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Posts Tagged ‘projects’

Collaboration – The Big C – Do Not Wait!

Posted by Kathy Adkins on September 7th, 2012 2 Comments

Collaboration is one of the 4C’s that propels our district’s 21st century vision of learning along with Creativity, Critical Thinking and Communication. Collaboration is the big C that embraces the others and makes them stronger. Learners love to connect and share their knowledge in the classroom with each other and their desire to experience and share beyond walls is obvious. As they think, communicate and create collaboratively, the learning becomes larger. I am reminded of one collaborative project with first grade students, Hands Around the World, and how we worked to squeeze this project into the end of the year. It was a huge learning process for all learners including myself. Why should we wait to the end of the year when we have many resources and digital learning tools such as Edmodo and Wikispaces? Connect with a project or begin your own and collaboratively share your learners’ knowledge with others. Do not wait!

Five for Friday – Global Collaborative Connections

A great place to start is The Global Classroom Project, where teachers and students share on the global stage. Their wikispace shares ways to follow via twitter and facebook. Be sure to check out the Craze Crazes, under What’s Happening?

Projects by Jen, from Jen Wagner (creator of Wordle of the Day) provides projects for K-6 grades throughout the school year. OREO 2012 is a simple project for young learners and provides a wealth of resources to celebrate the 100th birthday of the OREO. Registration is now open with project lasting Sept. 17 – Oct. 12. Follow Jen Wagner on twitter @jenwagner.

Journey North offers collaborative sharing throughout the year. Currently Hummingbird Migration is being observed and reported weekly. Journey North now has an app to report sightings.

The Center for Innovation in Engineering and Science Education, CIESE, offers many ongoing and collaborative projects inspired by real time data.

Flat Stanley is a project that has truly embraced all ages. Be sure to check out current news and check the free IOS mobile app.

 

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A Dozen Words for 2012

Posted by Kathy Adkins on December 16th, 2011 No Comments

Last year, Michael Bungagy Stanier, Senior Partner of Box of Crayons, shared 11 Words for 2011. This 48 second movie shares an upbeat tempo to inspire and uplift. “Laugh, Explore and Partner” were just few highlighted to “Provoke” (another one) and inspire. Has your 2011 embraced and framed these words? As this year winds down and 2012 approaches, now is a great time to reflect on where we have journeyed and how we want to move forward. What would be your twelve words to live by for 2012? What would be your learners’ individual dozen words for 2012? How can you inspire creativity and guide learners as they share words for 2012?

 

A Few for Friday – Creative Ideas to Share Words

Five Word Cloud Creators would be one quick option for learners to showcase a dozen words for 2012. Check out more uses of Word Clouds at a previous Friday Flash – Learning on the Fly. The image on this post is from Image Chef another great cloud tool.

Word as an Image is a video that shares the talent of Ji Lee and his book by the same name. He challenges you to use only the letters of the word itself to create an image. The rule states:Use only the graphic elements of the letters without adding outside parts. Individual images are shared on his Word as an Image Facebook site. Students could collaborate and create their own word videos.

The Project Lettering Book by Robert Ainsworth shares examples of using letters of the word plus added images. Here are some examples used to teach recognition and spelling. Learners could draw on paper and take snapshots to create flashcards or share with a slideshow application such as Prezi.

Wordfoto is a great app for IOS devices that can turn a photo and words into amazing typographic works of art as shown with the image above. Unfortunately it costs $1.99 and will only let you input 10 words. What a great way to take an image of a learner and add their words. See more about Wordfoto at Nashworld.

For fun use Iconscrabble and Flickr Spell to create words online with images and photography. This can inspire learners to make personal word images from photos using alphabet photography as shown below with Happy New Year courtesy of Sukanto Debnath. There are sites such as Alphabet Photography that will create the word art for you at an expense. Learners can discover alphabet photography around them and create their own word art for 2012.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Image at top Courtesy of David K

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Falling into Place – Welcome Change

Posted by Kathy Adkins on October 14th, 2011 No Comments

The Castles photo created with Diptic

Fall is an incredibly beautiful season in many parts of the country with the changing of the leaves. In high elevations change happens rapidly to aspens as shown by the two photos taken of the West Elk Castles of Colorado. The snapshots were taken only six days apart and provide a great visual of the color change.

In today’s classrooms we see change but visually it is slow. Social media, mobile learning devices and online learning are a few influencers that are slowly shaping how instruction is being delivered in the classroom and beyond the walls. Enjoy the season of fall outside and inside and welcome change.  Things will slowly fall into place. If you take a snapshot now and later in the year, will you see change?

