Making Worksheets Personal - Student Examples

2nd May 2008 by Ben Rimes

I’m a very project-based educator. I like to give students all of the pieces of a learning puzzle, show them how some pieces can be arranged to fit with others, and then let them see what they create. I very rarely give examples of what I want their finished work to look like, because I don’t want students to have some pre-conceived notion of what is “good” or “bad”. Instead, I like to work from rubrics or level of engagement. If a student isn’t engaged with a project, I’ll try to find a way to tailor the assignment for him or her. Likewise, modifying assignments for students that are struggling is a constant as well.

So after 3 weeks of the 3rd graders conducting research on the Native Americans and Early Michigan Settlers of the 1800s (remember, I only have about 25 usable minutes each week after typing time), the kids were getting really discouraged with the work. It was slow, tedious, time-consuming, and was really starting to bum me out. Which is why I decided to make a really nice worksheet with graphics and text bubbles for them to fill out….which really got me depressed got me even more bummed out. Here I am in the 21st century creating a “prettier” worksheet and expect them to be engaged by it?

Instead, I fired up Kidspiration, downloaded a dozen or so pictures depicting early settler and Native American life, and let them roll with it. I asked them a few questions about “Little House on the Prairie”, and why it was such an interesting story. After talking about how Laura Ingalls Wilder managed to mix historical accounts of daily life with an interesting story, I showed them the pictures I had gathered in Kidspiration, and encouraged them to get creative. Instead of just writing down the information on a piece of paper, which they had been doing, I encouraged them to create a little story, as if they were actually a Native American or an early settler, and use the pictures to create “visual notes”. The end result was that the students had a lot of fun making their worksheets to suit their learning tastes. Some students focused on creating humorous lines to explain their life 200 years ago, while others were very serious and staight forward about describing the pictures. Many even started using other pictures that I hadn’t downloaded to help them better explain facts from the past.

Sure, they were still worksheets, but instead of fill in the blanks by searching for information, they were creating a personal story that they could alter, edit, and show to other people instead of just reading it. You could easily accomplish the same thing using Microsoft Word and inserting images, or fire up a painting program and have the kids draw the pictures themselves with their notes. These are a few that I thought were particularly nice. Just click on them to see a larger version.

Posted in Assessment, Multimedia, Social Studies, Software, Student Examples | Discuss in Forum | 2 Comments »

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Earth Day All Year Long

25th April 2008 by Ben Rimes

As Earth Week 2008 wraps up around the globe and corporate promotions come to an end, it’s important to help our students understand that caring for our environment and practicing what we’ve learned on Earth Day should be everyday, not just a few days in April. Over the last month I’ve been sharing a few websites and ideas for encouraging environmental education throughout the year, so I thought I’d end my series of posts with a few ways to make Earth Day Everyday. Whether you’re a kindergarten teacher, or a high school environmental studies instructor, there are simple ways to incorporate environmentally friendly activities, videos, and resources on the web in your classroom throughout the year. Below are just a few to get you started.

Earth Day, Everyday at Wilderness.org

Teacher's LoungeThe Wilderness Society has put together a really nice collection of teacher resources in their Teacher’s Lounge that emphasize making everyday a day to respect the Earth. Lots of links to Earth day sites, environmental organizations, and downloadable lesson plans are just a few of the teacher resources. Interactive adventures, photo treks, and recommendations for off line reading help round out the resources for students from kindergarten through high school.

National Geographic’s Earth Day

National GeographicAlways providing the most in depth and immersive resources on the environment, National Geographic does a fantastic job of blending the latest environmental news with timely in depth articles and interactive activities. The Earth day page of National Geographic’s website is well suited for middle school and high school classes, though an elementary teacher could “cheery pick” resources. Daily environmental news updates make the site a MUST for any environmental studies classes, interactive virtual habitats on the Earth Pulse section of the website were always a must when I taught middle school science, and topical issues like fresh water conservation are a great resource for secondary classrooms.

Earth 911 for Students

Earth 911Earth 911 is a great resource for starting your own grassroots recycling and ecological efforts. Club Earth 911 lays out simple plans for starting your own school wide recycling program, including logos to print and tips for spreading the word. The teacher’s page includes the ABCs of simple steps to help the environment, a fun resource for early elementary students. Or you can check out the latest news of national contests that are available to students who want to show off their “green-ness”.

Other posts in my Earth day series:

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Planet Green Game

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Google Earth & Climate Change in the Science Classroom

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - SimCity, Eat Your Heart Out!

