Brookview Bots - Robotics Club

This year I was asked to run a club during recess to help some students make a positive connection to others at the school.  We decided to use the time to do a robotics club using the Dash & Dot robots from Wonder Workshop.   The students were excited to come down during recess three days a week to with the robots.  We started by just playing around with some of the apps.  The first day, we just used the Go app to make the robots move, talk, and flash lights.

The second day we tried the app, Path.

The third day they tried the app Blockly.

Then to get ready for the robotics competition, the students worked in small groups on the Wonder App to complete the Scroll Quests which hep them familiarize themselves with the different commands in the app.  The students enjoyed this very much as were looking forward to competing in the Wonder League Robotics Competition that runs October 17 - Dec. 15, 2016.

Dash & Dot Robots

This year I was fortunate enough to be part of a pilot group of teachers who got to try out some robots called Dash & Dot by Wonder Workshop.  When our district technology coach asked me if I would be interested in trying them.  I jumped at the opportunity.  Thinking that I would only have one set, I planned on using them with one particular 5th grade class (their were only 12 in that class compared to 28 in the others).  However, by the time the robots came in it was almost time for winter break and then just after break, I was moved to my new position as the elementary technology coach in two of our elementary buildings.  The robots came with me and to my surprise I have five sets to work with, not just one. You can read more about the robots here.

The first group I used the robots with this year, was a group of two boys that are grade accelerated in Math.  They start their school day at the intermediate school for math class then head back over to the elementary for the rest of the day.  Often when these boys returned, their class was just starting their math lessons, so their homeroom teacher and I decided this would be a great enrichment opportunity for them.  We ended up being able to meet about twice a week every other week.  They LOVED it.

The very first day, I started out by just letting them play around and experiment with the robots and apps to see what they could do.  They mostly used the Go app that day and had fun with the lights and sounds.  The next time they came down to work with the robots, I had them do the How Fast and How Far experiment I found though Pinterest and a blog called The Digital Scoop.  Check out the experiment here.  The boys had fun doing the experiment and observed some things about out the robots work.

When they finished their first experiment together, they both had different things they were questioning, one being if the charge of the robot would impact their results.The robot they used was not fully charged and they were charging a second one while they worked together, so one boy decided to do the exact same experiment again with a fully charged robot.  The other boy decided to see if by programming the robot to travel twice as many steps resulted in the robot traveling twice the distance as their first experiment.  They did this using the same set up as the first time, but ran both robots at the same time staying on their side of the tape measure.

Having this information proved to be valuable for future projects, so I would highly suggest you do this experiment or a similar one as one  before doing more complex projects with the robots.  The boys use the information gathered in this experiment for every project they have done so far.  It's definitely a keeper.

Wonder Moodle

In January, I started a new position in our district that will last for the rest of the school year.  I am the Elementary Technology Coach for two of our elementary schools.   The were able to purchase some iPads and laptops for classroom use, so I will be helping teachers integrate them into their teaching.  I will return to my teaching position next year.

One of the projects I am helping with is called the Wonder Project. This is a grant based project that involves four of our 4th grade classes in two of our elementary building (two classes in each building).  The classes are reading the book Wonder by R. J. Palacio in their classes and then having discussions about it online.  We are using our district Moodle to house this project.

Here is a description of the book from the author's website linked above:



The publisher's description:

August (Auggie) Pullman was born with a facial deformity that prevented him from going to a mainstream school—until now. He's about to start 5th grade at Beecher Prep, and if you've ever been the new kid then you know how hard that can be. The thing is Auggie's just an ordinary kid, with an extraordinary face. But can he convince his new classmates that he's just like them, despite appearances?



The purpose of the project is to encourage students to look past appearances and to build a community of respect for others.  Since all of our elementary schools only go up to 4th grade, and every 5th grader will be attending the same school next year, the hope is that the students will have a better understanding of each other when they come together as 5th graders and be models for the other 5th grades on how to build respectful relationships with others.

We started off by getting the students enrolled into the Wonder Moodle.  We then spent time making avatars using Bitstrips and using the snipping tool to capture just the faces.  We asked the students to make their avatars look as much like themselves as possible.

