Last Post for 2009-2010

It's been a good year, and as I write this we are sneaking up on the last hour of the last full day of the 2009-2010 school year. Since this blog is specifically for communicating what is going on in the computer lab, I'll lay it to rest for the summer with this post. THE SHORT STORY is that we are at each grade level exploring Free Choice Options, as they are amply documented in earlier blog posts. So many class parties and field trips are making class attendance in the lab so hit or miss that I believe that's the best course. The party's over, ya'll.

So what am I up to this summer? What follows should serve to inform:

I am a "Core Volunteer" at the International Society for Technology in Education, having become acquainted with that now 100,000+ member organization the summer of 2000 as I attended my first "National Educational Computing Conference, its annual convention, in Atlanta, Georgia. Since then I've attended nearly every year, presented multiple times for groups as large as 300, and gotten involved in their innovative "virtual environment" community in Second Life. Last year, I was motivated to create an official "Special Interest Group" for Virtual Environments, and that was recognized and instituted (as one of the only 20 SIGS) in October of 2009 with me as the chair, president, leader, or, as I have designated the role, "Poobah." It's fascinating work and it takes up a great deal of my discretionary time, though I am always mindful to keep that work secondary to my work as Technology Coordinator.

That said, I have benefited greatly from interactions with educators of like mind, many of whom believe that the education of the past, while it offers elements we must not discard out of hand, is no longer meaningful and that we we must look to the world of the future, and beyond reform to revolution. "Innovation is hard," says Sir Kenneth Robinson in a Ted.com talk just released this week, "because it means doing something that people don't find very easy for the most part. It means challenging what we take for granted, things that we think are obvious." My work with ISTE led me to Quest Atlantis and Scratch, and to my use of those tools with our kids. Recently, this work along with other contributions resulted in my being honored by the National Association of Independent Schools as a "Teacher of the Future."

This summer I will lead a group of those like-minded educators in activities designed to help others understand the potentials of 3 dimensional virtual environments for learning and teaching. This will take place in Denver, Colorado from June 25 to June 30 at the ISTE 2010 Conference and Exposition. I'll frame that effort with several days before it and a week after with my extended family, vacation with loved ones and fun in Colorado.

I also hope to spend a few days in Boston at the end of July, at the Apple Learning Institute for educators that is part of the Teacher of the Future program award.

Finally, I learned just yesterday that my grant proposal for USN's Quaker Hill professional development grant won me the funding for self-designed travel to "exemplary and comparable schools" to observe K-4 technology program curricula in other locations. Though I am pleased with what I do in the computer lab, I feel that it could be more tightly and intentionally designed and less reliant on my own sometimes whimsical and playful approach to learning. Out of obligation to my students, your children, I am seeking ideas that will inform redesign of our technology curriculum to bring it even more in line with best practices, as demonstrated in programs that profess to "get it." Wish me luck. It's going to take some sorting out. I'll report back in the fall.

A few housekeeping notes:

• I have had to remove Boowa and Kwala from the Webliographer. This is a long story but basically the new owner (no longer my friend Jason in Mauritus) refused to respond to my request that they remove inappropriate advertising from the non-login site. I regret this, as the blue bear and his lovely little koala buddy have been staples of my work in the lab for years. I feel it is the appropriate response, though. I'm good with it.
• Keyboarding for Kids accounts will remain open all summer. If your child should finish all 64 lessons during the summer, please email me and I'll set up a new account for them so that they can keep up their practice and improve even more. PLEASE make sure that they are practicing with home row key position, using the correct fingers for the correct keys.
• Quest Atlantis accounts will also be kept alive during the summer. I'll check in at least weekly. I have some questing to do myself, and it's incumbent upon me to fulfill my duties as mentor all summer long. If you have questions for me, don't hesitate to email. smerrick @ email.usn.org is the address.
• 1st grade Kerpoof accounts will remain open for rising 2nd graders. The login "Nickname" is the child's first name (duplicates in the grade level have the first two letters of the last name added, as in "SarahJo") and it is capitalized conventionally. The Password is 10r13 for the student in Ms. Roth's class sitting at computer 13 (the 10 is for the year 2010), and the Class Name is K747. I sent home login slips but if you've lost those you can also email me.
• If your child is using Google Buzz, I highly encourage you to help them disable it. Go to your gmail "Settings," click on the Buzz tab, and disable Buzz. 'nuff said.
• Keep your child's computer use public and monitor the browser history once a week. That works.

