I posted a few weeks ago about the ongoing Teddy Bears Around the World (now in its fourth year) project.

The project blog and hub can be be found at http://www.langwitches.org/blog/travel/teddybearsaroundtheworld/

I have created a How-to-Guide in order to articulate how and why to join such a project, to make participation easier and to facilitate the process of passing on the information.

Feel free to forward via email or print out the flyer and hand them to a teacher who might be interested in participating.

Global Project: Teddy Bears Around the World

Last year, while our first grade teacher was absent for an extended period of time, I spend a few sessions with them to read a book from the Magic Tree House series, Vacation under the Volcano, and then pulled  students out in small groups to record them. You can read about the process and my reflection on this post “Podcasting with First Grade“.

This year, the first grade teacher took over reading and writing the script in the classroom. She was one step ahead of me in reading and scripting each chapter, as I took three students (Interviewer’s, Jack’s & Annie’s voice) at the time out of the classroom to record them.

Recording the Script

As I was pulling the students out to record, the classroom teacher continued reading, chapter by chapter, and creating the interview script to be recorded with the students. By the time the last chapter was recorded, I had ten written scripts collected. I decided to create a little booklet (created from a MS Word Template) for the first graders, so they would be able to follow along as they were listening to the podcast.

Booklet created with MS Word Template

The audio file is about 15 minutes long. As the class listened to the podcast for the first time in it’s entirety, they had their little fingers on the paper to follow along. Each chapter ending was followed with a special sound to indicate that a new chapter was about to start. This helped any student who had lost their place on the script.

Read-Along

Read- Along

Once we had finished listening to the podcast, I asked their teacher give them a few minutes to write down a couple of sentences about their experience.

My thoughts:

• It amazes me every time. Students are so engaged, wanting to re-record, if their voice, didn’t sound “just” right.
• Students (6-7 year olds)  are very interested in the mechanics of Garageband (ex. tracks, dead air, sound clips, moving clips, etc).
• Students started to experiment with their voices: inflection, fluency, pitches, emotions, volume, speed…
• The written script as an add-on to the audio file was a bonus. Students are eager to “read-along” as they were listening to their podcast. I want to look for an iPad/iPhone app to streamline the process. Does anyone know of an app that would allow me to import a recorded mp3 file (I want to be able to continue using Garagband to record and edit them) and then ” attach” the word doc or a pdf file to that audio file for kids to scroll through at their own pace, as they are playing and pausing the audio file.

Next Step:

• upload the podcast to their classroom website to be played within the blog.
• upload the podcast to our school’s iTunes Podcast channel.
• Send information (how-to-guide) via blog, email or paper print-out to parents to help them subscribe and download podcast episode from iTunes to their devices.
• Work with librarian to establish a book review, storytelling, etc. audio file library accessible in physical and virtual library space to all students.

Reflection:

• I really like to expand the reflection piece as part of the podcasting process.
• In the future I want to involve students by giving them ownership and time to “play” on their own in Garageband to record and edit their voices.
• Assessment: I need to find a way to formally assess the impact podcasting (including script writing and voice recording) has on writing, reading, fluency, comprehension and presentation skills.
• We need to do this earlier in the year to be able to connect our students with other podcasting children around the world. Take a look at my blog post from last year when I asked: A Worldwide Audience for Six Year Olds?

Listen to these first graders make “Dinosaurs Before Dark” come alive with their voices.

If you have a first grade class or your own child is ready and interested in reading chapter books, download the mp3 file and the pdf file of the script, upload them to your iPod, iTouch, iPhone or iPad (or other device). Now you should be able to listen to the audio as you read along.

Dinosaurs Before Dark Script

——

Postscript: I could not stop thinking about the script and the audio file. Thanks to Leigh Murrell on Twitter, I checked into epub, a format that can be imported into iBooks on my iPad/iPhone.

Since I don’t have Pages on my macbook, I used a script file I had created in Word.

Creating Document in Word

I then converted the .docx file to an .epub file by using 2EPUB, a free online converter.

Free ePub converter

Once converted, I plugged my iPad in and dropped the .epub file from my finder directly into the iTunes>Books folder. I then added an artwork as a cover. Once I synched my iPad, I could find the dinosaur “booklet” on my bookshelf.

Import into iBooks

Even the dictionary part works, as you hold one finger down on a word, the dictionary caption pops up with a definition.

Script opened in iBook

I also uploaded the mp3 file to iTunes and now have a Read-Along audio book with the iBook and iPod combination.

