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. S’s 3 grade class has just started a very exciting new project!

Through the use of a class blog, Mrs. S and her students will communicate with other 3rd grade students in schools around the world!

As of right now, our Blog Pals partners are in:

• Pennsylvania, USA
• Singapore (Singapore American School)
  

The students in Singapore and the United States will leave comments and questions for Mrs. S’s class on their class blog, and we will do the same for them. These blogs are an exciting and motivating way to help students with their writing and reading skills, as well as allow them to develop friendships with other third graders around the world!

Throughout the course of this project we will learn a lot about online safety as well as appropriate online behavior. You can read all about the amazing things these 3rd graders have learned already right here on our BlogPals blog!

Please, leave a comment for our adventurous 3rd grade writers!

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!

Mrs. L and Ms. B’s fourth grade classes have just started an exciting new project! They are going to be creating multimedia book reviews on VoiceThread (check out a sample here) and then sharing them with partner schools around the world so that their single book review can become a dynamic conversation around books.

Our goal is to promote a love of reading for all students. We can share our VoiceThreads with other classes here at ISB, as well as partner classes in other international and public schools around the world. We will post all of our completed multimedia reviews on our wiki: Books Go Global!  (thanks to Lucy Gray for inspiring our wiki layout with her fabulous Cities of the World wiki – another amazing global collaboration to join!)

VoiceThread is an easy to use, free, online digital storytelling tool that allows students to share their ideas using images and their voice. One exciting feature of a Voice Thread is that it allows us to collaborate with other students around the world. Once a Voice Thread is created, other students can add their own images and narration to the initial Thread. This means that students around the world can begin to discuss and share their thoughts about their favorite books.

Now, I have to admit, I think VoiceThread is pretty cool. When I show our grade 4s a sample VoiceThread I thought they would just be blown away by the tool. And, to some extent they were impressed. But, when they really got excited, and I mean literally shaking with excitement in their seats, was when I mentioned that these book reviews would be shared with other students all around the world.

I find these global connections exhilarating myself and I’m so impressed at how quickly and easily fourth graders were able to grasp the power of these tools. One student asked if she could create her book review in English and her native language, so that friends and family from her own country (who might not speak English) can still enjoy her work. Which then started a discussion about the possibility of a book review being started in Korean, but making it’s way around the world, being translated as it travels. We talked about having partner schools on every continent and ending up with one book being reviewed in as many languages as possible – just like “real” books are published in different languages. What a powerful thought for a group of nine-year-olds!

It’s clear that this project is going to be amazing!

Cross post from http://www.medagogy.edublogs.org

Big movements start with small steps……………..

A simple conversation with Scott last week started like most conversations at ISB, passing each other in the hall. Scott just attended the LEARNING 2.0 and is eager to explore many of the ideas and tool he picked up there.

“Hey Justin! I’m looking to get a little deeper with peace day this year, got any ideas?”

Scott is always looking for meaningful ways to get his students engaged in the writing process and reflect on a deeper level. He has been using his classroom blog as a tool in process but up until now it did not really have an audience other than parents. It was time to change that. Together we came up with some questions for the post that we felt would stretch students to think about peace and what it means to them. You can see the post here.

Time was a factor here as Peace Day was the next day. As we know the read/write web is a powerful tool that can quickly and easily bring people from all over the world together to share and collaborate. The only barrier is knowing that each other exists. I decided to reach out to all my contacts and get the ball rolling. I put out call to teachers and coordinators to have their students stop by and share their perspective along with the country they came from. I also helped Scott embed a cluster map on his site so we could track where the hits were coming from. If you don’t have one on your site get one today! The goal of this little post was to get a few different perspectives from other students to create and opportunity for further conversation about peace.

The results…………..112 posts!!!!!

Mark Picketts at Carol Morgan School , Dominican Republic answered the call and got several of his teachers to involve their classes

Mark Dilworth at International School Manila, answered the call and also got his teachers involved.

Kim Cofino at International School Bangkok , answered the call and reached out to her global community to bring in some great comments from the U.S

Carolyn Foote - Librarian, Texas , answered the call and wrote a fantastic post about Scott’s experiment and featured some of her favorite student comments!

Maryland answered the call. Thank you!

Philadelphia answered the call. Thank you!

The list goes on…………….