Have a safe and fun family summer, ya'll. I'll see you and your wonderful kids in the fall of 2010.

Second Week in May

With so few school days left, we are scrambling to get every bit of learning value from our time in the lab.

The Short Story:
3rd and 4th graders are taking a 1 minute typing test so that I can gather data about their progress in Keyboarding for Kids.
Kindergarteners are choosing between drawing a picture in Drawing for Children or completing an activity at Kerpoof.
1st graders are choosing from that same set of options with the addition of the Creative Games portion of uptoten.com's Boowa and Kwala premium website.
2nd graders are visiting AuntLee.com for games that help them become more fluent with a computer keyboard.

The Short Story:
3rd and 4th graders are taking a 1 minute typing test so that I can gather data about their progress in Keyboarding for Kids. We do that at a website appropriately named TypingTest.com. Each child repeats the "Tigers in the Wild" 1 minute timed test as many times as we have time for, then I manually take down WordsPerMinute, Number of Errors, and AdjustedScore for entry into a MS Excel spreadsheet that will inform teachers so that they can include each child's progress in the discussions they will hold with parents at the end of the year. The accounts at Keyboarding for Kids will be available to students all summer long, and I HIGHLY suggest parents encourage practice. As I tell the kids, this skill is one that will make their entry into middle school immeasurably easier.

I'm so proud of the 4th grade team for all the support and encouragement they've given their classes this year. Our 4th graders' performance this year by far exceeds that of previous years and we feel like we're making progress in the program. More to come.

Kindergarteners are choosing between drawing a picture in Drawing for Children or completing an activity at Kerpoof. I save them all and I'll create a slideshow for each classroom's webpage as well as printing them for your refrigerators.

Here's one example of each platform's output. First, from Kerpoof.com's "Make a Picture" activity:

and then from Drawing for Children:

1st graders are choosing from that same set of options with the addition of the Creative Games portion of uptoten.com's Boowa and Kwala premium website.

2nd graders (who are not producing PowerPoint "About Me" slideshows in a quick intro to PowerPoint) are visiting the BBC Typing website for computer games they can revisit during the summer to help them begin to easily locate keys on the computer keyboard.

Keyboarding is an essential skill, and these students will begin their formal touch-typing program at the very beginning of the next school year as 3rd graders.

After the Mayday Floods

Hi all,

I hope you're all safe and well after the recent deluge. I gather that many of our families suffered loss or damage and I'm thankful that no lives have been lost.

I at first was dubious about getting back to school so quickly and I do miss the opportunities to volunteer that are so needed in our community, but after a couple of days with your children just being around them has done so much for my own state of mind and emotions that I am glad we're back at work.

Here's the skimmy on what we are doing:

The Short Story:
3rd graders finish and print their Asia Scrapbook covers
4th graders re-enter Quest Atlantis to make progress before the end of the school year
Kindergarteners revisit Kerpoof to "Make a Doodle"
1st graders revisit Kerpoof to learn more about how to "Make a Movie"
2nd graders make and print a new graph at the NCES Create a Graph site

The Long Story:
3rd graders finish and print their Asia Scrapbook covers from a Microsoft Word template. It's easy to do but getting it done with all 18 students in a class in our allotted 25 minutes is quite fun and chaotic. Here's one example of the results:

4th graders re-enter Quest Atlantis to make progress before the end of the school year. I am introducing the 5th graders to this marvelous, safe, interesting platform this week (re-introducing most of them, as we quested to positive effect for much of last year in their 4th grade) and I'm hoping that our new collaboration with the Middle School will turn into something good for all of us--for the students, the technology team, and the families. Stay tuned!

Kindergarteners revisit Kerpoof to "Make a Doodle." This is Kerpoof's simple but fun painting/drawing tool, and Kindergarteners discover this week how to draw a shape--triangle, square, even star--and as long as they carefully end where they began it, Kerpoof straightens and evens out all the lines to make a "perfect" shape! We're printing these for refrigerators but not saving them.

1st graders revisit Kerpoof to learn more about how to "Make a Movie" there. This is a pretty powerful feature of Kerpoof. I have set the kids up with their own accounts and logins, the benefit of which is that they can save projects and revisit/extend them at future logins. I'm working on a little book with the "Make a Story" feature myself and I'll share it out here when it's complete. It's about an alien who trips over his tongue all the time...

