Looking for Learning

Connecting with My MUVEnation Group

smithtk — Mon, 26 Jan 2009 16:52:08 +0000

This has been an interesting journey so far and I must add, a bit disconnected. There are very many participants (107, I believe) situated into various groups, following assignments from the main Moodle page. As things go, I have mostly been detached from people in this activity – that is, I have been trying to follow the sequence of activities/events, but haven’t been in touch with people. Working toward better communications on my part.

Big Change!

Yesterday I heard from John Muratet from my group and we met briefly in Second Life then talked for a while on skype. We are eager to participate and overcome the various timezone obstacles with our group members. We will be having a meeting soon to plan how to proceed.

Onward in MUVEnation!

Animal Island and Vampires

smithtk — Fri, 26 Dec 2008 05:49:35 +0000

I explored Animal Island today, walked among giraffes and peacocks, and met a new friend from Germany. She was using a translator to talk to me. She also told me about a group called Rumbled which is a social location dedicated to movie stars and singers form the 50’s era. After that, I follwed a link that promised SL freebies, which I imagined might be devices or costumes or something, but what turned out to be quite strange. I teleported to the freebie location and found myself inside a large walled area where several characters weer having a ocnversation, and two weer having a ocnfrontaiton, as it appeared to me. One of the characters came over to me and revelaed that she was a vampire. Then I got a message requesting that I give control of my avatar to her and that I would receive a vampire bite on my neck. I thougth baout it for a moment and htought , this isn’t exactly why I teleported o this location. So I decided to forego this experience and instead flew staright up and away out of the walled compound area. This calls for a little more investigating.

Navigating in SL

smithtk — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 01:59:42 +0000

This was not my first excursion in Second Life. I am a member of a few different groups, but I still don’t consider myself a veteran member. I can fly and teleport and basically find my way around. I have acquired a few item in my personal inventory such as a motorcycle and a little red car. I tried on a Darth Vader costume one time and had a very hard time getting out of it! I have met with class members in SL and I have attended a presentaiton there also.

MUVEnation -Starter Questions

smithtk — Mon, 03 Nov 2008 05:12:50 +0000

A. I am your friend. I don’t work in education. You are talking to me about the idea that we all learn from each other, in all kinds of contexts, and that this can often be richer than more formal classroom based learning. I am skeptical. Tell me about an informal learning experience you have had online in which collaboration was involved, show me a concrete example to help me to see what you mean.

Okay – I run an Internet project called the Monster Project. It’s a multischool project in which the parts of a friendly monster are divided among the participant classrooms (K-6). The idea of learning from each other is illustrated in each classroom and across classrooms as the kids are from around the world. Collaboration is required becasue without it, the monster will not get done. Each class chooses a Monster part. Then, each class writes a description of that part and sends it to this project web. When all of the descriptions are in, each class builds a single MONSTER using everyone’s descriptions from the table below. Students discover that designing and building a monster together is a very big job. It is a major lesson in working together and learning to compromise in a group decision process. For example, the kid responsible for the head has to plan with the kids doing the eyes, nose, neck, mouth, ears and hair. So kids must collaborate to construct their class MONSTER . The result is satisfying proof that a community of kids can accomplish anything!! Project Site Link.

B. We all explore new technologies, some grab our attention more than others, some seem revolutionary, others simply bore us. Tell us about that new tool, or set of tools, you have just discovered that really excites you, talk about the potential it has to change your work. What do you want to do with it?

The best new tool I use with my kids is a teacher moderated blog site called Classblogmeister. It is not only a place where kids can write their own blogs as wellas respons to my quesitons regarding asignments, it is a majot attraction for them – it appeals to their use of writing skills. They want to check for comments, they want to leave comments, they want to explore other kid blogs – almost makes my job easy! I watch and guide and instruct in how to write meaningful comments. Besdies other kids inother locations reading our blogs, grandmas, grandpas, mom, and dads get the benefit of being able to see into the classroom to know what the kids are doing. www.smithbloggers.org

C. Do you see yourself as a pioneer? Do you think you are more innovative than others in your organisation? Do you think your organisation is lagging behind? Tell us how you feel about this?

I see myself as following a path that is exciting and interesting and I know furthers my knowledge and skills as an educator. I think the Internet allows so much self teaching that we can all be innovative. As far as being ahead of anyone, I don’t look at it that way. There are many great teachers who may or may not be using web tools in their classrooms as much as I do.

Working in Ning.com

smithtk — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 15:40:49 +0000

Ning.com has many networks available. Classroom 2.0 is one of them and it has all kinds of teacher interaction going on – brand new teachers, veteran teachers, techy teachers, old school teachers, teachers from all around the world…and all sharing ideas, asking questions, seeking input, and so forth. It’s quite a large crowd in one place which has its advantages and disadvantages. Steve Hargadon is the moderator/manager and does his best to keep order in this expanding space.

Using Skype for ESL

smithtk — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 15:00:07 +0000

On we go. Doctoral classes are underway, and my 4th grade class has settled into the 2008-09 school year. Always a surprise with each new year… this year, Norberto arrived in our class. He speaks no English and we have absolutely no program, materials, or plan for non-English speaking students. But a challenge is always welcome, and since I’ve been playing with Mandarin Chinese for the past four years with our Taiwanese Internet project connections, I feel skilled, or better, just comfortable, in finding language resources on the net. On to Spanish.

