Day 3 Weds. July 30,2008 Lamar

I loved the Mystery Quest and see so many applications in the classroom.  One of the best things about the Mystery Quest is that they can be simple or very involved. They can also be used by every grade level across the curriculum. I like that all students can be involved since there are so many aspects to a Mystery Quest. The suggestion that camera shy students could do props or be the production manager was a great idea.

The GNG conversation was great and insightful. Even in our own group the debate and answers were heated at times. It comes done to who has done the better “sales” job. 

Small group work is going ok. Still working on topics.

Can’t wait for Day 4.

Thursday at Lamar

We were quite productive here at Lamar yesterday in terms of getting all the groupwork ready for Friday’s presentations.

The ASK presentation was wonderful.  We really enjoyed the process and being able to experience it first-hand.  I really liked getting all the different perspectives from all the participating sites.

 Global Nomads group had a representative explaining the organization and how we could involve our students in their programs.

We also enjoyed the presentation from Robert about JANET and UKERNA and I feel like we’ll be able to make a lot of great connections this year in our school district now that I have so many great contacts that share my interest in this technology.

A day of fun and surprises! Report Day 3

Today we started off with a bang!  Mystery Beach Quest was a blast! So many creative ideas, clues, and presentations in such a short period of time.  Everyone was blown away with their confident, wrong answers for most of us.  It was so much fun, I can see why kids love it.  Great way to get those research skills, geographic knowledge, and reluctant learners engaged.  Of course, we all understand that it wouldn’t be run exactly the way we did it for kids.  More time would be spent on building those pre-activities to prepare kids for the job in store as well as plenty of time for them to assemble their information and choose a mode of presentation.  Great assessment tool also.

When some of us lost our bridge, we were quite disappointed that we were unable to participate in the first part of the afternoon video conference.  Being able to hear ideas that have been successfully executed on issues that can be controversial or uncomfortable would have benefitted us all.  We will just have to go to the moodle and investigate more on our own. Our group talked about possibilities that might be related like conducting a trial with a couple of classes with each class divided into the defense and prosecution.  A couple of books recommended were: The Trial of Cardigan Jones (for lower elementary) and Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry ( upper elementary).

Our group really had lots of questions and excitement about the Poetry Bash idea. Thoughts were flying around the room discussing the possibilities from elementary to high school, trying to understand the whole concept and logistics.  Hopefully an event like this can get started down here in Texas. We wonder if there is a site that can be visited on the event.

 As the afternoon progressed, we all frantically tried to divide jobs or hash out issues for the final project that is rapidly approaching.  Hopefully, we all will take the hints for the morning’s mystery quest by dividing and conquering.  There is so much to do in such a minimal amount of time, I know some of us are worried that we won’t get it all in.  Ken’s posting of the projects from last year should really help us all have a better idea. 

Can’t wait to see what tomorrow will bring! Come back rested and ready to roll!

Day Two

Day two started with a roll call from our four connected sites.  We then proceeded with our “Where in the World” activity.  In that activity, we used several sources to locate our presenters for the week and place them on our map.  We then moved onto the Math Marvels simulation.  In that simulation, each group created math problems to challenge the other sites with.  Each group came up with great problems that could be used with various grade levels.  New York even threw a little humor into the mix.  Our speakers for the afternoon we teachers who shared the video conference experiences with us.  We learned about the Bluebonnet multi-point vc, and many different point to point vc sessions that we could adapt to our curriculum.  Next, we went over the various online environments avaiable to us for this conference.  We ended the day working in our groups to create video confernce projects we can use once school begins.  It was a lot packed into the day enabling us to take away many ideas in a short period of time.