"Play will be to the 21st century what work was to the last 300 years of industrial society- our dominant way of knowing, doing and creating value."- Pat Kane, author of The Play Ethic
Having explored a number of sites and shared them with your peers, hopefully you see the value of discovering new tools for yourself and within your network. In the spirit of collaboration, what ideas would you propose for replacing the technology in our centers from this morning? What activities might you change altogether to better meet a level of blooms?
I thought the entire exercise was great - it was cool and practical to see how each activity contrasted the others. No suggestions for change ... being a creative marketing type I loved the first station and might want to see more elaboration on that process. Ex: after creating, how would you market this? To whom? Define your target audience? One step further to extend out the student's thinking.
ReplyDeleteI liked all the activities... I think for next year we need to make sure links work and find sites that would work for our students.... Xtimeline seemed a little to difficult to follow.
ReplyDeleteFor the audacity activity, you could take it one step further and videotape the advertisement. Instead of wordle, tagxedo could be used~you could make it in the shape of chocolate!
ReplyDeleteFor the health benefits activity you could compare and contrast chocolate to some other sweet, taking it to the analyzing level.
Instead of simply creating a rubric, it could be taken one step further and students could actually use each other's to rate chocolate.
And that's all the creativity I have for the day.....
Having found new tools and shared with a group we had a few ideas to alternate with those given.
ReplyDeleteFor History of Chocolate- dipity was a great alternative tool for timeline creation.
For the Health Benefits of Chocolate lucidchart is a good flow charting tool online.
Like Vince's idea of how to market our wonderful commercial for the Pinnacle Bar.
For the center of creating the candy bar I would maybe go further with it by creating the logo on the computer and instead of just using audacity, use a program to add image to the sound so we have both an image while we hear the logo just like a real commercial. This would give more thought to the design aspect and spark more creativity. Plus a student would enjoy it more than using crayons.
ReplyDeleteYou could for the changes over the years with chocolate, search for images of types of various chocolate over time and upload to Animoto. Add in the dates of each of the candy. There you would have a timeline and you could see the changes that occurred with chocolate over the last 100 years or so.
ReplyDeleteTo replace the technology in the centers from this morning, I would have the students make a poster and display it in the room to replace wordle.
ReplyDeleteTo replace audacity or voice thread, I would have the student present in front of the room or to each other. Students could also verbally share their feedback to one another or they could write in a journal. They could also make a graphic organizer on paper as well to represent time lines or bubble maps.
I really enjoyed the activities and thought that they were very good ways to integrate technology in the classroom. If I were to change anything, I would have the students give feedback on graphic organizers or create something from the graphic organizer instead of just creating one.
I thought the centers went wonderfully this morning..There are a few things that I would like to change, but not many.
ReplyDelete1. I would use a different type of timeline for the history station. I thought this timeline program did not look exciting. It needs more "pretty pretty." Possibly using like a mixbook. Having students make each page of the Mixbook like a specific time period? This way they can insert text boxes and pictures on top of a "pretty pretty" page. :)
2. For the audacity station, they could also create a video "commerical" for their new candy bar and slogan. Possibly using the flip camera and creating almost like a skit and downloading it onto the computer.
Just some ideas. Having a great time learning all of these new skills :)
To check for understanding I like to uses a "snowball" fight". Students write a question on a piece of paper, throw it across the room, everyone picks up a piece of paper and answers his/her question. Not sure you could use this in a center, but could use as a whole group activity. :-) I think to better differentiate between understanding and applying, I would combine the two first,have a station where participants could share their earliest experiences with chocolate and then another person in the group would have to paraphrase the experience...maybe do a version of "telephone" in conjunction...not sure how that would work, but there isn't much time to think. For remembering, you could present a tray of chocolate, then ask us to remember what was on the tray. For evaluating you could provide a rubric, then ask participants to critique the candy they ate. I think that is all I have for now...
ReplyDeleteI liked tagxedo for the wordle activity. I also like Go Animate. I plan to use this tech tool in the upcoming school year. I need to think about my questions for the students to ensure they are moving to the upper levels of the pyramid each day.
ReplyDeleteSo... most of the activities today were decent. I must admit, I was unfamiliar with many of them. The timeline lacked intensity for me. It was bland and uninteresting as a finished product. Granted, we did not have time to upload images. Wordle was fun and would assist in pulling more descriptive words out of students' brains. I am so tired of hearing generic adjectives. If you had fun, what made it fun? I have used a candy bar activity before. Students have to write letters and use as many of candy bars as they can incorporate into each one. It helps to brainstorm before you begin so you don't have students saying, "I can't think of anything." Believe me, if they say that, they are right. They have already shut down, so don't give them that opportunity. In my classroom, "CAN'T" means Children Are Not Trying. If we engage them, they will try.
ReplyDeleteCurrent Station: Mmmm Tasty...
ReplyDeletePossible Revisions: Use Tagxedo instead of WORDLE.
Current Station: Break Me Off a Piece of...
Possible Revision: Students use VoiceThread instead of Audacity. Students could scan in a photo of their candy bar ads and record/type their slogans. Then, their classmates could view, listen to, and comment on the ad. The creator of the ad could listen to the comments and use the peer feedback to either (1) revise the original ad, or (2) use the feedback to judge the ad's effectiveness.
I liked all the ideas in the centers this morning. I am sure next year there will be newer sites and the Pinnacle group will need to explore the newer sites. We will all need refreshers.
ReplyDeletePerhaps include how we as teachers can learn about this new sites and resources in a time saving manner?
I liked all of the centers we did today. I think at some of the centers where there may have been more than one program that could be utilized to complete the activity, having a list at hand to choose from would be nice. The History of Chocolate (timeline) I did not like the program suggested to use for the activity. It was not very intuitive, and the end product was not really aesthetically appealing and did not justify the work involved to get to that point. Offering other timeline sites to work use would be nice. I would like to experiment more with online graphic organizers too, and have a list to choose from at the Health Benefits of Chocolate center would be cool.
ReplyDeleteOk, a lot of folks did not like the XTimeline choice and you guys are correct that something like Dipity (or Capzuls). We try to pick a couple of things we don't train on just to give you a moments exposure. I love the additions, particularly to the creating activity. It is interesting how those activities are easiest to modify because they are inherently more open-ended.
ReplyDeleteI also enjoyed and appreciated the suggestions for improvement. I agree that Xtimeline is bland and boring and we will work on finding an alternative that is "prettier." I hope that working through these centers help spark ideas for your own classroom.
ReplyDelete