In Florida, the fourth grade curriculum calls for students to learn about the explorers of the 15th and 16th century who came to its coast and influenced the history of the state. As the teachers and I were sitting together to plan the upgrade of the unit, we looked at the instructional goals, standards and objectives, reminded ourselves of 21st century skills and literacies we wanted to incorporate into the lessons for students to be exposed to, practice and “live and breathe”.

I shared with Mrs. R. the Explorer Mixbook project I had co-taught with a teacher from another school. We decided to also create a storybook, using Mixbook again, where students contributed different parts from a common storyline. In contrast to the previous project the story would be a narrative fiction with historical facts intertwined instead of a non fiction book. During one class, students collaboratively worked on ideas for a possible storyline and how each explorer would be represented and how groups would be able to research and contribute their portion of a story.

Brainstorming a storyline

Students started getting their creative juices flowing and kept coming up with more and more ideas to add to the list. Excitement in the class grew larger by the minute. The classroom teacher saved the notebook page with the ideas jotted down as an image and uploaded it to their classroom blog. She extended the brainstorming session by asking her students to add their storyline ideas as comments to the blog post. The class would vote on a final storyline once back in class. Here are a few comments:

Collaboratively writing the introduction and conclusion

Students then started their research about their assigned explorers. They also looked for creative commons or public domain images that they could upload and use for their storybook. Once found, they uploaded the images to Mixbook. For a step by step tutorial how to use Mixbook, take a look at the following chapter of my Digital Storytelling book.

Uploading Public Domain images to Mixbook

Students took turns to create and design the layout of their individual pages and then inserted and formatted the appropriate images and text.

Layout & Text Entry

Upgrade to 21st Century Skills

Upgrade to 21st Century Literacies

Upgrade to Digital Learning Farm based on Alan November

| View Sample Photo Books | Create your own Photo Book

At the beginning of most calendar years, especially at the beginning of a new decade, century or millennium, we tend to take a closer look at our past and future than perhaps at other times. In the past few weeks I came across the following two articles:

You’re Out: 20 Things that became Obsolete this Decade by the Huffington Post and Things that Babies born in 2011 will Never Know by Money Talks News are listing books, travel agents, video tapes, cassettes, watches, CDs and other items that will have or will become obsolete.

The above mentioned articles came to mind, as I was in one of our second grade classrooms getting ready to talk to 7 & 8 year olds about being promoted from merely commenting on their classroom blog to co-authoring a weekly blog post to document their learning and to be able to share it with their parents. Their classroom teacher and I had discussed that students would receive a weekly “Job Assignment” as the “Math Blogger”,”Science Blogger”, etc. and that these jobs would rotate among all students just as the other class job responsibilities.

Class Jobs & Responsibilities I

As I was in their classroom waiting for the students to finish a previous activity, I was looking at their prominent bulletin board displaying students and their corresponding class job.

1. Morning Opening Leader
2. Teacher’s Helper
3. Pencil Sharpener
4. Line Leader
5. Door Holder
6. Line Monitor
7. Paper Collector
8. Paper Passer
9. Board Cleaner
10. Book Organizer

The teacher wanted to keep the list of jobs to ten, one for each student in the class. The class started with a discussion about which current jobs they c(sh)ould be eliminated based on necessity and importance within the classroom community. Most students seemed to agree that the “Book Organizer” and “Pencil Sharpener” could be eliminated. I threw them a curve ball by asking them:

What classroom jobs could possibly not exist anymore in 50 years? What kind of classroom jobs would simply NOT exist anymore when their grandchildren would be going to school?

We looked at each job title individually:

1. Morning Opening Leader- Could still be around.
2. Teacher’s Helper- Could still be around.
3. Pencil Sharpener- I held up my iPad and my stylus and they immediately made the connection. Then I showed them how I use the NoteTaker HD app to take notes and how I could switch between different colored pencils as well as their thickness. They agreed that I was not in need to sharpen pencils anymore.
   
4. Line Leader-Could still be around, IF kids still were going to a physical school every day to learn. I reminded them of our Skype calls and how we could have class with children who lived in different cities, states, countries or continents. There would be no need for a line leader.
5. Door Holder- Virtual classrooms would not have a door anymore that needed to be held open.
6. Line Monitor- No students would be lining up in a virtual classroom to walk one behind the other to the lunchroom, resource or library…no monitor needed.
7. Paper Collector- I pulled my iPad out again and showed them how I could simply e-mail or share my notes with the teacher and she could do the same. We imagined how every student in 50 years would have some sort of device that allowed their teacher to simply have access to their work without the work having to be “collected”
8. Paper Passer- Passing out paper would also be obsolete, since teachers could share any “papers” or assignments via their device with students.
9. Board Cleaner- One click… board is wiped clean
10. Book Organizer- I showed the class my iBook and Kindle app and how I access any book on my shelf. Close the book…and it is “neatly” stored and even remembers the last page I read.