One conversation…….led to one email………….led to 112 posts………..which led to a global audience and a conversation about peace!

That is what these tools are for. That is why they MUST be BLENDED into everything we do. Because the time invested reap rewards that keep on giving.

All it took was a teacher willing to ask “How can I go deeper?”

If you are reading this and interested in involving your class please drop by Scott’s Learning Blog and have your students post. We would love to read their thoughts!

One small step at a time.

Mrs. S’s second grade class has just started an exciting globally collaborative project with two second grade partner classes in the United States!

The Global Village project connects our class with two classes in the United States. The goal of the project is to merge our two classrooms into one global village by conducting joint activities or projects once a month. We are going to focus on inter-cultural understanding and making connections between or different lifestyles.

One of our first activities is to introduce ISB using a Voki:

Now, we can’t wait to hear the introductions from our partner classes!

We all know that you only get out of a conference what you put in. So, I did my best to make the Learning 2.0 unconference sessions work for me by moderating 2 of the 3 sessions (during the third session I was totally wrapped up in Alan November’s amazing presentation on Creating a New Culture of Teaching and Learning).

Both sessions had enthusiastic groups of educators from all over the world, all of whom are eager and ready to get started on some globally collaborative projects. We ended up having a great balance with our first session focused more on lower elementary ideas and the second session focused on upper elementary. All the ideas we brainstormed only require web 2.0 tools that are free and available online.

So many great ideas came up that I thought it would be appropriate to start a new wiki to allow everyone interested to take ownership of these projects. As much as I would like to participate in every single one, I know that realistically it’s not possible. With this Global Collaborations wiki we can begin to connect individual schools together on projects that truly enhance the core curriculum units. Please feel free to contribute anything and everything to this new space!

For convenience, I have listed all of the projects that we brainstormed here, along with a number of collaborative projects that I’m already working on or have already initiated with colleagues over the past few weeks. Now comes the hard part: actually getting started on all these inspiring ideas!

Lower Elementary Ideas

Partnering on YackPack or TokBox for Early Elementary: Connect students in several international schools to create a “global communication center” as Alan November suggested in the roundtable discussion. Each teacher will create a YackPack for each student in your class, each student will have 4 partners in other schools around the world, for a total of 5 students in each Pack. This will enable the exchange to be more constant, more flexible and sometimes involve just a portion of your pack and other times all of your pack (depending on curricular needs).

YackPack is an audio e-mail service that allows students to share and exchange ideas in a user friendly graphical interface that requires little to no reading skills. TokBox is a slightly more complex video e-mail/live video chat service.

The Pack can be used for: storytelling, practicing reading with emotion, share their favorite book, talk about the author, reflecting on learning and the process of learning (metacognition), collecting “data” (for ex: for graphing activities). Students will use inspiration / kidspiration or an online mind mapping software to brainstorm ideas about what they will talk about so students are not reading from a script.

This project could be extended by creating a collaborative Ning or Imbee for the classes for a place to share pictures, videos, etc and/or video conferencing with Skype or TokBox (video e-mail) where video would be required to enrich the experience.

Global Village: One of our grade two classes will be working with Alecia Dry’s teachers on the Global Village project to connect elementary students around the world. The goal is to merge our two classrooms into one global village by conducting joint activities or projects once a month. We are going to focus on intercultural understanding and making connections between or different lifestyles.

Upper Elementary Ideas

Book Club / Literature Circle: Use Ning or Imbee to share our thoughts on our reading – create literature circles with students from a variety of schools – each group would have a community on a collaborative Ning/Imbee.

Connecting ESL students: Discussing common books that our grade 5 ESL student read using podcasting or YackPack. Please share some of the books that you would like your students to start a discussion around – we are confident that there will be at least some overlap between schools if we’re working at the same grade level.

Weather: Drawing conclusions from data – collaborate to both collect and present data on weather

Blogging: Connecting grade 5 classrooms – individual student bloggers connecting about their learning, areas of interest, creating a community of learners. It might also be an interesting idea to connect our younger students with some more experienced middle or high school bloggers. I know Clarence Fisher had a great experience with this last year and several middle school teachers have expressed an interest in partnering up: Jabiz Raisdana, Annabel and Jennifer Cronk.