We also talked about the purpose of an avatar why we use avatars instead of our own pictures.  Once we had the avatars saved to their h-drives, we upload them to Moodle.  The students were very excited to see everyone's avatars.  Here is an example (my avatar):

From there the teachers came up with some open ended discussion questions that I added into Moodle.  They also broke their classes in to four groups for discussions to make sure students were connecting with each other.  We used a Q & A forum so that students would have to respond to the teachers' question first before they could see other posts.  We also set it up so that they had to wait about 30 minutes before they could see posts from other students.  This helps us manage the time the students spend on the questions.  

When the students reply to the posts, they follow what I call the CCQ method.  I had learned about something similar to this when I was working on a Flat Classroom Project a few years ago, and have adapted it to my classroom.  I shared this with the teacher working on the Wonder Project and we use it to help the students make strong replies to each other that encourage further discussion.  Here is the sheet the use as a reference:

CCQ Stands for:

• Compliment or Comment (depending on what type of post they are responding to) - State what you like about the post or tell about something you found new or interesting.  
• Connect - Make a connection between the post and your own post, yourself, or the world around you.
• Question - Ask a clarifying or follow-up question that encourages discussion (can't be answered with just a Yes or No).  

The students really seem to be grabbing onto this concept and it bothers them when others don't follow the guidelines, because they want to continue the conversations.  It has been really encouraging to see them working to better themselves through appropriate replies.

So far I think the project is off to a great start.  I look forward to seeing how the students learn and grow throughout the rest of the project.

2014-15 School Year is Off to a Great Start!

The 2014-15 school year started off a little slow for computers.  We spent the first week just going over basics of the class like routines, the syllabus, class fees, etc.  During weeks 2 and 3 and even into week 4 we were administering the MAP tests (Measures of Academic Progress) that is used by the district to help monitor growth of students throughout the year in the areas of Reading and Math.  We then finished off week 4 by doing the course pre-assessment and introducing the students to keyboarding though various activities.  They began by working a paper keyboard as they finished MAP testing and were waiting for others to finish.  The paper keyboard is a tool that they can use while they work on their keyboarding lessons.  Since they will have keyboard covers on while doing their lessons, the paper keyboard serves several functions:

1. It allow the students to become familiar with the layout of the keyboard as they write in the letter, number and symbols on the black keys.
2. It helps them learn what finger to key the letters with by color coding the keyboard and the fingers on the hands pictured at the bottom of the paper.
3. It can be used to locate letters on the keyboard while the keyboard covers are on.
4. It helps train the students not to look down at their keyboards while they are typing.

Students will work on about two keyboarding lessons a week while doing mini lessons on other parts of our curriculum.  Some topics we have covered so far include:

• Using Moodle
• Coding and the skills it will help them develop
• Creating Avatars and why we use them
• Updating Profiles and creating tags to search for other user with similar interests

The students seem to be enjoying most of the class work so far.  Okay, so they don't all enjoy keyboarding, but that's pretty common when starting off.  Remember your keyboarding classes in high school, most people will say they were pretty boring and how they dreaded them, but now they are glad that they learned it. There are some fun keyboarding games that I will be introducing them to soon to help keep them motivated.

So, that's the update for now!

Have a great day!

Mrs. Meany

Getting Ready for A Week in the Life - Flat Classroom Project

Two years ago (my first year teaching second grade), I was asked to participate in a global project sponsored by the Flat Classroom Project.  The project was call "A Week in the Life" and it has students explore the differences in cultures through several different topics.  Although the project is really for third - fifth grade students, my 2nd graders did a nice job with it.

Now that I have switched to teaching computers at our intermediate building (grades 5 & 6), I have been asked by our district tech coach to pilot a group again.  I have decided to do the project with a group of fifth graders that I see on Mondays and Wednesdays (and alternating Fridays).   The students are very excited to participate in this project.

