Week+7+Journal

Monday December 14 - Sunday December 20


 * Tuesday - Today we met with our team to look at the SNA results. I guess I wasn't really surprised by what I found. The only thing was 75 said they learn better by taking notes. I thought they hated to take notes, most don't study them, and several refuse to write them down at all. So I'm wondering if they put this because they do it so often. However, I don't think any of the other teachers give notes, except maybe science. Other than this none of the answers surprised me. One student said their knowledge of technology was poor, I wish I would have seen this before I hid the names. I'm so curious as to who this was. (I know I can go look it up, I just haven't had time yet.)
 * Wednesday - After viewing our results and talking about the areas that we felt were of concern and needed focus on, I really started to think about digital storytelling. I knew that I wanted to do something with their book reports, but I just wasn't sure what. I had been thinking of using the cartoon generator, but I had used that before and wasn't really impressed. Besides, if I spend days in the lab I want it to cover the standards or help for the test. So I decided we would take our book reports and put them in moviemaker. They will have to identify the elements of plot and theme. Plus, they will have to further summarize their reports. I'm excited to try this.
 * Thursday - I decided today that when we do the digital storytelling I will seat the kids in the lab according to their groups (for the webquest we will do after Christmas). This will make it easier if they stick to the same computer. The one site I chose about digital storytelling said to publish the stories. So I'm going to try to upload the kids movies to my progress book. I know this is possible, but I just don't know how much I can put there. This way they can view each others movies and share them with their families. We also began to fill out the template today. I thought this was going to be a lot more difficult, but they seemed to really understand what to do. Some finished, but most didn't which was fine. We are going to work on this again in class tomorrow so they will be ready to go to the lab when we return.
 * I'm having trouble accessing my wiki from the two mac computers I use. My mom's computer won't let me login, even if I empty the cache. My laptop let's me login, but when I go to edit all my previous entries dissapear and I'm afraid if I start typing they will be gone forever. I have to talk to someone about this. Anyway, I read a good article in the NEA catalog on team based learning. I went to the website too, this further backs up all my readings on cooperative group learning. Here is the site for [|Scott Kubista-Hovis] and how he uses tbl in his 7th grade classroom (which I aslo have). It helped me generate some good ideas.