Connect 2.0

Our fabulous elementary teachers and students are participating in a wide range of exciting projects that help them connect to the world around them using web 2.0 tools. If you’re curious about web 2.0 or the different ways that your children will be using technology at school, please come to our monthly Parent Technology Coffee Mornings in the ES Learning Hub (the first Wednesday of every month at 7:30, as listed in the school calendar).

For now, you can get started by checking out our first projects for the school year:

Grade 5: Students Teaching Students

The wonderful Chrissy Hellyer and her fellow new ISB teacher, Aly McAloon, will be kicking off the school with a classroom blogging project that will eventually include a regular podcast focused on the Lucy Caulkins Readers Workshop. Our students will start by reading and commenting on each class’ blog, while learning about online safety and appropriate behavior, and will eventually become contributing authors to this blog. We will connect with another grade 5 class at Shanghai American School and the American School of Madrid to help engage and motivate our learners to share their learning with their classmates around the world!

Grade 4: BlogPals

Our fabulous returning teacher, Sonja Merrell, who participated in the 1001 Flat World Tales last year, is back for more 21st century learning this year! She has decided to start the school year off with a class blog, which she will use as a communication portal for her students and their parents. We’re going to start off the year using this blog as a discussion tool, to build a strong school-home connection and to get her students thinking about their learning in a more interactive way. Over time we will have each student as a contributing author to the blog, in order to record their learning and development over the course of the school year.

Grade 2: A Window to Our World

Another amazing returning colleague, Susan Souza, is connecting her class to a partner class via a tool called Ning. She conducted a similar project last year and was amazed to see how quickly her students took to this new learning environment - posting questions and answers, commenting on individual student pages, and sharing their learning as a class - all in second grade! This year the project will focus on building intercultural understanding, learning about diversity, and getting to know our collaborative partners in this private network.

Grade 1: ESL Learners Speak English

Our enthusiastic grade 1 ESL teacher, Erin DeYoung, started using VoiceThread in her classroom last year as a way for her beginning ESL students to practice their English in an authentic environment. We had a great time connecting to grade 1 ESL students at the American School of Madrid, and we’re planning to re-connect again this year. Our students will start practicing their English with an short introduction to each student so that our partner class can really get to know each person as an individual. Over time the students share a bit about their lives in Thailand, the school, and other grade 1 favorites.

Kindergarten: Kids Draw!

Our amazing Kindergarten team teachers, Sandy Chin and Akiko Nagamine, are jumping in to a new model of technology learning with their fantastic class. We have started out the year with a short unit on drawing, where the students were asked to draw a picture of themselves on paper (for a unit entitled “All About Me”) and then draw the same picture on the computer (using KidPix). We discussed what was the same and what was different about drawing on paper and drawing on the computer. Interestingly, although almost all of them though drawing on the computer was more difficult (we still need to work on those fine motor skills), most of them liked drawing on the computer better. After this short unit, Sandy, Akiko and I realized we have lots of room to grow with drawing and technology. We’d like to revisit the concept of drawing on the computer over the course of the year and build in some thoughtful reflection, ideally with VoiceThread, where students can talk about the context of the picture, and the skills they learned while drawing.

All of these projects are being facilitated by our 21st Century Literacy Specialist, Ms. Cofino, in partnership with the classroom teacher. You can keep up with all of the new and exciting developments in 21st century literacy here on the Connect 2.0 blog!

Two of our fantastic elementary classes have recently participated in two different, but equally exciting, writing projects. Both projects involve students from around the world and both projects result in the publishing of a book authored by our students!

Grade 5

Mrs. R’s class used the group instant messaging tool, Twitter, to write a globally collaborative story as part of the @manyvoices project. Twelve upper elementary and lower middle school classes all worked together to create a fantastical fiction story 140 characters at a time, following the protocols of Twitter. Mrs. R’s class wrote chapter 10 (of 12) using their best descriptive language, in just one afternoon. As each student wrote their sentence in the story, they were able to build off the work of the previous author. What a great way to build excitement and enthusiasm about reading and writing! And what makes it even better, is that the finished story is now published as an actual book you can either buy or download!

