CultureQuests

How does the CultureQuest project help improve:
1. The Study of Culture?
2. The Implementation of Project Based Learning?
3. The Integration of Technology?
How might I use this in my science class next year?


I enjoyed doing my CultureQuest. At first, I was skeptical, I felt that the directions were very vague, and I didn't feel like my group was headed in the right direction. It took a couple of meetings to refine our topic in such a way that everyone was interested, and it was divided up fairly.

The CultureQuest improves the study of culture by helping us delve into an aspect of a culture that is not necessarily already familiar to us. For instance, I have visited Mexico once, but I am not too familiar with their history or culture. I was excited to work on an aspect of Mexican cuisine, and learn more about something I already enjoy.

In terms of this being a problem based learning assignment, I found it rewarding to show off my research in a beautifully formatted website. I thought that creating a project is a much more interesting way to present the material than writing a paper. Using websites made my information accessible and user-friendly.

This project is definitely helping improve my integration of technology! Now that I know how easy it is to make a website using googlepages, I will definitely implement that in my classroom.

I anticipate that I will use the website creator page, googlepages, in my science class next year. It is easy to pick up and a great way to have students showcase information. However, I do not believe that I will implement a project such as a CultureQuest. It is the end of the year and I am running out of time to focus on Regents material, I believe it would not be a practical use of time in a Regents class to use class time to research other cultures. Our classroom is so diverse that we already have many cultures represented daily. Perhaps if I taught English, history, or an elective class, I would be more apt to use this project.

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We Be Bloggin'

Today we just spent 20 minutes checking out everyone else's blogs. Everyone in our class has such different postings! Some are just one sentence long, "today we talked about stuff." (To think that in comparison, I've been writing novels here!) Other people reflect on their life outside of school and work and Lehman and ESC 529. They talk about going to the gym and what they did on spring break.

Mine seemed fairly boring in comparison, all I reflect on is what we do in class. Oh well, no one other than my classmates who just read all the blogs would actually read this. Good times. It is a good summary of what we've been doing every Tuesday.

As a quick update, I submitted my webquest today! Also, I finished my part of the culturequest! AND, I narrated and submitted my digital story. I emailed it to my sisters and brothers so that they can see it too. We are winding down in this class!!!!

Smartboards! The students call them Dumbboards...

Smartboards are awesome, unless they are aggravating. There are good and bad elements to the Smartboards.

Pros:

You can leave your laptop and work directly on the board. This eliminates walking back and forth between board and computer.

You can use your finger to type, write, color, erase, click, right-click, double click, open, close, minimize, spotlight, highlight, shade, rotate, twist, save, photograph, and otherwise manipulate materials.

Students like to use it and have a lot of fun with it. They can manipulate text and images and writing.

Programs like Internet Explorer, Microsoft Notebook and Microsoft Powerpoint and Microsoft Word take on whole new meanings when you can write directly on the websites, pages, slides, or documents. You can annotate, edit, and decorate notes with relative ease.

Videos and sound are dramatically more awesome than any DVD/TV/VCR combo you've ever used before. Crisp pictures and sound.

Cons:

The setup of my Smartboard requires cords galore. The USB cord coils on the floor, the speaker cord is barely long enough, and I have an extension cord trailing across the entire room to plug in the laptop, projector, and anything else I need.

Any slight motion of either the Smartboard or the projector requires a realignment of the two. Students accidentally bump the projector and all goes awry. Realignment tends to lose the class for a few seconds.

Preparing awesome lessons on the Smartboard requires extra prep, which usually takes quite a bit of time.

Sometimes it is hard to click on tiny elements of the website, like the x to close a window. That requires much precision.

Conclusion:

It's worth using if you can put the time in. My classes like it, I like it, it makes things funny and engaging, especially when done right.

Visual Literacy

Today we spoke of visual literacy, not necessarily literacy having to do with words, but instead pictures. In Microsoft Word, I created a poem based on an image displayed in the front of the classroom. I then illustrated my poem in Microsoft Paint. The idea of having students write material based on scientific images intrigues me, I wonder if my students are motivated enough to actually do it if I asked them to. Usually as bonus points on tests, I have them write haikus about the material we have been focusing on. I know that when I ask them to draw, it rarely goes well - on our museum field trip, we had space for students to sketch what they saw, and those spaces were the ones most frequently left blank. I do have students who like to draw though - some of them have a hard time putting their pencils down.

We also learned geography through Japanese art today. This was an interesting exercise - we looked at pictures to determine the climate and geography of Japan. I liked how we used art instead of photographs to learn this. I definitely want to try this with Earth Science as we start landscapes soon. My only hesitation is that the photos might be difficult to see from the back of the room.

Google Pages

I like using Google Pages to make a website. It seems to easy to be true. I have made a website before in Dreamweaver, and Google Pages is much more user-friendly. The only downside is that it does limit what your designs can really look like. It is easy to change the layout and the format, and the best part is that it automatically saves itself after every change.

I hope that I can set up a website for my class. Then it would be easy to say, "Go look on the website" when students need see homework, worksheets, assignments, and resources. Ideally, maintenance would not be too difficult. I am curious as to how much space Google Pages allows you to use, for instance, if I start uploading documents, how many can I upload? I know that Google Mail has virtually unlimited space, hopefully Google Pages is similar.