Northwest

This week the clock ticked slowly at my school in Mount Vernon, WA. It was the week before a much needed Spring Break. Our whole school was entrenched in WASL Practice for the upcoming state test. Even though the calendar said Spring, it was blustery outside, keeping my “too big for their britches” 6^th graders cooped up in my basement room for painstaking amounts of time. I was doing my best to engage students. We were creating Science Investigation Photo Stories, for our online Science Journals. We were creating a podcast about “Surviving the WASL” but everyone knew, we were just marking time until Friday and Spring Break. On top of all this, this was conference week so report cards were due and I was at school well past dark most of the week. I was just infected as any of my students with a huge case of Spring Fever. In the midst of my struggle to hang on until Spring Break was a bright ray of light coming from a DEN Star Educator on the other side of the country. Lisa Parisi, a STAR from New York is teaming with Brian Crosby from Nevada on a collaborative writing project with Chris Van Allsburg’s book “The Mysteries of Harris Burdick”. Classes are teamed together to create collaborative stories based on the imaginative pictures in the book. My class is teamed with another STAR, Shannon Smith’s class from Illinois. So far, we have assigned the pictures and done some brainstorming. Lisa and Brian’s classes are paired for this project. On Thursday, Lisa and Brian planned to Skype so that their students could brainstorm “face to face”. That evening, Lisa and Brian both reported that this was a huge success and very powerful for both students and teachers. Both teachers shared pictures and blogged about their experience. Lisa bubbled in Twitter that this was the BEST technology day of her career.

The next day, Lisa and Brian took it one step further. They were so excited about the learning happening in their classrooms that they decided to broadcast their classes collaborating on UStream so that everyone else could catch that excitement as well. This was another very successful day of teaching for both. Unfortunately, I was unable to view the UStream as it is blocked at school and I was busy with my own class at the time. But being able to experience this excitement for successful teaching and innovation even vicariously, was a real boost and inspiration for me as a teacher. This is the beauty of networks like the DEN and Twitter. We all experience fatigue and burnout as teachers. We so passionately love what we do that it can take its toll. But to be in a place where we are constantly being fed the joy that made us all want to become educators in the first place, might be just what the doctor ordered for a bad case of Spring Fever. Thanks Lisa and and Brian for your inspiration!

I love collaborative projects.  I think that it is one of the great gifts of Web 2.0.  This year, creating math based collaborative projects has been a focus for me.  I’ve learned a lot about how to get others to join, what works and what doesn’t work.  One thing that I have learned is that the actuall collaborative piece needs to be really simple.   They should be a springboard for other learning and exploring in the class. 

One of the benefits of being the Northwest DEN blogger, is that along with sharing great ideas that I find, your news and ideas and news of events in our area, I can also share my collaborative projects with you. 

Join us in learning about how what we eat can effect our community, our environment and our health.  As a part of our year long collaborative Mathlincs project we are learning about Food Miles (the distance our food travels) and the benefits of eating local foods.  You can join our project by contributing a picture and a comment to our VoiceThread.  There is lots of great information on our Mathlincs Moodle  as well.

Collaborative projects are a great way to introduce students to the power of networking they have available due to the wonders of Web 2.0. I am learning a lot about this process this year as I have created a series of collaborative math projects called Mathlincs. It has been exciting to make connections with teachers all over the world. I am learning what works and what doesn’t work when creating collaborative projects. (Sounds like a good blog for another day.) For now, I wanted to highlight two ready made projects in which you and your class are invited to participate. So please take a few minutes to help widen the world for students.

Put Math on the Map

Please join us in putting math on the map. As a part of our Mathlincs collaborative project, we are creating a GoogleEarth tour of local landmarks. At each local landmark, a measurement question is posed. See example. You can help by taking a photo in your area, creating a measurement question and sending this to me at t56linc@gmail.com. Please include your name or name of your school and your location. If you would like, you can also include a video, picture, screen capture, voice file, etc, of a student solving the problem. This is optional. We are hoping to hear and share with as many schools as possible. But we also welcome individuals as this will help make our tour more extensive. Please send your photos and questions by January 18. My class will then create the tour and post it for all to see.

Help Curious George

Curious George is curious about how your town got its name! Our third graders, in their community lesson, learn about the naming of our town, originally Jeffrey’s Creek and now Manchester-by-the-Sea.

If you would like to participate in this online project you only need to send us an email with your town’s name, state, how the town got its name and a digital image of an icon of your town.

We are going to pose Curious George at a place called Tuck’s Point. Please feel free to send a picture of any geographical site, monument, memorial, building, etc. that you feel invokes a feeling of pride in your town.

The following website will store all of the feedback we get from across the United States and have information about our town. http://www.memorial.mersd.org/curious/index.html

Please visit and share this information with anyone else. We are really excited about this project and will use the results in a variety of ways.

Looking forward to hearing from you.

We are,
Pat Fleming
Jane Foye
Lynne Stasiak
Paul Clark
Jenna Seymour
From the Manchester Memorial School, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Massachusetts