Just helped the first group of 6th graders upload their science podcast! Check out the podcast on bacteria on our wiki. The 6th graders are dissappointed that their epal partners haven't written them back. That part of the project is out of my control so that is a bit frustrating. I do like how the 6th graders are getting into the routine of checking their epals email account, then checking our wiki home page for instructions for the day. Most of the 6th graders are doing a great job with their science podcasts; they are creating it in different formats, such as a question and answer format, a news story format, and so on. I like how the podcast media allows them some creativity in their project, while maintaining good content. It makes me feel better knowing that one group is finished, and some groups are almost done. I feel like this project is taking a long time, and I want to move on. For the science podcasts, I put them in groups of 4, which in retrospect is probably too many. Partners worked out great for our practice podcasts; I thought with a science topic maybe they would need more people in their group so that their content would be richer--and in a few cases that might be true. However, for most groups, it seems that 4 was too many. Anyway, I am looking forward to having them finish their podcasts and next, setting them up with a voicethread account. We'd like to create a end-of-the-year voicethread for our Peru classmates, to sort of close out our partnership with them, as their school year comes to an end in December.

Just had 6D's tech class this morning-they are the first in the class rotation to begin working on the next Ensworth-San Jorge project; podcasting in groups on a science topic. While discussing possible science topics, I shared with Gerardo that our students are currently studying bateria and viruses, and he shared that his students are studying motion. After some back-and-forth discussion about which topic we should use, Gerardo suggested we both use the topic of motion of bacteria and viruses-how do they move? I thought that was great, so we decided upon that. I thought it was a cool way to join our studies together on a project. He suggested some interactive sites that show movement in bacteria and viruses (which was helpful to me as I am a bit out of my element in the subject of science), and I expanded upon them by adding some 6th-grade appropriate research sites in that area to my delicious page. We were hoping to be able to Skype today, but the daylight savings time that the US follows threw us off, so we only had about 5 minutes of common time. In the meantime, we watched the interactive links on the home page of our wiki , got our science textbooks, divided into groups of about 4, visited the research sites, began typing our podcast scripts, and created our podcast files. We connected quickly with our San Jorge partners at the end of our class period, and I chose a student volunteer to talk about what we've been studying in science, and one of their students did the same. It was a cute interaction between the students (see below)  When we are finished with the podcasts, we will post them to the wiki, view each other's podcasts, and then have an online discussion about them. I think the students will really enjoy this next project!