Classroom Chat Rooms

Like Sarah, I had a great day today. The reason is twofold:  1) We were using a site that didn't have graphics, so it didn't max out my bandwidth, and 2) the technology part of the lesson was intuitive for my students, and they jumped right in.

Here's what we did:  

We're reading the book Copper Sun by Sharon Draper.  In this section, the protagonist survives the middle passage and spends her first day enslaved on a Carolina farm.  Also in this section, the protagonist, and the reader are introduced to new major characters.  

Using www.TodaysMeet.com, I set up five chat rooms for the students to chat as a character in the book. It was like role playing - they had to speak in the first person.  Everything they said had to be in character and be consistent with the spirit of the text. 

I think that part of the reason this worked was that the students were prepared.  Last Friday they knew which character they would chat as, so when they read this weekend, they paid special attention to that character. I gave them a list of questions and told them they should know the character so well that they could answer the list of questions.  But I didn't have them write the answers. The list was to guide their thinking.

Today, I had them read this post on our class site and they jumped right in.  I guided the chat with a powerpoint that included a list of questions to answer. Then, during the second round, they were allowed to ask each other questions.  At the bottom of this post is a transcript from one group.

Lessons Learned

• It was a more democratic way for students to discuss/ participate than a traditional classroom discussion.  
• This was an exercise in higher level Blooms because students had to generate and create.  By asking them to talk as the characters and responding to prompts, I got much more complex thoughts than I would had if I had just given them questions to answer. 
• Today's Meet was a venue for students to demonstrate their thinking, their understanding of the characters and the book.  It was a more expansive, generative process.  Students learned/ synthesized their thinking in the process of generating, and in the process of reading other people's posts
• It's a full-engagement, fast-paced activity.  Students are reading, thinking, writing/ typing.  If they don't concentrate, they miss a lot of what's going on

Good times!  Looking forward to using this tool again.

Transcript of CopperSunPer7Group5 « TodaysMeet

Bloggin' the Noggin

Phew!! Success at last! Students have all created their own blogs. Seems easy enough, but I am still trying to figure out the privacy issues and how to assess each blog entry. Tomorrow, I will have them pull their blog up and then grade the post (a reading summary). I need to figure out how to view all of them w/o overwhelming myself by subscribing to each log. I am thinking they will need to share the blog with at least three other people and they will comment on each peers' blog.

Today was also the first (yes, I said first) day that I did not have sign-in issues. I feel quite satisfied with this. I was hoping to have created technology wizards by now, yet there have been some challenges, primary school-based and not student ability. I do believe that next year will hail Google geeks in all the glorious ways!!

You have got to try the schedule app for the conference!  It is really great.  I've chosen several workshops for each time period that I want to attend plus the other sessions.  We can share our schedules so we will know where to find each  other! 

You can access it through the CUE Guide now posted! link on the CUE Annual Conference page.

Classroom Blogs

I (Melissa) am again using our class blogs to elicit thinking and writing about text.  In line with our thinking about this grant, I am trying to push the definition of text to include things like video clips.  Last week we read the short story "One Throw."  It was a perfect time to introduce my kids to the classic comedy sketch "Who's on First."

So, keeping with the Abbott and Costello topic, this weekend I had students watch the hilarious "Two Tens for A Five" routine (embedded in the blog) and write about a time they tricked someone. Here is a link.

What's been great about this type of assignment is that I have loaded my students' email addresses into my email reader. That means I read their comment, write back to them, and then put a grade right into my grading software. It's so fast I can't believe it counts as real grading!

This grant has been a great opportunity to "learn by doing." I encounter problems and find ways to solve them. That's what learning is, right.

Things I have learned:
1. It's great to "grab" the html code from one blog and paste it into another blog if I want duplicate posts.
2. I have to remind my students over and over that class blogs require standard, academic English without typos, spelling mistakes, and other errors.
3. Everyone on the blog (my students and me) have the ability to edit.I have to figure out how to "lock" my posts.  I don't know if this is possible. But today, one student accidentally over-wrote my post and replaced it with his comments, instead of using the comment button.

Group Me for CUE Convention Conversation

I've found an app (for Iphone and Android) for our CUE convention conversation. It's called Group Me. Check it out. The site doesn't say whether or not there is a way to record the texts/conversation, but I submitted a request for more information. I found the source on a SXSW (South by South West) article. I believe the convention takes place this weekend so hopefullly there will be even more goodies for us to explore. Also, in mention of Twitter, I have found that many teachers use Twitter to hold class discusssions. Of course, there will be our issue of students not having phones/computers (ah, inner city) and whether or not we can actually require the students to participate since it is sometimes considered "taboo" or "inappropriate" (ah, LAUSD) but I think we can do it!!

7 Tips For Using Social Media In Your Classroom

This is a great article called 7 Tips For Using Social Media in Your Classroom  It really got my wheels spinning. It was like a mini-PD with Sean. I would love to discuss it with you both. And, we can even try using TodaysMeet.com (a tool mentioned in the article) to chat about it. 
-Mel