“You must be the change you see in the world.” Ghandi

Four for Friday – Ideas to Engage Learning

Adobe Education Exchange – Become a member of Adobe Education Exchange and view and rate the 2011 teaching innovations submitted. Once a member you can save favorite lessons and ideas to engage your learners. Adobe does showcase their products but compatible applications can be used to complete many of the innovative ideas.

Interface Magazine – This publication for New Zealand teachers provides a wealth of ICT (Information and Communications Technology) for their teachers. The Lesson Plans and Free Tools are places to explore new tools with suggestions on how to implement in the classroom.

Interactive NETS*S – This wiki site was presented at ISTE 2010 and contains lesson ideas created by Kansas educators. Lessons are tied to the National Educational Standards for Students. Use the search feature or the navigation bar to explore the NETS*S framework and locate lessons and ideas.

Georgia NETS-S Performance Tasks – Here is a collection of resources at GeorgiaStandards.org that align the Georgia performance standards with NETS-S. These tasks were created by Georgia educators.

App Resource – The above image was created with Diptic, an IOS app for arranging and combining photos. ($.99) This is a great photo tool to share contrasts and comparisons. How could your learners use this to springboard learning?

Photo Courtesy of irewired – West Elks Fall of 2011

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TUIT – Don’t Wait for August 14, 2012

Posted by Kathy Adkins on January 21st, 2011 No Comments

Do you have a TUIT? It is time to get a round TUIT. This round TUIT will remind you not to put off what you can do today. Granted your lists are long and time is not always on your side and getting a round to do something takes motivation, drive and passion. A recent article, August 14, 2012,  via The Journal by Therese Mageau, shares an example of a future getting a round TUIT. Mageau states, Karen Cator, the director of the Office of Educational Technology at the United States Department of Education, declared at a recent State Educational Technology Directors Association (SETDA) meeting that Aug. 14, 2012, will be “the date that schools are going to flip from being print to digital institutions.” Therese Mageau, believes making technology so integral to teaching and learning that we don’t even have to talk about it anymore. She shares, “Let’s make Aug. 14, 2012, the date we’ll look back on and say, That’s when the conversation on education technology changed.” What are your waiting to get a round TUIT?  Don’t wait for August 14, 2012!

Friday Flash – Five Projects to Get A Round TUIT

Join a project. The Tooth Tally Project runs from Feb.1 until April 30. K-2 graders can share their experiences on losing teeth in so many ways. You can follow Tooth Tally on twitter @toothtally and like on Facebook. Can you get a round TUIT and let students create and share as Mrs. Watkins’ kids shared with Our Tooth Fairies?

Share Doodle 4 Google with your learners. Registration closes March 12, and entries must be postmarked by March 16. The winning doodle will be featured on the Google.com homepage on May 20, 2011.

Differentiate and share Google Science Fair Project with learners who are budding Einsteins and Curies. The competition is open to all full-time students and home schooled students aged 13 to 18, from around the world. The project opened this month and all entries are due April 4, 2011.

Take a virtual field trip to Alaska with learners and follow the huskies.  Join The eiditarod Project by January 28, 2011 or register now with Go North! 2011. The journey begins in February!

Photo – My TUIT given to me by a dear friend. Share a TUIT!

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Make Everyday Count in 2011 – Project 365 Challenge

Posted by Kathy Adkins on January 7th, 2011 No Comments

Have you heard of Project 365? It is an opportunity to take a photo a day to improve your creativity and skill in the field of photography. Doing something daily, such as taking pictures, can only improve your photography skill by inspiring you to capture photos at different times of the day, of different objects and different settings. If you can’t commit to 365, can you commit to once a week or everyday for a month? Many 365 projects evolve around a theme or topic, such as self portraits, hobbies, sports, etc. Even though the school year is half  over can you capture 100 days of engagement in the classroom? What would a collage of this week in photos look like? What would a daily math photo look like? Better yet, put the cameras in the hands of the learners? Can they design their own photo discovery project with you as the guide on the side? Can you help them make everyday count in 2011 with their photos?

Four for Friday  – 365 Day Ideas to Make Everyday Count

Digital Photography School – The DPS provide lots of resources for becoming a better photographer. This year’s 53 Weekly Themes for your 2011 Project 365 guides you with weekly topics and even provides a spreadsheet to keep you on track. Still not sure but would like to tackle this project, then check out their 11 Tips to Succeed With a Photo365 Project. 7 Photography Projects to Jumpstart Your Creativity has lots of ideas!

