Marchin' On through 2009!

Well, well, well, here we are in March! Where has most of the school year gone!?

It's a good thing we have most of the rest of March, and April, and May to continue working because we are going to need it!

Let's go in order of coming into the lab, starting with our 3rd graders:

We finished up our three weeks in the award-winning program "Timez Attack" this week. I'll be rolling around the room later today on my little office chair, going from computer to computer to computer recording the student progress. My intention is to make a case for purchasing the full-fledged program for next year, so that all the exciting levels of work are unlocked for the students. Should I be successful we'll buy the Timez Attack upgrade and the 3rd and 4th graders (and those 2nd graders who may need extra advanced practice, just another available tool for individualized instruction) will have access to them! I note that several students' parents have already purchased the program for home, and that is heartening--I don't recommend home purchase, partly because I don't want to be viewed as endorsing a commercial product--but those decisions on the part of parents just justify my faith in the program!

4th graders continue questing! I am seeing the overall progress of my little n00bie questers begin to string out in a broader spectrum as some forge forward seemingly voraciously and some still languish in the early stages of introductory missions and quests. I'm getting around to the latter group individually to help them work through those areas where they are confused, and hopefully everyone will be on track soon. However, I have to share that the quality of the questing (in the form of written submitted "Responses" and "Reflections," two required features for quest completion) is VERY encouraging. For example, a recent response from one 4th grader came to me for review and I had to print it out to share with her teacher. I won't name her by name, but when asked to describe a personal occasion where she felt she'd been disrespected, here's what she wrote:

One time someone told me that I needed to dress better. I didn't get very upset,
but I wished that she hadn't said that. I told her that I didn't care what she
thought about my clothes and that she should stop being mean. I wish I hadn't
said that, either. I couldn't agree more with the saying 'treat others the way
you want to be treated.' To me, respect means to make sure that you don't take
anger out on anyone else. It aslo means to have a good attitude about what your
friends do or wear, even if you don't personally like it.

If you look at the goals for this quest, the student did a very good job of addressing them. Yesterday I reviewed and responded to over 25 mission/quest submissions, approving about half and asking others to resubmit after adding detail or correcting grammar or spelling. While I do not require perfection (note the "aslo" in the above submission), I do require attention to both!

Here are the goals, by the way--and please bear in mind this is only one introductory quest in a virtual world rich with opportunities to learn and reflect:

Having Respect
Your goal(s) are to:
Do you feel like there was a time when you felt someone didn't respect you? Was there a time when you didn't respect someone else? Share your views on respect.
Share a time when you were disrespected or you didn't respect someone else.
Then, describe how you would you like others to treat you.
Also, describe what it means to show respect.

I will report that managing this "classroom of 72" is a challenging load for me, as my QA mentor suggested it might be. However, I'm so encouraged by early performance that I persevere! This week one classroom was inworld during the regular 4th grade time and we found that bananausn (one of our quester users from USN) was also online. It turns out she was home with a case of pinkeye and via the magic of our virtual environment, we were all able to chat and explore together! Fun!

Revisit this blog for more on our journey into the fabulous learning experience of Quest Atlantis!

Kindergartners explored Lesson 24 at UpToTen.com (now up to this week, challenging their memory in four fun activities. Two of them are scaled to "Younger Kids" and "Older Kids" and I challenged all our "young kids" to pick the older option and share with me and the teacher assistant (when present) when they were successful. Beaming faces testified to their pride in being just that.

1st and 2nd graders are working at AAAMath.com to drill basic addition facts. It turns interesting and fun (and, yes, maybe a little bit competitive, but in a good way!) when we all go to the 0,1,2 Addition page and click "Give Me Time" to do a 60 second timed drill that allows the user more time as he or she completes the number sentences correctly. I like this drill site because it does not require young children to enter the numbers on the keypad, only to click on the correct answer button. I'm hoping that some of our children who are most in need for retention of addition facts 0-10 will benefit from the experience and re-visit the site frequently!

February Marches On!

Another big week in the lab, as:

Kinderkids explored lesson number 43 at UpToTen Premium@Schools, now up to 8,377 schools using it; and I have to brag again about our being school NUMERO UNO! This lesson contains four activities classified as "Advanced Mouse and Keyboard" work and the kids had great fun with them--filling a honeycomb with honey from flowers, helping a mole through a tunnel, mousing Zoombunny up into the air to collect acorns and carrots, and finally using keyboard arrows to play a very serviceable version of the old game Brickmaster called "Breaking Bricks." Click the pic above for a detailed descripton.

1st graders explored the Webliographer for resources I've stored there relating to Weather. Some particularly liked the 15 or 20 word "word searches" while others gravitated to the "Water Goes Around" construct-your-own water cycle activity.

2nd graders visited the Webliographer for Mystery links, and explored especially the Fin, Furr, and Feather Federal Bureau of Investigation.

3rd graders cracked open Timez Attack (free version) to take their little guy through a very very nice 3D environment picking up math facts along the way then demonstrating their retention of them by tossing them at a pretty scary ogre who their math releases from a secret door. When the ogre is conquered by the smarts of the player, he disappears into thin air (not "killed," I emphasize, because the next door will surely see him released again) and another door, containing another math fact, is sought. It's a fun, well conceived and expertly executed game, the free version of which (the only limitation is that there is only one environment option, and more can be purchased at the site; but I don't encourage that--to the maker's credit, new environments are not required for full functionality) is downloadable at the Webliographer's Downloads topic or by visiting the TimezAttack website. Parents, if you wonder about the value of playing games for learning, visit and view the excellent intro video at BigBrains.com.

And, ahem, speaking of games, we (4th graders and I) proceed apace into Quest Atlantis, learning more about the worlds in which we are increasingly engaged. My email 9within QA) to all of the kids this week encouraged them to seek a sense of balance by limiting game play on their own, balancing it with homework, family time, outside play, reading, and other ways to be entertained. Their enthusiasm is sooooo clearly present (I overgeneralize somewhat here--we still have some confusion and mixed reaction and we're working with that) and I'm glad for that, but the last thing anyone wants is for this engaging platform to dominate playtime inordinately. But I will argue to the wall that if there's "screentime" available and there's a choice between a DVR'd episode of iCarly or the Simpsons and Quest Atlantis and a child chooses the latter, a good choice has been made!

We're beginning to get into some missions and quests now, and in addition to the basic iBurst quest and Shardflower Social Commitments mission, the kids are unlocking some interesting things, such as fighting blights with magical critters and seeking out a playable giant piano to commit to Creativity. I'll soon have samples of writing so that you can begin to truly understand the power of this platform to motivate and inspire. I'm also beginning to take a little video of the action in the lab when the kids are all on at once. It's wild!

That's all for this week!