shoot for, and tie the quality and quantity of assignments done to grades in a really easy to follow formula (2 required assignments and 1 extension for every section).
3. Create screencasts of my lessons with something like Jing. This allows students to learn at their own pace.
4. Identify the weak students, or students who cannot keep themselves on pace. Teach them to set their own goals and monitor their own progress.
How can I do this? Perhaps I need to set a goal of one screen cast a day for the next two weeks. That will take me to the end of term 1, and get me ready for term 1.
I have never done a self-paced program before, so let's see what happens.
Yesterday I had plans to do a power point presentation on using SharePoint websites for virtual classrooms. During the first workshop on Learning Disabled Students one of our staff members talked about how some students have written output problems. I mentioned that MS Word 2003 has built in voice recognition software. That means you talk, and MS Word types, (after you train the computer first). They were astounded, as no one had heard this feature existed in MS Word. It is not as good as some of the third party software titles out there that do speech to text better, but it is something we already have on our computers. No added cost; no waiting for installation or implementation. Some of the student services people thought that this was something they will implement immediately.
How can we get the word out about these features on commonly used pieces of software that will help our students? I will do my part, and blog it!
I think my next pro-d will be about professional reading. If all the teachers in my staff subscribed to one blog each on the topic of their field of education, we would be the most up-to-date middle school in the Province. Plus, by subscribing to blogs, we would be learning in small, easy to digest bites. Middle school practice is designed for people to share out information, and so one good idea can get spread through a team and then a whole staff very quickly.
We shouldn't stop reading books. We should just start reading blogs.
I am getting a laptop! As part of my job, I am going to be helping manage a number of SharePoint websites. The public face of our school on the Internet, the secure staff-only sites, the virtual classrooms that teachers may need help starting - all of it is based on SharePoint sites.
When was told I was getting a laptop to use to help me do my job I was thrilled. I didn't know anything about this particular make and model, so I asked some of the people who work with computers and laptops for a living. They told me that the hardware while very good at the time was a little older, and I should invest my own money to get a recent model. I disagree.
1.) I don't want to spend the money
2.) Newer laptops have to be downgraded to XP from Windows Vista. My school and my district has not made the move to vista on any sort of a large scale.
3.)I think there is a possibility for the increase in web 2.0 use in schools to save schools money by enabling them to use older hardware longer.
By doing more of our work online, using web creating tools like SharePoint, there is less of a demand on our machines. I just have to keep my web browser up to date, and web browsers are free.
Some programs like those that work with graphics and video editing demand more memory. Why not use older programs, and save files at lower resolution? Many of the graphic editing tools that do basic graphic functions are found in older programs. Kids can learn the basics on software that is a little older, and that knowledge is still relevant when they use new versions of the same software.
I just think it's ironic that the evolution of web 2.0 may make it possible for some schools (or people like me) to use older hardware, longer. Time will tell.
One of my students in my "Computers and Students with Learning Disabilities" (let's call him Mike) just had a bit of a breakthrough in tonight's course. It was the last night of the course, and it was the best night yet. Mike has CAPD (Central Auditory Processing Disorder). This means that when he hears things, somehow the signal gets turned around in his brain so that he doesn't hear the sounds that enter his ear. He also has trouble with his vision, and sometimes what he see also gets turned around.
When I asked Mike if he preferred to read or listen to a story, he said listen - with his right ear. When I asked him if he would rather speak an answer, write an answer, or type an answer, he said....type! Mike displayed a good sense of how to navigate menus (file -> save, or edit -> copy), and type at a decent speed for a student about 13 years old. So I thought of ways for him to do his work using a computer to help.
Mike was showing some good skills with photo editing using a simple graphics program. I wanted him to use a digital camera to tell a story, as he could use photographs to tell stories with less typing, than just writing out a story alone. I also showed him how he could use royalty free pictures and VoiceThread.com or PowerPoint to create simple presentations with either voice narration or typed explanations. Mike was pleased.
Mike's mom reported that Mike had difficulties remembering step-by-step instructions, such as "resizing a photo" (about 4 steps). As our lab has Audacity on each station, and many of our computer stations have headphones, I decided to use Mike's preference for audio instructions and skills with a computer to give him a way to remember step-by-step instructions. I used Audacity to record the steps as an mp3 (sound) file. Mike put on his headphones, but only on the right ear. He played the steps using Windows Media Player, and pressed pause when he finished listening to a step. Mike was able to resize a photo listening only to the recorded instructions; he listened, paused the instructions, did that one step, and went back to listen to the next step!
Mike's mom said she was pleased to see that he could do instructions step-by-step by listening to an MP3 file of instructions, but wondered how Mike could do this in class? I suggested an iPod! Some models of ipod have microphones to make a recording. He could ask the teacher to make a recording of Mike's instructions, pausing after each step. Then Mike could play it back, listening to just the right headphone in class, and pause the track at each step. By using headphones on his iPod, he would not be disturbing others. He could then save the file on his computer and his iPod to listen to it again in the future. My hope is that someday Mike records his own instructions, and becomes able to teach himself.
Show me don't tell me. That is one of my student's motto. In our gifted program, one of our students has developed an interest in bridge building. Using the Internet I found a lot of great resources on bridge building, including a site that already has a description of a grade-able activity, background information on bridges, instructions, materials list, and a criteria sheet. Here is the site:
The site is called Rich Performance Tasks, and it is a Canadian made site, based on the Ontario curricular goals.
I then did a search on bridge building on YouTube, and found some great screen-capture videos of a video game that teaches bridge building. With these videos I was able to show the student how bridges are made up of a framework of beams and that their geometry determined how strong they are. We also discussed that bridges in reality needed to be made of materials used in the right way to make sure the bridge is made under budget:
This program is free from Download.com, and can be downloaded an reviewed here.
We also looked at another program that costs money, BridgeIt, and the student really liked the graphics, and felt that the cost (about $20 I think), was not too much for him to get if he really wanted it. I still like the free program, as free is my favourite price. Here is the video of BridgeIt below:
Finally we talked about how he could practice making bridges of different shapes using a combination of real building materials, and testing out new ideas first on the computer when looking for ways to improve his design. All in all, it was a nice lesson that married the experiences of the real world, and the learning that can come by experimenting the "virtual" world as a way to learn more.
I wish, I wish. I wish my students could have "phun" in class.
This is a free program that simulates a lot of the physical features of our real world. With this program I could teach about gravity, mass, density, buoyancy, the three states of matter (or at least two of them), balance and center of gravity, shape and space, tessalations and patterns, simple machines, friction and more. However our computers don't have 3D accelleration I think (this may be a feature of having a graphics card). Apparently the program needs to have a graphics card, and all our refurbished dell computers use on-board audio and video.
I showed this video to my 3 year old, and he wanted to watch it twice. Then he went straight for his blocks. I showed it to the kids of a grade 4 and 5 class, and they were mesmerized! I told them that with parent permission they can get the program, and install it themselves at home if they have a newer computer (with parent permission of course). I guess I will have to put a pin in this one!