Class Jobs & Responsibilities II

Take a look at the new bulletin board, that their teacher created for her class the following day. Since her second grade is not a 1:1 iPad class, nor holds virtual class for her students, some of the original jobs are [still] valuable and necessary in their classroom. The new added jobs are:

1. Science Blogger
2. Spelling Blogger
3. Reading Blogger
4. Writing Blogger
5. Math Blogger

Their teacher created a “template” blog draft with an outline of a format including the different subject areas. The bloggers of the week will be writing daily in the draft version to document and reflect on their lessons and their learning in different subjects. They will collaboratively revise and edit the draft as a class before publishing and sharing the post. For me, this “blogger” job describes beautifully (at an appropriate developmental stage of a second grader), one of the roles to develop empowered learners that Alan November lists as “Official Scribe”.

I am looking forward to seeing their progress as they get comfortable with their new class job as bloggers, practicing online writing, documenting, reflecting on their learning, sharing, collaborating and so much more…

Adapted from Alan November (pp.188-193), Curriculum 21 (ASCD, 2010) by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

What are some of the classroom jobs that are becoming obsolete in your classroom? What jobs are replacing the old ones? Please share!

A new school year has started for us here in the Northern Hemisphere. We are off to a fantastic start. I am working with our 5th grade teacher and class on their Christopher Columbus Social Studies unit.

Cristobal Colon

We are looking to involve students in researching the historic figure from different perspectives in order to put together a more accurate view of the “hero-fied” persona he has been portrayed as in many textbooks in the USA.

To this end, we would like to skype with “experts” from different countries and backgrounds who could tell us a little bit about what their perception of Christopher Columbus is. What have they been taught in school or at the university about the “Discoverer of the Americas”? Do you celebrate “Columbus Day” , “Dia de la Raza” or “Dia de la Hispanidad” in October? What does your textbook say?

We would be interested in skyping with educators at the elementary school, middle school, high school or university level as well as entire school classes to put together different perspectives.

If you have a different perspective, please contribute to our learning. Leave a comment here on this post, contact me via the form or Tweet me to let me know you would be interested in participating.

The actual Skype call should not last longer than 5 minutes and we would send you specific questions ahead of time.

If you are ready to weave global awareness & collaboration into your elementary school classroom, consider participating in the

Teddy Bears Around the World Project

For the third year, Teddy Bears from around the world are contributing images about their travels, traditions and customs to this blog.

Currently, there are contribution from the following categories:

Categories Submissions

The idea is to collaboratively create a space with stories from different locations around the world. Students practice creative writing skills as they contribute stories from the bear’s perspective about their lives, surroundings and customs. I would like to expand having classes connect and interact with the stories of their teddies via more commenting.

About the Project:

Teddy Bears Around The World started as a project with a school mascot called José,  the travel bear, who enjoyed roaming the world, getting to know new places and meeting interesting people. The Teddy Bears Around the World blog provides the space to hang out and communicate with different teddy bears around the world to hear more about their lives and adventures. This will allow our students to see each other’s countries, customs and traditions through the eyes of our “teddy bears” and open their horizons through a more global perspective.
The idea is to have an ongoing exchange (no deadlines, no pressure) to contribute stories, photographs, videos or podcasts.

These contributions can be from the teddy bears point of view or from the students’ point of view telling a story ABOUT their teddy bear. We could have seasonal posts or specific “story starters”, such as:

• Teddy celebrates Thanksgiving in USA (other country specific holidays)
• Teddy is going to the movies
• Teddy’s Eve tradition
• Teddy and his favorite foods
• Teddy looses his first tooth
• Teddy watches TV
• Teddy’s favorite fairy tale
• Teddy celebrates his birthday
• Christmas trees around the world

There is no need to send a Teddy Bear to another school or teacher. All you need to do in order to participate is to register via the Contact Form, integrate writing and documenting (via images, videos or audio) the adventures of your own class’ teddy bear.

