We've all heard the oft-repeated statement that teaching is the only profession that has not changed in 100 years. Maybe in some classes, but not by the teachers that I know.
I asked my network on Plurk and Facebook to describe some of the ways they engaged their classes today, and here were some ideas. Where I could, I've pulled descriptions from the sites, themselves and provided links.
Winterwonderland
http://winterwonderland.wikispaces.com/description
The Winter Wonderland Project is an online project for grades K-3 that includes winter-themed technology activities with reading, writing, and math components. Registration will open on November 17th. The Project will begin December 1st and end February 29th. Teachers who participate will share student work on their own personal page(s) on the wiki. If you aren't able to participate during one of the months don't let that stop you from signing up! Go ahead and join now and then participate when you are able. Suggested thematic activities and resources for each month will be provided. We will have a Featured Activity each month that we hope all classes will be able to complete. We have chosen our Featured Activity to introduce you to some new tools or websites or new uses for tools you already use. We do realize that there may be times when sites are blocked at schools or schools do not have access to the programs or tools used. If you can not participate in the Featured Activity, or if you're doing some other winter related technology project in your room, go ahead and post that to your wiki page instead. We would still love your participation in the Winter Wonderland Project, because our goal is to get teachers trying new tools and to share the results with others.
The Monster Project
http://monsterproject.wikispaces.com/Welcome
The Monster Project encourages the development of reading and writing skills while integrating technology into the classroom. Using monsters as a vehicle, students exchange written descriptions via this wiki, and then recreate their partner's monster without ever looking at the "real thing". During the project, students create, discuss, describe, interpret, analyze, organize and assess their monsters as well as the monsters of their peers.
The Time Zones Project
http://timezoneexperiences.wikispaces.com/For+Teachers
This wiki is a place for your students to learn about timezones and what is happening to children in other places during the day. Your students can add a column to the Time Zone Chart page, following the format of the example that is there. Then you can have your students work in groups or individually to create content to show us what they are doing during each hour of the day. They can make a video, an animoto, a podcast, a VoiceThread, etc. and add this to the pages linked off the Time Zone Chart. If you have time, please follow the same format for the Month by Month page on the wiki. Let's discover how different we all are or how similar we all are.
Math Connections Project
http://mathconnections.wikispaces.com/
The Math Connection Project is a mathematical problem solving workshop between international and public schools around the world.
Math is found and used everywhere in our world. This collaborative project is designed to provide a place for students and teachers to share their experiences with math and discover the connection of mathematics study to their own real world experiences. This year's project is centered about four CHALLENGES which will use a variety of online tools to engage your students' in exploring and communicating their understanding of math within four different strands.
- For each CHALLENGE, students will share a real world example of math within the challenge strand using web2.0 tools.
- Students will pose questions and problems about their real world example for others to explore and solve.
- Students will post their example with questions on their individual wiki page in Math Connections.
- Classes will then be partnered enabling students to work collaboratively to ask questions and solve the problems posed.
Flat Tales
http://ms1001tales2009.wikispaces.com
Welcome to the second middle school workshop for the 1001 Flat World Tales project, a "Flat Classroom" writing workshop between international and public schools around the world.
We are using the story telling format of 1001 Nights to tell a new story, a story of our world. The format of 1001 Nights is unique, with thousands of different stories embedded within the one main story. We hope that our student stories will become "never ending tales," with each links to different individual stories embedded within our one overarching story. Our story starts here!
Scary Spuds
http://www.crickweb.co.uk/assets/resources/flash.php?&file=scarymain
My 2nd graders made pictures of Scary Spuds from an online site and then wrote descriptions of the spuds. I put the descriptions on a wiki. A 2nd grade class in another state read our descriptions and tried to replicate our spuds. Their spuds were added to the wiki and then I added the original spud. The other class did the same thing for us. We did this with 6 classes. We're both lab teachers.
Voicethread
http://voicethread.com/about/k12/
Ed.VoiceThread is a web-based communications network for K-12 students and educators. Simple, powerful and safe, Ed.VoiceThread is a place for creating and collaborating on digital stories and documentaries, practicing and documenting language skills, exploring geography and culture, solving math problems, or simply finding and honing student voices.
My 6th grade math students answered and reviewed math problems via Voicethread.
Skype
Skype is used for making voice calls, chats, video calls, and conferencing.
The students met via Skype to get to know one another and find out about life in another country, USA vs Canada.
We Skype to talk with experts and ask questions.
We're calling buddy classes/teachers all the time, just for a chat & a catch up/to talk about what's happening in the classroom/answer questions. Just participated in Around the World in 80 schools - a Skype project by Silvia Tolisano.