Posted in Science, Websites | Discuss in Forum | 1 Comment »

Forum Friday - 3 Reasons to Use SpellingCity With Your Students

18th April 2008 by Ben Rimes

On Fridays I like to share a resource or discussion that I’ve found to be incredibly helpful or thought provoking. While I will often pull in a resource from another website, today’s Friday message comes from a recent post on the Tech Savvy Ed Forum here on the site.

Johnegood, a new member of the forum, shared a fantastic spelling practice website called Spellingcity.com that he has apparently had some hand in creating. While I don’t usually write about posts, press releases, or e-mails that people have written to me in order to promote their specific product, I had a few minutes to spare this morning, and played around with Spelling City. That coupled with johnegood’s casual, no-pressure post made me want to share the site with all of the readers.

Spelling City Banner

While on the surface, SpellingCity appears to be a simple tool to create an online spelling list, I found at least 3 reasons that this site is much more than a digital worksheet, and could really lend itself well to improving vocabulary.

1. Play a Game - After typing your spelling list into the boxes it provides (you can add as many boxes as you need), you can play a spelling game in which every word is given with it’s pronunciation and used in a sentence. NOT textually, but verbally; actual people have made actual recordings of the words you put in, so you can click on a button and hear a human voice say the word, and even hear them use the word correctly in a sentence, very much like a spelling bee. If you get words wrong, you can always try the “Teach Me” button, and the site will spell out the words you missed while also giving you the sentences they’re used in.

2. Share Spelling Lists - The site is completely free (which is awesome), and teachers can create their own accounts to create and share lists with their students. You can create as many lists as you want, and students can find them easily without having to have a login. They simple have to type in the first or last name of the teacher or the name of the list, making it simple for them to find lists. Once they’ve found a list they can take a test, have the list “taught” to them with a review, play the game, or print off the list to work with it in the real world.

3. Lists of the Month - If you’re a competitive type, or just want some recognition for your wickedly difficult spelling lists, you can nominate your list(s) for “List of the Month.” When I checked the most recent lists, I found vocabulary words from the first chapter of “Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, soccer terms, and 3rd grade homophones.

Apparently, there’s more in store for the website, with more games coming online in the near future. With just the one game, I can see how students might quickly become complacent with the repetitive recordings; clicking on the sentence or pronunciation button yields the same recording each time. This is definitely a site worth checking out for elementary and middle school students.

Posted in Assessment, Forum Friday, Language Arts | Discuss in Forum | 5 Comments »

Harry Potter Lawsuit - You Be The Judge!

16th April 2008 by Ben Rimes

This morning on the way in to work I was listening to NPR and heard about the tragic story of Harry Potter superfan, Steven Jan Vander Ark, being sued for copyright infringement. Apparently, he’s publishing his popular online version of the Harry Potter Lexicon. The long and short of it is simple; J.K. Rowling LOVES the fan site, as it catalogs everything Harry Potter, and has even gone so far as to the use the lexicon site for her own research while writing the last few books. However, once the book was published, it became something of a copyright infringement beacuse there was money to be made.

There have been other Harry Potter books published not authored by J.K., but they have contained so much commentary, speculation, and original material that they’ve fallen under fair use guidelines. Unfortunately, most of the text in Mr. Vander Ark’s book is actually lifted from the Harry Potter books.

The thought that popped into my head was “THIS WOULD MAKE A GREAT LESSON ON COPYRIGHT!” Imagine providing students with the framework of the issue (copyright versus fair use), and then provide them with a media portfolio of images, articles, references, etc. They could use all of that media and information to state and defend their position using powerpoint or some other multimedia presentation tool (could even be a short movie). What do you think? Is the idea half-baked, or does it have some merit? I figure the popularity of Harry Potter would make it a HUGE favorite for kids of all ages, and really provide lots of resources, images, articles, and media for putting together a persuasive “visual essay” on whether they agree that J.K is having her material infringed upon or not.

Here’s where it gets really fun! I need your help! I’m going to put together a “You Be The Judge Project” on this, but the more help I get, the sooner is can be accomplished. If you have any resources, images, or websites that deal with copyright, fair use, and specifically this whole court case, just add them to your response. I’m also collecting resources with a simul-post over on MACUL Space. I’ll gather all of the resources and share them during a Forum Friday post and see what we can create!

I know this would be easier with a wiki, but I wanted to get the ball rolling now while the idea was still fresh in my mind. Please share anything you have, and we can use it all to create webquests, projects, lessons, or whatever else we can think of.

