Our next project

Last Friday, my class and Ms. F's started working on our next project. The project has three groups of 6 children. Each child will rotate through all three groups. Our other teachers will then rotate their children through all three groups, when they are ready. The project will take about 5-6 weeks.
Group I are the "Barnes and Noble Websters". This group was told that they work for Barnes and Noble and their jobs are to encourage children to read books. They were given the task of picking their favorite book. They will write a summary of this book and design a cover for their book. The final step will be podcasting their summary, which we will post to our blog.
Group II are the "Everyday Hero at BHE" group. Their job was to pick a teacher that they wanted to create an iMovie around. Once they picked the teacher, they will create interview questions for that teacher. When they meet with the teacher, they will record the interview questions on the touches. They will use the flips to video the teacher in their classroom. They will then create their iMovie about their hero.
Group III are the "Advertising Agency for BHE". This group's job is to advertise the great things that we are doing at BHE. They will be taking pictures with our digital camera and then create an iMovie.
Our purpose is to train each child on podcasting, digital cameras, flip videos, recording on iPods and creating iMovies.
Ms. Seldenthous and Ms. Holly have agreed to provide additional support as we work with our children.
We will be adding in the other three classes, as children move through each group. Our goal is for each child to have three pieces of work in their e-portfolio, which the projects being completed by the end of our 3rd 9 weeks. We will keep you up to date as we work through the projects.

Some problems ,,,,,

Since we are trying to be honest about what works and doesn't work, I thought I would share a few problems that we have had with our PTL equitment and use of that equipment.
We found out that when we posted videos on our blog, you were not able to view them while on the SBISD server. This is really strange. If you are not on our server, you can see the videos fine. I know that this has been addressed and they are working on it.
Another issue that we are going to have to address, is the ACTIV board. We were able to get the ACTIV software downloaded onto our Macs, however, none of us know how to hook up what cords to have it work on our boards.
We have found that our children have been very responsible about handling the iPod's. What we now need to address with them are things like clearing their work before they turn the touch in or put it up. We also have a few children who have decided to write on the "Notes" and they are leaving messages like "Mary, do you like Bobby?" This is another issue that we will address regarding the appropriateness of what they are working on while using the touches.
Some of the teachers are still having problems getting on to the Macs at home. Still addressing that issue.
But for the most part, we have had few problems with our equipment and the children's use of the equipment. We think this is because we had an amazing PTL coordinator, amazing IT people who have been generous with their time in helping us "hook up" and of course our teachers who continue to paddle even though it feels like we are going under!

Projects taking off!

Just to give a recap of what we have been doing in class. We finally got the cases and the skins on all of the touches. Of all the things we have done, this was the least favorite and most tiring. The cases were too thick, therefore, they did not allow us to plug in the touches to charge, nor were we able to use the microphones. We had to cut a small part of the case. We created an assembly line of cutting the case, cleaning the touch, putting on the skin, then putting the iPods into the cases. Yea!
Our children really have the routines down on the touches. Each morning my touch guard puts 4-5 iPods into a container designated for each teacher. These touches are being used daily in centers throughout the day. For example, on Monday morning, I taught a mini-lesson on time. We then went to Math centers, where my children worked on the App "Telling Time", reinforcing what we had learned during the mini-lesson. In the afternoon, during Literacy centers, my students used their touches to play "Wordl", practicing their spelling words.
Each teacher gets the cart one day a week, with 20 touches to use in their group projects. This week we are working on researching our two mayorial candidates. A few weeks ago, Ms. P had her children creating their own posters about their favorite candidate, using information they had researched on their touches.
Ms. F and I are starting a large project with our children. The project will last 4-5 weeks. Yesterday we introduced the project to the children and began preliminary work. More information to come.

Here was Ms. P's class reading from their science journal. As part of the study of balance and motion, children performed the experiments, twrote in their science journals, then Ms. P recorded the students as they read from their Science journal.

Ms. F's class is spinning!

Ms. F filmed her children with her flip video. The children have been studying balance and motion. They cut out stencils of ghosts, then using the arms of the ghosts and paper clips, tried to determine which ghost would spin. It was a great AIMS activity and the children had fun.

This week, our students created Halloween stories. Their assignment was to create their story, using the story starter we provided. Then they read their story to a buddy to get feedback. Some of the questions they need to ask were; Is there a beginning, middle and end?; Does the story catch my interest?; Did I use good grammar and punctuation? and Did I give detail? The students then recorded each other reading their Halloween story. I gave the assignment to the students, then stepped back and let them do it all. Some of the students had shaky hands, but they still did a great job.

This week, I was focusing on problem solving with my children. The children were put into groups of 3 - 4 students. Each child was given the written problem. Their job was to read the problem and as a group answer the problem. They were to show their work, show a number sentence and then the answer. With 4 groups, it is hard to sit and observe each group. What I did was use the Flip Video to record the groups as they worked. Sometimes I asked questions, but I tried to stay out of their interactions. The next day I met with that group and we reviewed the video and discussed how well they worked together, any problems they had and how they arrived at the answer. This allowed me to give them both an observation and a Problem Solving grade in Math. Here are a few of the videos.