So far, it is going okay. Norberto is helping me as I try to have him fine tune my pronunciation such as when I ask him how to say various words (usually a noun, pointing at a desk, clock, pencil, etc). Now we need to move to the next step – I really want to talk to Norberto about his behavior, about touching other students, about writing in library books, just in general I want to speak with him. So – I have asked Delia, a teacher from Los Angeles, to Skype with me, to video her way into my classroom and speak with Norberto and me at the same time and we’ll see what we can do about understanding each other. Also lined up for skyping, is a class in Bridgeport, CT, a group of kids from Nicaragua, Mexico, and Honduras. I had a skype session on Friday with a class of 3rd graders in Oklahoma City and Norberto was too shy to speak into the microphone – but I hope this will change when he hears Delia speaking Spanish. Adios.

Using Animoto

smithtk — Wed, 07 May 2008 01:30:10 +0000

I’d played around with the free 30 second version of Animoto before, but things just got very interesting when I found out that there is yet another great deal for educators. If you request an educational code from Animoto, you can have the greater form of program access, that is, the ability to create a larger presentation from more photos ( and longer than 30 seconds) , and then download it for use in other ways in the classroom. I can set up individual kid accounts, but for now, I’m just using a whole classroom account. Here is the first run using Animoto to present moments from a recent play at school.

Newspaper Magic Trick with Chinese and Spanish

smithtk — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 03:38:57 +0000

Video conferencing has gotten more and more sophisticated in the past few years. “It used to be so hard to do” sang some rocker in the 80’s… yes it was. I think CuSeeMe was the first video program I tried, then Netmeeting, then a short-lived thing called iVisit. My kids talked to kids in Wales – choppy, with echoes and frozen frames. Then along came Sightspeed and Skype, so now with a little broadband and a cheap webcam, we can see into classrooms in any timezone around the world with good audio and often good video – assuming that those on the other end are awake the same time that we are.

So, I get around to my point here, last week we connected with a grade 4 teacher in Connecticut who teaches a very small class of 11 kids – all native Spanish speakers. Mr. Greenberg, however, had a previous occupation – yes, he was a magician. In our video meeting last week, he amazed the kids by seemingly tearing a newspaper into shreds, the calmly opened up the unshredded, whole newspaper. Were there gasps in my classroom? Giant gasps. The remainder of the conference was based on language sharing: my kids were teaching mandarin Chinese numbers and phrases, and Mr. Greenberg’s kids were teaching us the same or similar words and phrases in Spanish.

My kids take it for granted that we can just “call” whomever we please directly from our classroom – and in return, anyone might just call us while we are having class – and that does happen. The Skype rhythmic melody sings out from time to time, and we stop what we’re doing and see who’s calling. Only takes a moment, and it of course breaks any concentration we might have on social studies or whatever else I might be teaching, but the curiosity and the fun of it is worth it.

I have Mr. Greenberg on video tearing up the newspaper, and I still can’t see how he does that trick.

1001 Tales Writing Project

smithtk — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 19:39:35 +0000

At the conclusion of our collaborative writing project, the Top Ten Writers have been named to the Hall of Fame, chosen by their peers. 1001 Tales is a multi school project which started last year, created by Clay Burrell, an American literature teacher in Seoul, South Korea. It had a high school group and an elementary group. Clay from Korea, Jeff Dungan of the Dominican Republic, and myself from Hannibal, MO met in Skype and in about 40 minutes had our plan together for how we’d use wikispaces and how we’d match schools as writing partners. Dean Meyer of Michigan came along shortly with a plan for reviewing student work based on Peter Elbow’s writing ideas. Kids were to pretend that an Alien King had taken over the Earth. Now, the King was calling Earthlings to his throne to tell him a story. If he liked the story, the writer would be allowed to exist on Earth. If not, well… perhaps vaporization.

At any rate, that was the start of the project in the 2006-07 school year. This year, word obviously had gotten around because the number of participating schools in the elementary group expanded to fourteen schools in grades 3-5 with one grade 2 as well. Schools were from the USA, Thailand, Australia, Malaysia, and the Dominican Republic. See the list HERE.

My small sector was shared with Jane Lowe’s grade 4 from western Australia. We paired the kids and set them loose on their wikis writing a first draft of narrative fiction. Each kid was to read the draft of his or her partner and leave positive comments in a format we all had agreed upon, thereby giving the kids a structure for their feedback. The feedback structure is listed here: http://smithclass.wikispaces.com/smithtales08.

Finally after a few weeks of writing, commenting, exchanging photos and videos, we had the Top Ten Hall of Fame session. In my class, we read all stories aloud, projected on the Smartboard, then all students rated the stories on a scale of 1-5 in the categories of: (a) Makes Sense, (b) Used enough describing words, (c) Final draft improved from the first draft, and (d) the story created pictures in the reader’s mind. So each student rated the stories and tallied a score for each. The Australian kids did the same for us. The resulting Hall of Famers have their photos posted on our wiki page here — http://smithclass.wikispaces.com/hall-of-fame-smith-lowe .

Lots of work, lots of fun, lots of learning. One comment on this year: it was easier having just one other class to work with. Some of the groups were in three’s (as we did before) and it is much more of a huge management task getting all three sets of writers to coordinate the drafts, the comments, and just navigating through the wikis.

Google Earth + Flickr

smithtk — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 18:33:40 +0000

From the Viewfinder web site, new ways to use Google Earth and Flickr together. Interesting.