Creating a WebQuest

Wow!  Making a WebQuest is a lot of work!  But, the benefits for the students are great.  I think if you do a WebQuest well, students will become engaged in the material and will learn it better than if you just stood up and lectured to them. 

I liked thinking about a task that they could complete.  I knew I wanted to create a WebQuest about explorers, a third grade SOL.  I knew what facts that they needed to know, so it just was up to how they were going to get that information.  With the help of Dr. Coffman, I gave each student in the group a job: Captain, First Mate, Map Maker, and Cook.  Each job has different information that they need to discover and then the whole group will come together to make a PowerPoint presentation at the end.  There are four explorers that third graders need to know.  Each one then has a page for Captain, First Mate, Map Maker, and Cook.  That was a lot of pages to create!  That was the most time consuming – making all those pages and making sure the information on them was accurate and the pictures on them were cited correctly.

However, hopefully it was all worth it!  I’m looking forward to using it in my classroom this year. 

Tapped In Reflection #2

I attended a Tapped In session for the second time last night, entitled “The Art of Storytelling.”  I believe it’s a series of sessions that are on going.  When I arrived, there was only the moderator and one other person in the session, who left about 1 minute in and never returned.  So, it was just the moderator and myself.  This made the session swift and to the point, but it would have been nice to have some other points of view. 

The moderator introduced me to a site called www.ted.com which has video clips of speakers.  She had me watch one particular clip which had a photographer speaking about a very moving experience he had while photographing children in Korea who had been fathered by American GIs.  It was a 25 minute speech that showed his photographs while he told his story.  The photographs were powerful and he was an excellent storyteller.  It was more like watching a still movie rather than listening to a boring lecturer.  I really enjoyed it. 

Once the clip was finished, we discussed how something like this could be used in the classroom.  I think the clips on the site would be great resources to use to build background knowledge before learning about a new topic, or as a springboard for discussion. 

The moderator also gave me some information about the upcoming festival being held on Tapped In.  All in all, it was a very informative and enjoyable experience.

Interactive PowerPoint

Making a PowerPoint presentation interactive involves a lot of work, but hopefully pays off in the end.  Rather than just slide after slide of bulletted lists that put kids (and adults!) to sleep, interactive PowerPoints mean that kids are working individually or with small groups to find the answers to questions. 

I made an interactive PowerPoint to teach kids about continents and oceans, a third grade SOL.  Figuring out how I could get it to look how I wanted took some work.  The process is time consuming.  It’s a great thing for the kids to do, but I’ll probably be making these over the summer when I have more time rather than during the school year.  Teachers can make these for any concept in any subject area.  There is a wealth of information on the Internet and it is easy to link the slides to sites that provide students with the information they need.  When students are working to create something, answer a question, or solve a problem they are more involved in their learning and retain the information much better. 

Podcasting

Once everything was working technology-wise, podcasting proved to be easy and even fun!  I enjoyed adding some extra sounds to my podcast.  I did this by just playing them in the background so the microphone could pick it up.  There’s probably a better way to do this so you get better sound quality, but this was easy! 

I think kids would have a blast using podcasting.  I’d like them to put their audio along with a visual that they had found or created.  For example, in one of the example podcasts we saw, a class had powerpoint slides with math word problems on them.  Each kid made a podcast to go with it describing how to solve the problem.  I think that’s really cool!  It also would be a neat tool for kids to use to practice their fluency.  For example, kids could write their own stories or descriptions and then add audio of them reading the story.  Other students could enjoy listening to each other’s stories.  I think the possibilities are endless with podcasting.  I’m looking forward to trying it!

Critical Thinking

I think teaching students to think critically is one of the most important skills we can give them as teachers.  To me, teaching students to think critically does not mean me standing in front of the classroom spewing information and the students absorbing it.  In my classroom, one way that I teach critical thinking is through challenging questions.  When we read a story, I try to have my students think more deeply about it.  Why does the main character act this way?  How is the setting important?  In all subjects I try to ask questions that loosely go “Why do you think this is?”  This is a more of a constructivist way of teaching, and from what I’ve read, constructivism lends itself quite well to creating critical thinkers. 

Another way I try to teach students to be critical thinkers is through the projects they do.  Instead of beginning an experiment in science with “this is what you’re going to find…” I begin it with, “Here are the materials.  Here’s what you’re going to do.  Now predict what will happen.”  Again, this takes more of a constructivist and inquiry learning approach. 

Technology can aid teachers in helping students to become critical thinkers.  The Internet offers a wealth of information from which students can view different opinions about a topic and form one of their own.  There are also multitudes of resources in which students can create their own science experiment and then change the variables to see what happens.  For example the site http://www.bbc.co.uk/schools/ks2bitesize/science/activities/plants_grow_fs.shtml offers students a chance to play with variables involved in growing a plant.  Students can change the amount of heat and water the plant receives. 

Computers offer students multiple avenues through which they can create projects.  Once a teacher has assigned a topic to investigate, students can anayze information, synthesize it, and then create a project to display their learning to others.  This might include creating comic strips, brochures, fliers, or banners using basic word processing, to more complicated projects like creating animation or video broadcasts.  Throughout creating these projects, students have to think critically about the information they are obtaining and how to best synthesize it to express themselves.

Using a Screencast

I thought it was really fun and fairly easy to make a screencast of how to use some basic Excel functions.  I think I would use this with my students as a way of presenting directions.  Instead of me going from student to student answering the same question over and over again about how to do something on the computer, I can make a screencast, probably with voice-over, to describe it to them.  This way, they can go at their own pace.  I think this would be a great way to teach them how to use Word, Publisher, Kidspiration, and Excel as well!  I can see it being especially beneficial for ESL students or very young students who cannot yet read.  It’s a visual way to give directions to students. 

I think this would also be great for teachers to use to show other teachers how to work programs.  ITRTs could use screencasts to introduce teachers to new technology. 

I can’t see myself having my third grade students making a screencast themselves, but you never know!  I get more and more comfortable with technology each day! 

Tapped In Reflection

The Tapped In tips and tricks discussion was something that I’ve never done before.  I got a bit of a sense of what was there, but felt that maybe I could have learned more.  With so many people “talking” at the same time, the session took a long time to just learn to click and go to a few places.   We covered some of the different places that we could go on Tapped In.

I think I would use Tapped In the most to talk to other educators and get ideas.  I don’t think I’d use it with my students because I teach in Spotsylvania County and already have a “SCORE” page which seems to have the same capabilities (posting sites for students to visit, being able to see a student’s score on an assignment posted, etc.). 

Overall, it was interesting to be introduced to something new!