Life ‘Round Here: An excellent international digital storytelling project designed and initiated by Chris Craft, designed to introduce students to different cultures and lifestyles around the world. Deadline to join Sept 21st.

Cross Grade Level Ideas

Great Book Stories: Listen and See: A great (new, but existing) digital storytelling project based on book reviews produced by students using Voice Thread to integrate audio and visual elements. Find an overview and two samples on Wes Fryer’s recent post.

1001 FlatWorld Tales: A wonderful collaborative storytelling project developed by Clay Burell, using wikispaces to create a never-ended story based on a central theme. I worked on this project last year with my middle school students and we loved it! This year Jeff Dungan and I will co-coordinate the elementary section. We’re hoping to encourage students to see stories within stories so that students all over the world can build on each other’s idea. We would also like to see use of audio and visual elements to the stories, so there is lots of room for growth with this powerful project.

PodPals: Students use podcasting tools to connect on social issues, curricular integration can develop as the year continues. Jamie Hide has already expressed an interest in participating.

Online Art Exhibit: Using Flickr and/or Voice Thread to post an international art exhibit from a variety of international schools. Also, allowing students to discuss each other’s art by posting pictures and allowing others to comment on areas that interest them by audio, text, and drawing on the images.

Exploring Our Communities: Use Voice Thread to share drawing of the different communities that each student is a part of and describe those communities. Share among schools.

Learning About Local Culture: Representing art in the culture you live in teach students about local art – students teaching students

Social Networking : Open Ning or Imbee network just to connect and communicate – starting with more casual conversation, exploring our likes/dislikes, culture, school experience and build as the school year goes. Jamie Hide has already expressed interest in starting a social network with his students in Canada.

Voices of the World: An existing project created by Sharon Tonner to connect children from around the world using their voices. All too often we ask children to communicate at a distance using text rather than voice. Voices Of The World will hopefully prove that we can unite and learn from one another using our voices in the simplest way possible. I am looking forward to this challenge ahead of us which will surely motivate our children to learn about other cultures through the use of the voice.

Exploring Digital Citizenship: A collaborative VoiceThread project to explore what it means to be a digital citizen – a critical issue discussed by many of the presenters this weekend. Joe Dale, Jamie Hide, Lisa Durff, PJ Higgins and Alex Savage have already expressed an interest in working on a project like this.

Flat Classroom Project: Flatten the walls of your classroom and partner up with another class around the world. Collaborative learning at it’s best. Check out the teacher Ning for more details.

Youth Radio Collaborative Podcasting : YouthRadio is an existing project that Kevin Hodgson shared with me earlier this year. From their site: “We are hoping to transform this site into a space where young writers and voices can connect with news stories about their communities, their schools and their interests via audiocasting (and podcasting). Our sites will include Norris Elementary School in Southampton, Massachusetts; Butler Elementary School in Sacramento, California; and the Odyssey School in Denver, Colorado; and we hope to have other partners along the way.”

Next Vista for Learning: An online library of free videos for learners everywhere – find resources to help you learn just about anything, meet people who make a difference in their communities, and even discover new parts of the world. And Next Vista for Learning wants to post your educational videos online, too. Everyone has an insight to share and yours may be just what some student or teacher somewhere needs! An excellent opportunity to help students teach student initiated by Rushton Hurley.

Global Virtual Classroom: The Global Virtual Classroom (GVC) project is a collection of free, on-line educational activities and resources. It aims to complement the efforts of governments and education departments around the world to integrate technology into their classrooms and curricula and to link their schools to the information superhighway. Jeff Dungan introduced me to this great 21st Century resource.

Known Issues:

• Each student may need an e-mail address to access web 2.0 tools – how do you organize this for lower elementary? Thanks to Susan Sedro for one solution: Scholastic.com. We could also try gmail accounts.

Ideas for Teachers

Join an existing network of educators learning together:

• Clasroom 2.0 Ning
• The Global Education Collaborative Ning
• NextGen Teachers Ning
• Support Blogging Wiki
• Ning in Education
• Tapped In
• K12 Online Conference

Of course there’s always room for more participants! Please let me know if you’re interested in participating in any of these projects or share your thoughts on the collaborative wiki!

Anything spark an idea for you? Please share your ideas here or on the collaborative wiki!

Tags: learn2cn, elementary, 21stcentury, globalcollaborations, internationalschool, flatclassroom