Photojojo – Photojojo also lists tips for Project 365. Be careful not to spend money at this site but grab ideas!

Creating Keepsakes – This site provides 365 Ideas, a two page document that shares many ideas. What ideas could young learners share?

Scholastic’s 100 Ways to Use Digital Cameras - These ideas aren’t new but could a photo a day inspire a question, a poem or story? Make Everyday Count!

Photo: Flower from irewired’s summer garden.  Text To Path compliments of Adobe Fireworks

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Share Your Bookshelf and Ignite Creativity

Posted by Kathy Adkins on December 10th, 2010 No Comments

Educators’ bookshelves are lined with wonderful stories that can be paired with online creativity tools such as Sumo Paint, Sketchpad and Voicethread to produce projects to engage young learners and ignite creativity. Providing opportunities for learners to express themselves using these digital tools will produce many outcomes that may not exist the traditional way. There are also many fun online games that compliment the literature and can be used but the level of learning and engagement may be low. Use the online games to hook interest but push it up a level or two to inspire creativity and expression with visual and audio tools. During this busy season, take the time to invite an administrator, parent or older student into the classrooms to read a holiday book and include them in follow up activities with the learners. Share the warmth of the season and ignite the creativity in young learners.

Friday Flash – A Few for the Holiday Season

The Night Tree by Eve Bunting, is a beautiful story that shares a family holiday adventure. Using authoring/drawing tools shared above or Pixie/ Wixie(free 30 day trial) from Tech4Learning, students can create their own version of the night tree. Decorate a Tree from KidsHeart, offers an online trim a tree activity. Share more about real evergreens with Real Trees 4 Kids. Activities range from K-12 and share the importance of real trees.

Gingerbread Baby, by Jan Brett, is a classic and her web site shares many resources to compliment this picture book. The interactive Gingerbread House as well Gingerbread Friends Postcards correlate with this story. Home Sweet Home, from Jenny B. Harris, is another easy decorating site as well as Sprint’s, Sprints Sweets. At Sprint Sweets, learners can decorate a gingerbread man as shown in the image and import image into a word processing application to write a story to share his/her gingerbread man adventures.

The Polar Express, by Chris Van Allsburg,  is read online by Lou Diamond Phillips at Storyline Online. Houghton Mifflin, shares a teachers guide that lists some guiding questions that can be channeled into creative activities.   Sharing Christmas Wishes as well as audio reviews by readers at the Horn Book are just two activities shared at gaillovely.com. Can these examples be updated using  VoiceThread for creativity?

Friday Flash will return in 2011. May the warmth of the season brighten your days and warm your heart.

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Hook and Capture Curiosity

Posted by Kathy Adkins on October 22nd, 2010 2 Comments

Curiosity is the drive to learn new things, the spirit of inquiry. We are more curious about things when we know a little and want to learn more. As we learn more, how do we keep curiosity at optimal levels?  Can we design better instruction to motivate and sustain curiosity and hold the level of engagement throughout the learning?

Marilyn P. Arnone, director of educational media for Syracuse University’s Center for Digital Literacy, published Ten Instructional Design Strategies to Promote Curiosity. The first strategy, using curiosity as a hook, is important in igniting that spark with young learners as well as a method to arouse interest in professional development activities for educators. Providing an atmosphere for questions, opportunity for choices and time for exploration are three other key design components. How can you incorporate these strategies in your instructional design? How can you hook and sustain the curiosity in all learners?

“I have no special talents, I am only passionately curious.” Albert Einstein

Five for Friday – Hook the Curiosity of Learners with Photos

CompFight is a great resource for inspirational photos. Be sure you set creative commons to only and please attribute accordingly. Use your IWB with the revealer , spotlight or magic brush tool coupled with questions to spark curiosity.

ImageBase is another free stock photography resource to check out. Free PowerPoint templates could provide an awesome backdrop for inquiring text to hook learners. 

American Memory provides primary resources and images to introduce and spark curiosity. One such lesson from the Lesson Pages, Jacob Have I Loved, how to hook students in groups with picture puzzle pieces.

Hook the lesson by putting digital cameras in the students’ hands! In this lesson from ReadWriteThink, Taking Photos of Curious George, students explore character through images and build a digital book to tell their story. Blogging with a PhotoVoice is another excellent lesson about courage for the upper grades but could be modified for younger learners.

Befunky is a free and easy photo editing tool. What kind of cool effects can you apply to one of your photos to hook learners? Curiosity sparks creativity!