Building My PLN

I need to renew my teaching license at the end of this school year, so I'm currently taking some classes through WVIZ ideastream for college credit from Ashland University.  I decided to focus on some tech related concepts since I switched content areas this year.  Two of the classes are about the different resources available through INFOhio, the other one is on Flipped/Blended Classrooms.  In both the idea of a PLN (Personal Learning Network) have been mentioned.  But what can a PLN really do for me?

A few years ago, I participated in a PLP cohort my school district had going.  While participating, I learned about ways to grow my PLN.  I tried using Twitter as suggested, but just didn't see the usefulness at the time.  Through these classes I am currently taking, I have been reintroduced to Twitter and can truly see it's worth.  I have already started following several new people and through them have found some great articles, sites, and gotten some great ideas to use in the future.  I'm finding information not just for the classroom, but for my family too.

I am amazed at the information, services, and ideas out there!  I would not have found even half of what I have found in the past two weeks without the uses of the people I added to my PLN.  Through Twitter alone, I have found some great articles that I have bookmarked for the future.  Articles with sound advice, proven ideas, and sense of true excitement you can feel in the authors words as he/she posts.

If you plan to use Twitter to help build your PLN, I truly recommend getting Tweetdeck.  It is a great management tool for all the information that will start pouring in.  I also suggest you set up a Diigo account or some other social bookmarking account so you can bookmark the great information you will begin to find. There is so much out there and I'm not always on the same computer, so Diigo lets me access my bookmarks from anywhere.  It also allows me to search for other articles with the same tags, instantly giving me even more information on a topic.

Another site I just found today, that I am really enjoying is Qui.ly  This is a great site to find out information on different tech issues that we face each day both with our own children and with our students.  You can: ask questions, get answers, learn about new technologies, follow certain topics/areas of interest, search for advice by age, etc.   Anyone can give answer questions or give advice, but there are members designated as "experts" (that really know their stuff).  I plan on reading more about these experts on their profile and then following them on Twitter if I think they will add to my network of resources.

Is there someone you follow for ideas?  Are you building a PLN?  I would love to hear who/what you use to grow your network of resources.

Websites to Use with Students Part 1 - Popplet

Two years ago, I participated in the Flat Classroom Project called "A Week in the Life" (AWL) with my 2nd grade class. It was a global project where students shared different aspects of their lives (school, transportation, holidays, languages, etc.) with other students from around the world.  It was a little difficult to manage at first but mostly because we participated in the spring and everyone had spring break as different times (I'll share more about AWL in a late post).  Despite that initial challenge, my students and I really enjoyed the project and learned about some new Web 2.0 site to use.  One of our favorites was Popplet.  Popplet allowed the students to organize their work into webs to share with their group as a n orgaizational step in the project.  It is simple to use (even allows them to upload pictures) and easy to color code "popples" by group members to easily see their contribution.

Last year, our second grade team wrote a grant to get a netbook cart to share among us (we actually ended up getting two carts each with 16 netbooks). Part of the grant was the use the netbooks on collaborate projects, so one of my teammates, Mrs. Rump, and I finished off the year by grouping our students together in a collaborative project centered around Ohio Animals and their habitats.  We had the students use Popplet to create their projects.  The more advanced students used Popplet as an organizational activity, while the majority of the students used Popplet for their final projects.  Here are a few of the final projects:

In this first one, the students added their information, but did not have time to add pictures (remember we did this at the end of the year, so we had some time restrictions).

In this one, the students included some pictures.  I think it makes a world of difference in the presentation, especially when using it as a final project.

In order to use this in a way that the students could share the same Popplet, Mrs. Rump and I set up free accounts using our emails and set the same password for both her account and my account (something easy for the students to remember).  This allowed the students to work on the popplets even when they weren't together in the same room (student pairs were made up of at least one child from my class and one child from Mrs. Rump's class).  This worked really well for us and the students were extremely motivated to finish their research so that they could try Popplet.  It was rewarding to see the students so motivated, especially at the end of the school year.

So, if you are looking for a simple Web 2.0 tool to start using in your classroom, try Popplet. Remember it can be used with groups or with individual students, but either way I'm sure your students will enjoy it.