Lab Reflections for Weeks 19 and 20

February2

Hmm, I really haven’t been reflecting enough lately. I apologize. I’ve been setting up stuff, laying groundwork, but really, that’s not a good excuse. I really should be thinking about what I’m doing more. Still, it has been an exciting few weeks with the Inauguration, and the start of Dy/Dan’s Annual Report contest.

First, some really exciting news! I’ve found another way to both supplement my income and do work with my husband (a nice two-fer). His non-profit group gets grants to help schools do “walking audits” at schools, which gets them to the top of the queue for county/city road improvement money. Many recent grants have included provisions for having students document the audits (basically, the public goes out for a walk around the school and notes what makes it hard to walk or bike into school). I did the first of what will be a series of trainings at different schools he works at, and trained the kids how to use Flip cameras and Olympus digital audio recorders. They did the training with me on Monday, and the audit was on Tuesday. The results are not perfect, but there is a lot of good stuff there.

In the lab with students, things in some places are on auto=pilot, but in others I’m doing lots of new and exciting things. The Voice Threads have been on hiatus. I will probably start doing more with them in the next few weeks, as the units they are based in are winding down, so I’ll try to get some summary observations. Fourth, fifth, and sixth grade are where the big changes have been. In fourth grade I’m having a small group in each class work on health PSAs. So, we’ve started organizing and deciding on topics. Next, we’ll be storyboarding. Fifth graders have been writing poems about their families and heritage using Kidspiration. We’re now transferring them to PowerPoint, and we’ll be adding their photos in a washout as background. Some of the poems are really great. Sixth grade has been using the Life photo collection on Google that Larry Ferlazzo shared to bookmark and comment on heroes who took a stand using Diigo bookmarking.

I’m sorry I’ve been such a poor correspondent about what’s been going. I think my efforts could have probably benefited from some input. I’m hoping to be on a better routine in February.

by posted under Uncategorized | 1 Comment »    
One Comment to

“Lab Reflections for Weeks 19 and 20”

  1. February 9th, 2009 at 6:25 pm      Reply chriswherley Says:

    Great idea on sharing your reflections on things you have been helping others do. Thanks for sharing as it gives me some ideas of things to do with our teachers and students.


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