Grade 4

Mrs. M’s class used a wiki to participate in the globally collaborative writing project, 1001 Flat World Tales, elementary group. Our students used this simple web 2.0 tool to become peer-editors for students in Australia and the United States, while developing their persuasive writing skills. We enjoyed the project so much, that we collaborated just a little bit more to create an interconnected frame story that links all of the individual student stories together.

This ongoing writing workshop involves students and classes from grade 2 all the way up to grade 12 and will continue until the end of the school year (each school division participating on a separate wiki). Once all of the participating schools are finished writing, the top stories will be selected by the students for final publishing in a book! After reading the fantastic stories from our grade 4 students, I’m sure at least one will be chosen for the final publication!

These projects are a fantastic way to engage students in their writing and to promote a lifelong love of writing, reading and learning!

Mrs. R and Ms. H’s classes have just finished a fabulous globally collaborative project, called “Life ‘Round Here,” with students from 11 different schools around the world! The goal of the project was to allow students to share their personal viewpoint about life in their country and to connect with other students to get a “kid’s eye” view into life in different countries.

Here at ISB, we were very excited to work on this project as part of our Adaptation unit. Building on the concepts of how Native Americans adapted to the challenges of their environment, we developed questions to connect our learning to our personal experience.

Our essential questions for this unit were:

• What is life like here in Thailand?
• How have we adapted to life in Thailand?
• How have Thai people adapted to the influence of international culture?

Because we have such a diverse student population, we were able to create groups of students with similar cultural backgrounds to tell the story of their adaptation to Thailand. In Mrs. R’s class we had Korean, European, Japanese and Taiwanese, and American groups, each telling their own story of how life in Thailand is different than in their home countries, and how they have had to adapt to their new lives here. We also had a Thai group that reflected on how Thai culture has adapted to the influence of international culture. In Ms. H’s class we also had European,  American, and Thai groups. In addition, we had an Asian group (with students from Indonesia, Hong Kong, China, and Korea), a Kuwait group, and a South American group. You can find all of our completed movie on the IT’s Elementary podcast channel!

These projects took us about a month to complete. We started by watching a sample video to get our classes excited about the project. We developed a list of tips for creating a quality digital story:

• kept it simple
• you can learn lots of information from a video
• use effects only when needed, when they enhance the content (not so many that they’re distracting)
• integrate different types of images (like screen shots of Google Earth)
• make sure music fits with the slideshow
• use titles to organize your movie into main themes - this needs to be planned in advance
• use categories within categories to further organize
• keep the titles consistent
• photos can represent a lot about a topic

We then brainstormed our big ideas for each group project. In our groups we discussed:

• What is the story we would like to tell about our adaptation to Thailand?
• What are the key points we need to highlight?

Next, we wrote detailed scripts based on our big ideas and found pictures that tell the story visually.

Finally, this week, we put all the stories together into group iMovie projects - first adding our pictures, then titles to organize the sections, and then recording our voices.

Our completed digital stories are posted on the Life ‘Round Here ISB page, so please check them out! Here’s one sample project from Mrs. R’s class to get you started:

Download Video: Posted by mscofino at TeacherTube.com.

You can also view the other digital stories from our internationally collaborative partners here.

Over the next few days we will spend some time reflecting on our learning, watching the completed videos, and even conducting a Skype video conference with some of the participants from other international schools! This has been an exciting, engaging and motivating experience for both the students and the teachers. We can’t wait to read some of their personal reflections about this adventure! We will be posting our stories on our individual student blogs (linked here on the sidebar) beginning next week. Feel free to read and comment anytime!

Mr. Dudash took writing to the next level this week by having his students podcast their work and set it to music. The students in the class were asked to select one piece of recent writing that they were proud for use in their podcast. Next they selected a piece of accompanying music that best fit with their story or theme. Each student then took an evening to practice reading aloud with emphasis and style. The next day they recorded their story into Garage Band, a podcasting program that put all of the components together. I think you will agree, Grade 5 has some GREAT writers!!

