Change of plans!

Well despite all of our best efforts to develop plans that accomodate the Belize students, our plans need to change due to the Belize students' schedule and limited access to Internet / computers. In order to prepare for their next standardized test, the students in Belize needed to review the Belizean goverment and culture. We proposed sending questions from Ensworth 6th grade students to the coordinator, who could then share the questions with their teacher and use them in preparation for their test. The Belize students then prepared a video responding to the Ensworth students' questions on the Belizean goverment and culture. This week, Ensworth students will view the Tokbox videos and respond to them via our wiki on a online discussion, expressing what Ensworth students have learned about Belize, directly from other students who live there.

Planning

We had a chance to share our introductory videos with the Belize students via Youtube right before Spring break. Since then, I've been in contact with our coordinators in Monkey Bay and at the Democracia school in Belize, as well as with Alecia, to plan our collaborative lessons. Scheduling is proving to be a big challenge. We were on Spring break in March, and now Democracia is on Spring Break in April. Democracia also has regular standardized tests that they must perform, which limits their time- so we are working really hard on the collaborative lessons that will begin once they return from Spring break next week. We hope to breifly explore the topic of sound, then develop movies online involving the health topics of managing stress and embracing diversity. Another major topic to follow will be the parts of the eye, light waves, how the eye works, and so on. In May, we hope to explore the topic of our solar system. While planning, we need to keep in mind that Democracia does not have Internet access- access is available through Monkey Bay, so we are working on activities that could be completed offline, then posted or concluded online.

Intro videos

6th graders enjoyed watching the introductory videos from the Belize students send via Tokbox! They found their Creole accent interesting, and discovered that most of them enjoy soccer ("football"). In return, 6th graders created their own introductory videos using iMovie and their webcam. We then posted them to our YouTube channel for the Belize students to view. Currently, Mr. Fuentes is preparing the Belize students for their standardized testing while we are on spring break. When we return from spring break, we hope to collaborate on a discussion of copyright and intellectual property.

Belize - Ensworth Partnership

I just heard from Alecia that we may be ready to begin our new partnership with a school in Belize! My classes that are ahead in lesson plans have started a new Voicethread on Belize, to learn some basics about the country. We have also practiced embedding Voicethreads on our wiki. They are excited about getting new partners. Connectivity in Belize won't be as good as in our Peru school, but I am hoping for some connections, and the possibility of adding a service learning component, however small.

Nearing the End

Finally finished 6th grade science podcasts! When the students finished, I asked them to join a discussion on our class wiki and to talk about if anything surprised them while doing this project, or if they think that they worked harder knowing that their Peru classmates would be viewing them. Check out their responses on our class wiki. We did get a chance to view a couple of our Peru classmates' podcasts, and they thought the Peru students' accents were neat to hear, and they enjoyed hearing about the same topic that we podcasted about. We've since started a voicethread project, as a way of saying goodbye to our Peru classmates who will be beginning their summer break. We decided to create a voicethread describing what we do in the summertime, and to invite our Peru epals to the voicethread as a way to tell them to have a good summer and to share with them our csummertime cultural experiences. The 6th graders are enjoying choosing summertime photos for their voicethread and recording themselves commenting on their summertime. The end of the semester and the end of the Peruvian school year is fast approaching, so we are doing one last push to complete our partnership.

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!