• Fill out the form.
• You will be contacted (at the e-mail you supply in the form) to submit an image of your Teddy Bear.
• Once the image has been submitted and has been approved, it will be placed on the Teddies of the World Gallery Page and a placemark will be created on the Where in the  World Map.
• You will then receive a username and password for this blog to upload your own posts AND that allow your class to comment on other teddy bear’s posts.
• Your posts could be about life in your part of the world. They could include traditions, holidays, day to day life , school events, etc.

So how about it? Are you an elementary school teacher who wants to get involved in a project that practices:

• writing skills?
• media skills?
• collaboration skills?
• geography?

and exposes your students to

• local & community awareness?
• global awareness?
• being globally connected?

Vicky Davis wrote Fail Forward- Move Forward a few weeks ago.

I was inspired by an art teacher’s experiment on his grading system that she describes.

The ceramics teacher told the left half of the room that they would just be graded on the quantity of what they produced. If they had fifty pounds of pots on the last day, they’d get an “A,” forty would get a “B” and so forth.

The right half of the room would be graded on “quality” and “needed to produce only one pot – albeit a perfect one – to get an “A.”

An interesting thing happened when it was time to grade.  The HIGHEST QUALITY came from the HIGH QUANTITY side of the room.  The author tells it like this:

“It seems that while the ‘quantity’ group was busily churning out piles of work – and learning from their mistakes – the ‘quality’ group had sat theorizing about perfection, and in the end had little more to show for their efforts than gradiose theories and a pile of dead clay.”

I shared the experiment story with one of my teachers and she was immediately game to work with her 5th grade students. We decided to tweak it a little bit. We told the students about the original experiment and outcome.  We divided the class into two groups (Quantity vs. Quality) and asked them to create a Grammar tutorial/practice for “Contractions” with the SmartBoard notebook for the first graders of our school. The Quantity group had to create as many separate tutorial/practice slides as possible, while the other group was told only to turn in ONE slide with a perfect tutorial/practice.

After students created the tutorials/practice slides, it seemed that the groups who produced quantity slides also produced the most creative slides compared to the groups who had to only produce one. The latter group seemed to have used the flash gallery items instead of creating their own.

In the back of my mind, I continued to have Alan November’s Six New Roles for Developing Empowered Learners and Contributors, which I have written about before: Math Lesson? Empower Learners? , “Skype Jobs” for Students & Students as Meaningful Contributors

Adapted from Alan November (pp.188-193), Curriculum 21 (ASCD, 2010) by Heidi Hayes Jacobs.

Due to school scheduling issues, it took several weeks to schedule a time when 5th graders could present their final tutorial/practice slides to first grade. The best scenario would have been to meet at the computer lab and allow first graders to “play” with the tutorials to observe them in action. Unfortunately, time ran out and we had to meet in the classroom with a SmartBoard. The older students became the “teachers” to their younger schoolmates by letting them “play” with their tutorial slides on the SmartBoard under their guidance.

Take a peek at the slides students created.

Students from Jacksonville, Florida/USA and Binyamina, Israel recently celebrated Jerusalem Day together. A true opportunity to share Language, Culture & History via Skype.

A grandfather in Israel shared his memories of the Six Day War (1967) of liberating Jerusalem. The Rabbi from Florida explained what Jerusalem means to Jews outside of Israel. Students sang songs, played instruments and practiced English and Hebrew.

Jerusalem Day- Yom Yerushalaim from langwitches on Vimeo.

A Teacher's Heart Smiles when...

A teacher’s heart smiles when students become creative, enthusiastic and take ownership of their work. This was the case with the 4th grade class at my school. Their classroom teacher asked me to introduce podcasts to her class, she and her students took it from there and RAN… with it…

I came to their classroom to let them listen to various examples of class-podcasts and talk to them about  creating a collaborative storyline, that would tie individual audio segments together. I also talked to them about the importance of voice acting in order to engage their audience.

Here are some sample podcasts they listened to:

• Flat Stanley Podcast
• Magic Tree House
• Zoo Trip
• Endangered Animals

Students started to get excited as we were brainstorming scenarios for their storyline.

Brainstorming on the SmartBoard

We took a screenshot of the final list and uploaded the image to their classroom blog. Students were then asked to write a short paragraph on the blog detailing their storyline. The class was going to vote for the best storyline to be used for their podcast.

Screenshot of Possible Storylines

From their classroom blogs:

Sabrina M.

I think the plot should be where we go the Kennedy Space Center and Hannah accidentally pushes the button that launches the rocket so we go to all the different planets and then an evil alien says that we cannot go back to Earth unless we can name four facts about every planet. And that’s when we say all our facts.

Josh Z.

