We Skyped!

This week has been a rollar coaster as far as feelings of efficacy both on our part and our students.  As teachers, we are struggling with pacing.  We are not quite sure if we are going too slow or too fast.  We are experiencing feelings of uncertainty about exactly what our model is going to look like authentically.  We know what is should look like; what it looks like in our heads and in our plans, we just don't know if our plans are idealistic or realistic. We have already adjusted our project model to one novel per themed unit.  We felt the 2 novel requirement was somewhat stressful for the students.

During the last week and a half we really concentrated on setting up the expectations of our new class model with our students and setting them set up with the various technology accounts: Twitter, Edmodo, and Symbaloo. 

One of the students asked why we had so many accounts to manage and we had a class discussion about how we use different tools for different jobs.  However,  Katie and I will be monitoring the technology tools we've established to ensure they're necessary for our program.

We discussed the purpose of edmodo was to create a network center for our class.  This is where we can post questions, find and post resources, turn in links to their daily learning blogs, etc.  We also had them create a Symbaloo page to act as their personal learning portfolio - They can use the bookmarks to attach the electronic artifacts and products, google docs, and videos.  They will then use the webmix to present their findings. We also had them sign up for a twitter account to use for quick surveys, class activities, quick resource sharing etc. 
We also had a great conversation via skype with TESLA - a school we partner with for PBL (project/problem based learning).  We were able to connect with each other at ISTE in Philadelphia this year.  The students at TESLA skyped in and gave presentations about what they were doing in PBL and what technology they use.  They shared their animals and talked about their unique school.  They also left us with a challenge.  They told us their mascot was an axolotl and challenged us to find out more about what that was.  We also agreed to perform a part of thriller for each other as and an element of our health and wellness program (getting kids moving in the classroom).  We ended the conversation with both our populations feeling excited and happy.

Katie and I then asked our students to research Axolotls and tweet and interesting facts about them.  One of our students suggested we create a hashtag and coached the students to use the hashtag in their tweets so we could do a search and find all of their facts.  We will share the search with TESLA so they can see what we've discovered.

Finally, we had a whole class discussion about creating essential questions.  We talked about what makes a good essential question and agreed to do some independent web searches on essential questions.  I twittered a furly link that contained 4 websites I thought might help them in with their search.

We will begin writing essential questions and focusing our project next week.  Monday, our students will be visiting the library for some tips on how to use library resources for research.