Photo above of Patches, our cat, caught in a curious moment in 2003. Capture curiosity!

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Web Quests- Spinning on the Web

Posted by Kathy Adkins on October 15th, 2010 1 Comment

Did you know that the original web quest instructional model was developed 15 years ago by Bernie Dodge, professor at San Diego State University, with input from Tom March, Pacific Bell Fellow. A web quest is an inquiry orientated activity in which some or all of the information that learners interact with comes from resources on the internet. The original website, WebQuests.org, has not been updated as of recent but contains valuable information.

The web abounds with thousands of quests created by teachers all over the globe. Many quests are “fetch and get” information, however many move toward transformational learning where knowledge is applied to a new situation. Take a look at these sites and think about how you can weave in stronger types of communication and new modes of communication, web 2.0 tools,  to compliment and update some of the tasks and processes to engage learners? Can you put a spin on the web?

Five For Friday – Web Quests

San Diego City Schools Triton Project shares great examples of webquests produced by teachers under the guidance of Bernie Dodge. These projects were created years ago but still provide examples for weaving the web and engaging learners.

Best WebQuests from Tom March is arranged by content area and learners’ age. These are quests that have been recognized to be some of the best, meaning they are not “step and fetch,” but knowledge is applied to a new situation.

QuestGarden Search is a great place to search for a web quest. There is even a section title Recently Published Webquests that share web quests uploaded from previous two weeks.

emints National Center shares many web quests created by Missouri teachers tied to ISTE-Nets and their state’s Show Me Standards.

Web Based Projects provided by Richmond University shares many quests created over the past ten years sectioned by subject and age.

Photo Courtesy of Josef Stuefer http://flic.kr/p/QGaM

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Harvesting Kernels of Knowledge from Educators’ Fields

Posted by Kathy Adkins on September 24th, 2010 1 Comment

Reflecting over many events of the past week, it is important for me to share that we are surrounded by many excellent teachers and administrators that support and nurture new teachers and veterans everyday.  Many of these educators freely share their wealth of information on the web to build stronger instruction with rigor and relevance for our students. Project based learning and lessons delivered with a driving questions provides that rigor and relevance for our learners.

It is up to you to harvest these lessons.  The web abounds with many examples of projects that provide step by step directions and resources that guide and steer the relevant learning. Utilizing quality activities created by other educators models and inspires future instructional practices. Can you harvest the kernels from these excellent educators’ fields to build rigor in our classrooms?

“I am always doing that which I cannot do, in order that I may learn how to do it.” – Pablo Picasso

Four For Friday – Project Based Learning Resources

Exemplary Projects shares a great list of projects from PBLnet.org. Be sure to view the other  great resources at this site.

Problem and Project Based Learning Projects – Cindy O’Hora provides a wealth of projects at Mrs. O’s House. The activities cover a wide variety of topics and offer many levels of difficulty.

PBL Co-Laboratory – Here is another resource from the Buck Institute for education that shares a small collection and also provides an opportunity for you to share back. You can easily register and begin to search these projects by grade level, subject area and time frame.

Driving Questions – PB Works provides some great examples of driving questions for your projects that were created by camp participants at Edutopia’s PBL Camp. These questions were derived by using the Gulf disaster as the starting point for meaningful learning.

Photo courtesy of Chris Bartnik Photography

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Driving Questions – Project Based Learning

Posted by Kathy Adkins on September 17th, 2010 1 Comment

Recently Edutopia shared a post from Mary Beth Hertz, Which Tool do I Choose? Hertz shares that an educator must start with standards and goals but asks that all important question, “how can you know where to put a tech tool in if you don’t know what’s out there?” It is important to know new tools and how they can be used to share new stories of learning. However learning must first be driven by questions aligned to standards and then the path can be taken to steer the learning toward a choice of communication. The driving question is paramount.

The favorite for Friday shares steps in developing an engaging, standards focused project centered around a driving question(s). The Buck Institute for Education maintains this awesome resource with five design principles for effective project based learning. Abundance of information at both sites provides valuable resources to design and implement quality projects.

Can you follow these principals and craft a driving question to engage learning?

“You can tell whether a man is clever by his answers. You can tell whether a man is wise by his questions.” Naguib Mafouz

Favorite for Friday

Five Design Principles for Effective Project Based Learning

  1. Begin with the End in Mind
  2. Craft the Driving Question
  3. Plan the Assessment
  4. Map the Project
  5. Manage the Process

    6.  3D Character and Question Mark Courtesy of SMJJP @ Flickr

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