Monkey Business - Activity Reflection #5

Hey Everyone!

I hope your week is going well.  I am on Spring Break from work, but I am not on Spring Break from school, so I am writing this blog entry from my hotel room in Times Square in NEW YORK CITY!  If anywhere in the world was technology driven, it is Times Square in NYC, that is for sure.  Bright, blinking, glittery lights sparkle from every building, flicker on signs and street lights, and glimmer on billboards and advertisements.  From the room key to the touchscreen computers in the taxis, we are totally surrounded with technology.  Even the American Natural History Museum was a technological wonder.

I am having a ball here with my 14-year-old niece, but we are in overload.  Everywhere we go, people are rushing around, lights are blinking, and we hear honking, sirens, and general traffic noise.  It can be awe-inspiring but also overwhelming.  My senses are on overload.  It makes me wonder if technology helps us or hinders us? Are our lives better with all this going on or will we suffer in the long run?  I don't know the answer to that.  I suspect that in the end, we suffer from the overload.  Well, in any case, we're EXHAUSTED.

It has been so hard to concentrate on my studies this week, and I know a part of that is because of this technology overload.  I don't especially want to sit down at the computer after all the over-stimulation.  I just want to close my eyes and THINK.  Which isn't to say that I don't WANT to do my work this week.  I am just struggling with gathering my thoughts and presenting them in a way that makes sense.....

This week we are reading and discussing curriculum pages.  Our instructor defines curriculum pages as such, "Curriculum pages help keep students safe and where they belong while on the Internet. They also assist teachers in focusing their students' learning. Creating and utilizing curriculum pages provides students with high quality and appropriate Web resources. Curriculum pages also encourage independent thinking and working skills in students, as well as developing higher order thinking and problem solving skills" (Thompson).  Curriculum pages provide students with a condensed web experience, in my opinion - meaning, the instructor brings together the resources that she wants the students to access, and from there, the student can read, view, explore, listen, etc. to the appropriate educational examples without having to do a lot of searching, which can waste time.  The instructor can use the curriculum page as a guide to assist her students in getting the most appropriate information in the most efficient manner.

Last week, we created a wiki that we could use as a collaborative site in our classroom, so that students could contribute to the site as well as gain knowledge from it.  According to dictionary.com, a wiki is "a web site that allows anyone to add, delete, or revise content by using a web browser" (dictionary.com).  This concept lends itself very well in an educational setting, since a teacher can guide students to certain websites and present various examples of multimedia all in one place. A student doesn't have to be at school to access the wiki, and the student may add their input to the site as well.  Group projects work well in this forum.  We will be using the wiki as a curriculum page in this class, for this project.

In addition, last week we also began brainstorming story ideas for an individual or group story project for our students.  I came up with a collaborative story, a question-and-answer-type story to do as a class project for first graders. The title of the book is A Mischievous Monkey Escaped from the Zoo! The format of the story is as follows:

Students will add their contribution to the following scenario. "A mischievous monkey escaped from the zoo!  Oh no!  What will he do?"  Then each student will answer the question of what they think the monkey will do.  The "mischievous monkey" phrase will precede ever student answer.  For instance,

• A mischievous monkey escaped from the zoo!  Oh no!  What will he do?  Student 1:  The monkey will hang from the trees and giggle.
• A mischievous monkey escaped from the zoo!  Oh no!  What will he do?  Student 2:  The monkey will eat one hundred bananas.
• A mischievous monkey escaped from the zoo!  Oh no!  What will he do?  Student 3:  The monkey will roller skate down the street.

I am not currently teaching, but I have twin 6-year-old niece and nephews who are willing, active, and eager participants in whatever project I am currently working on.  I also have a good friend who teaches first grade and she gives me feedback.  However, first graders aren't as technologically savvy as say..... any other higher grade, so my challenge has been how to create this assignment for the appropriate technological level of 6-year-olds.  I mean, my nephew knows how to "accidentally" move all the icons around on the desktop of a computer and my niece knows how to color inside the lines in a digital coloring book, but typing skills?  website navigation skills?  and basic reading skills?

This activity has been a challenge for me - to make one easy enough for first graders to do while still creating the wiki interface as assigned.  I decided that this digital storybook activity would be best suited for students to do with their reading buddies (presumably in 4th grade or above) or a "Special Grownup" (the politically correct term, I have heard, instead of saying "parents" because you never know what your student's home life is like, and of course, you want to include all....).  This project could also be done with the help of parent volunteers - those parents who are always helping/hovering in the classroom and who would be very eager to help out with this sort of thing.  In other words, this is not a project for a first grader to do alone.

Here is the link to my wiki's homepage:  hitechedcheck.wikispaces.com and the link to my Mischievous Monkey Digital Storybook Page.

Looking at my Mischievous Monkey page, there are a few things that I would adjust:  I think I would create separate pages for each of the activities - meaning, I would have one page for the monkey facts and photos, one page for monkey stories, and another page for the drawing tutorials.  I think that it is too long of a page to have all the links together.  I did have some links that were to pages of lists of links and, after reviewing them, I actually linked my site to the best sites directly, rather than linking to more links.  I think that simplified things.  In addition, I would include more graphics on my page - it looks pretty bleak right now.  I might even include some sounds or embedded videos, since these are small children who probably don't get around online very easily.  But, as this is a work in progress, I am satisfied with where my wiki is at the moment, and in the next few days, I can spend the a little time retooling it to where I want it to be.

In the meantime, there's Lion King and Mary Poppins to see, as well as a behind the scenes tour of the show Wicked - all before we fly home on Monday.

Happy Spring Break, INDEED!