Plot: We go into space accidentally and we get a tour of space. After the tour a black hole suddenly says ” take a quiz of the solar system if you get any questions wrong the sun will disappear ” and we take the quiz and the sun doesn’t disappear.

Reesa Z.

We should do something where we all were asleep and we had a dream about and alien taking us to the solar system and then he/she would give us a tour about the planets. Then we will talk about our planets. After that we all wake up and realize it was just a dream.

Ryan H.

Real estate agents: Aliens from many galaxies away want to sell, The sun, Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, asteroid belt, Jupiter, Saturn, Neptune, Uranus, and Pluto are on the market from alien Real estate agents. The aliens want you to know 4 facts about each planet in order to buy them. If you dont get all 4 facts for your planet by Friday Earth will be destroyed.

Hanna G.

I think the storyline should be: One night all of the classmates dreamed of aliens coming out of the blackhole and they came to capture us. Then the next day we came to school and we went to the Kennedy Space Center and clumsy Hannah accidentally launched the rocket and then it fell so we had to go back to the class and when we got back the class turned into the solar system. In the solar system we learn about all the planets. When we were done we went to the alien real estate agents to get us back home.

Allie I.

Everybody in the class goes home and goes to bed. They all have the same dream. In their dream, they dream about space and learn about space. When they go to school the next morning, they all figure out they had the same dream and talk about what the dream was in class.

Edyn G.

I think that we should be staying at a hotel and there is not enough beds so we pull out a pull out bed and while every one is asleep it turns into a rocket ship and takes us into space and then it turns into a bus and we tour space and then it turns into a rocket ship and gos back to the hotel.

Montgomery P.

I think the plot should be: We go outside for recess, and Daniel tells everyone to come look at what he found. He found twenty jet packs. So we all take a field trip to all the planets and the moon and sun. So when we get back we put the jet packs back where we found them.

Rachel O.

Our classroom turns into the space shuttle because by accident Josh tripped over a binder and pressed the button and no one knew what it did until they all saw the stars and planets.After they see all the stars and planets the class wants to go and take a look around at them all.Mrs.Raitt says “Ok let’s go!”.We all are looking at the planets and then we go back to school.

Shira D.

I would like to do a news cast where on the news they announce that aliens have captured people and they take then around the solar system and that is my idea!

We booked time in the computer lab to allow students to “play” with Garageband and learn about tracks, background music, splitting, editing and moving tracks.

The classroom teacher created a list of planet facts that each group had to include in their segment and students started to write their script.

Items to be included in script

Once each group finished and exported their segment, we imported these files into a new Garageband project and arranged the segments in order.

Putting Podcast Together

Take a “listen” to these 4th graders “Space Real Estate Agents” podcast. Honor their efforts as

• storytellers
• collaborative team members
• creative writers
• producers
• directors
• audio editors
• podcasters

Leave them a comment, including your location, so they can track their listeners on a Map.

View MJGDS-4th Grade Space Podcast Audience in a larger map

My teachers and students at my current school have heard me talk about Twitter more than once (well… more than a hundred times would be more accurate). I have been the “middle(wo)man” between the students and their classroom teachers to make connections (For Skype calls around the World), ask for advice, disseminate a project or request feedback (CSI Twitter) . How do I move from being that sole connector and disseminator to preparing students for that role?

I am planning on working this out with a 5th grade class (10-11 year olds).

First step was to create a Twitter Classroom account. At this point we are testing the waters and will protect our tweets, so only approved users can follow us.

We filled out the profile, added an avatar, link and a bio.

Lee Kolbert has set up a Google Spreadsheet for teachers who are using Twitter with their classroom ( students/parents). Great way to learn about how others are using it as a tool to communicate, collaborate and learn.

We had a “Twitter Meeting” with 5th grade to introduce Twitter and brainstorm ideas HOW the class was going to use it.

• Sharing with others when we skype with people from around the world and what we learned
• Summarize what happened in the classroom that day
• Share links to classroom blog posts
• Share with others how 5th graders learn best

As we were brainstorming, I sent out a Twitter shout out on my Langwitches account and asked:

5th graders and I are brainstorming HOW they will use a classroom twitter account. Give them some of your ideas . Please RT

Here are some of the great suggestions we received.

So, we are off to be pioneers in an uncharted territory of Twitterland with with elementary school students. I am hoping to observe and document our successes and pitfalls in order to encourage other educators to take the plunge and learn from our experiences.

If you are already experimenting with your elementary school students on/with Twitter, please share what you have learned.

We are also looking to follow other 5th grade classes to learn with and from.