I’ll get everyone started:

Online News Articles about the Harry Potter Lawsuit

Online version of the Harry Potter Lexicon

Government’s definition of Fair Use

Posted in Multimedia, Technology | Discuss in Forum | 1 Comment »

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - SimCity, Eat Your Heart Out!

9th April 2008 by Ben Rimes

I’m a recovering hardcore gamer. In college, I would purchase at least 2 to 3 video games a month, play Mario Kart well past midnight (but then again, who didn’t in the late ’90s), and once stayed up all night with my roommate not because we were at the hottest party on campus, but because we were attempting to build a massive transportation empire that would drive our competitors into bankruptcy.

ElectroCityThese days, with a family, a 40 minute commute, and having purchased a house worthy of Tom Hank’s Money Pit, there’s little left to purchase games, and thus I’ve been limited in my choices. Which is why I spent a small part of my Spring Break today playing several games of the entirely free ElectroCity. It’s a fabulous city building simulation created for the educational outreach program of Genesis Energy, the largest producer of energy in New Zealand. To be fair, I can’t take credit for discovering it, as I found it via a post on Larry Ferlazzo’s excellent ESL Blog.

To start with, the game is completely FREE (I love that word). Better than that, this is a perfect game simulation for middle school and high school teachers looking to provide a reflective learning experience for students interested in how the environment is affected by choices made by local or state government concerning energy production and use. It combines the addictiveness of Lemonade Stand with the deep control and management tools of SimCity. With only 150 turns to create a thriving economy and growing population based on realistic environmental practices, I thought I would be presented with simplistic choices, and be railroaded into some pre-scripted “save the Earth, reduce energy consumption”, but I was happily wrong.

ElectroCity2Players start with 10,000 people, a small town, and $400. You can choose to set the tax rate at whatever percent you like, use the city funds to play the energy commodities market where you can buy or sell coal and natural gas, enact environmental policies within your city, and even improve or demolish the landscape to suit your economical or environmental needs. I had two dismal starts to the game; I lost once due to bankruptcy after buying natural gas heavily and then seeing the market drop out, and then lost again when my city became a ghost town because of the people leaving in droves after building numerous coal mines and gas wells around the city. The third time was the charm, and although I didn’t create a booming population, I managed to maintain a balance of ecologically-friendly energy production (geothermal plant) and more traditional means of energy production (I built a natural gas rig out in the ocean). Enacting programs like energy efficiency education and solar panels in the city drained my city funds each turn, but I managed to offset that with a slightly higher tax rate and by selling off the excess gas I was producing from the drilling rig. You can see from my report card above that I received an “A+” on my environmental record, as well as “A”s in energy management and popularity, but I earned a “D” for my population growth and well-being.

Which is why I think that this game should be a center piece for any secondary classroom talking about climate change, energy use, and the repercussions for making certain decisions regarding land use. Sure, it’s nice to talk about establishing national parks and riverside campgrounds instead of lumber mills and aluminum smelting plants (both of which are available to build in the game), but making strict ecologically friendly decisions meant that my city was nearly bankrupt at the end of 150 turns, and my population severely “rollercoastered” as I had to adjust the taxation rate in order to make money. A stable economy, I did not have. Which is the second reason I love this game. Just like in SimCity, it’s based on a limited supply of resources, both environmentally and monetarily. If you don’t have the funds to purchase additional energy each turn for your citizens they start to become upset with you and your popularity drops. Likewise, if you decide to build a natural gas well to offset the cost of building expensive geothermal plants, you’ll pay a price to clean up the wells once the gas runs dry, which further eats into your budget.

I can’t recommend this game enough, as every time you replay it, there are deeper and deeper questions that must be asked, and not just questions about how we interact with the environment and produce our energy. This simulation could easily aide conversations of sustainable and responsible growth within communities. Or it could just as easily be an introduction into stock market trading, and how real world events affect the price of commodities, and why “buy low, sell high” actually matters. At the very least, ElectroCity is an engaging way to get students thinking about real world solutions when it comes to making changes in our energy use, and not just the typical “let’s make everything Earth friendly” lesson plans and activities that often ignore the real world costs and sustainability of such changes.

Other Posts in my Earth Day Series:

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Planet Green Game

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Google Earth & Climate Change in the Science Classroom

Earth Day Should Be Everyday - Earth Day All Year Long

Posted in Games, Mathematics, Science, Websites | Discuss in Forum | 5 Comments »