Check out all the action here: http://dudash.edublogs.org/

We encourage you to listen so some of the podcasts and leave a comment about the ones you liked. The students would really appreciate your opinion.

What is a podcast?

A podcast is a digital media file, which is distributed over the Internet using syndication feeds for playback on portable media players and personal computers. The term, like “radio“, can refer either to the content itself or to the method by which it is syndicated; the latter is also termed podcasting. The host or author of a podcast is often called a podcaster.

As our grade 5 students are exploring the exciting world of blogging, we are also learning about how to stay safe online. Today, Mrs. T’s class watched an excellent public service announcement called “Think Before You Post” (more available here):

Please enable Javascript and Flash to view this Flash video.

As we discussed the ideas presented in the video, we developed a class set of online safety tips that we want to share with our entire school community:

Think before you post!

• Before you post anything, anywhere, think about:
  • Why are you posting this?
  • Who will see this?
  • What will they think?
• Use a nickname or ONLY your first name
• Do not share personal information like your:
  • Picture, or pictures of your friends
  • Last name
  • Phone number
  • Address
  • E-mail address
• Ask your mom, dad, guardian or teacher before you post

All of our grade five bloggers have had the chance to watch this video and develop online safety tips. Understanding how and why we need to think before we post is a critical skill for all students. Please feel free to use this video at home to start a discussion about online safety with your children!

Two of our grade five classes have just begun an exciting new literacy project!

Ms. H’s and Mrs. R’s classes are learning about 21st Century literacy by reading, writing and communicating via their own individual blogs hosted by Learner Blogs. You can find links to all student blogs here on this blog, or sorted by class on the individual teacher blogs (on the sidebar). Please feel free to read what they are writing and to participate in the conversation. How exciting to see that learning is no longer limited by our classroom doors!

What blogging does for students

“Helps them find a voice

A benefit to educational blogging (and wiki-writing) is the opportunity for the student to find a personal “voice” and to develop individual interests. Much like journal-writing, blogging gives wings to ideas that otherwise may can stay trapped in the mind. Many individuals find that blog-writing changes their lives in a significant way by allowing them to express their ideas in a medium that appears to have life and longevity–and that might find a kindred audience.

Creates enthusiasm for writing and communications

It is not expected that all students will take to blogging (just as not all students enjoy writing), but it is believed that blogging has a unique ability to create enthusiasm for writing and the communication of ideas.

Engages students in conversation and learning

Educational Blogging is more than just being about writing, just like writing is more than just writing business correspondence or a lab report for Chemistry class.Unlike traditional forms of publication that are one-way, when the work is done at the end of the publication process, students can be engaged in ongoing conversations about their ideas and thoughts. This can be threatening for some administrators afraid of endangering children, yet, it brings a reality to the classroom that was not previously possible.

Provides an opportunity to teach about responsible journalism

Because students who are posting blogs reach an audience with their posts, whereas a personal diary can be kept private, students have the opportunity in blogging to learn about the power of the published word. Whereas they might be tempted to criticise or make fun of someone in private conversation or in a diary, they can be taught about responsible journalism, and that the consequences of these kinds of remarks in the new world of the read/write web can be serious and long-lasting.

Empowers students

Student blogging is incredibly empowering in the following ways:

1) Instead of writing as a mechanized approach to empowerment where we learn to write well enough for school and work, we learn to write for life-long learning purposes.

2) Writing and blogging and life are intertwined as difficult issues are exposed and dealt with in a transparent community of voices. Although this type of writing entails risk and trust, growth and teamwork naturally result.

3) Writing and blogging encourage students’ initiative to write, to be engaged at more than just the head level. It involves writing from head and heart. Children often have not learned to do more than live from the heart, while adults have concentrated their efforts on more cerebral approaches. This means adults and children can bridge the gap that exists by writing together, creating a community of writers in their classrooms where there is no pseudo-community, only community where humans write.”

“What Blogging Does for Students.” Support Blogging Wiki. [http://supportblogging.wikispaces.com] Retrieved on 1 December 2006.