2nd graders make and print a new graph at the NCES Create a Graph site. We did so last week and I'm pleased to see most 2nd graders able to complete the exercise this week, emerging with a graph displaying data taken by quick voice poll on a topic we choose at the moment. Actually, the 2nd grade has split focus to some degree this week, and two classes are involved in other activities--Ms. Pitt's class is finishing "All About Me" style PowerPoints, and Ms. Darr's students enjoy the first third of a movie that Lillian brought in to share. "MicroCosmos" is an absolutely stunning G-rated film distributed by Miramax that makes use of very high tech photography techniques to share the lives of insects in real life. Not an animated movie, you can read more about it and see a trailer at the Miramax MicroCosmos website!

Stay safe!

Comments for Mr. Merrick?

For my students:

Last Week of April, 2010

Time's flying by! Drop in for our annual International Fair from 5:30 pm to 7 pm Friday night, when 4th grader Caroline Knowles, her crew of fellow 4th graders, and I will be sharing Hopi American food, inspired by our Mesa Verde Unit in Quest Atlantis. I'll be sharing Quest Atlantis with interested attendees, too, via my laptop and a dedicated internet connection! Here's a great composite picture of two of my Questers who became virtual twins, dreadlocks and all, in Quest Atlantis!

The Short Story:

3rd Graders are creating Word cover pages for their Asia study scrapbooks

4th Graders are making graphs with the NCES Create-a-graph website

Kindergarters are making special cards with Kerpoof's "Make a Card" feature

1st Graders are looking at tutorials in Kerpoof, especially the "Make a Movie" tutorial

2nd Graders are also making graphs at the NCES site

The Long Story:

3rd Graders are creating Word cover pages for their Asia study scrapbooks by modifying Word Art on a template residing on our network. I created the template to facilitate getting the task done in the brief 30 minutes I have with the kids, and I'll be cleaning up any mis-formatting and printing them all for the students once they are all finished. In the course of the re-formatting, students open a browser and use the safe-search Google field in the Webliographer to find an image they would like to appear on their document's cover, then copy it into a text box on the template. This retains the desired sizing and makes for a good consistent cover page for all the kids' scrapbooks.

4th Graders are making graphs with the NCES Create-a-graph website. This site has been around for maybe a decade, despite the best efforts of the folks at the National Center for Economics Statistics to take it down several years ago. There was such an outcry by educators that they put it back up and it's been up and available ever since. It's easy to see why it was missed: Students can enter data, choose a style of graph, edit many design elements, and preview their work before revising it until they have just what they want. When satisfied, they can print, save, and/or email a copy of their graph to a teacher, themselves, or their favorite computer lab teacher. Here's a sample:

Kindergarters are making special (shhhhh) cards with Kerpoof's "Make a Card" feature. I'll share some of that work when it's the appropriate time to do so. With a certain holiday coming up a week from Sunday, it may be too early :-)

1st Graders are looking at tutorials in Kerpoof, especially the "Make a Movie" tutorial. This is a good introduction to the concept of tutorials, and it gives the students a source of reference once the logins and passwords go home. With luck, they will be able to use these accounts as long as they would like, since I set them up in such a manner that their usernames and passwords can travel with them up the grades through Lower School and beyond. I would really like to see what older kids could do with Kerpoof, and while introducing the Movie making interface to the 1st graders, I am struck by nothing so much as how it's kind of a nice little subtle introduction to programming. You have to see it to understand, and if you'd like to do that, click on over to the Kerpoof Tutorial page and watch Make a Movie Learn how to make a movie using Kerpoof Animation Studio.

2nd Graders are also making graphs at the NCES site. With them, however, I first demonstrate the site and then walk them through the process a step at a time. The biggest challenge is attention span and self-control in whole class, and I welcome the chance to work on that with them. The results are mostly stellar (the example above is actually one emailed me by a 2nd grader!).

See you in May!

April Proceeds Apace!

We are workingworkingworking in the Lower School Technology for Learning Lab. Here's what we're doing this week:

3rd graders continue with Keyboarding for Kids

4th graders add desktop shortcuts and continue to explore their new mobile netbooks

Kindergarteners "Make a Story" at Kerpoof.com

1st graders login to their new student accounts and Making a Story and saving it online

2nd graders finish up My Lemonade Stand

3rd graders continue with Keyboarding for Kids. Parents, I'm proud of the way many 3rd graders have pursued acquisition of this skill and I want to remind you that the K4K accounts will be "live" online all summer long. A rainy day at the beach? Pop 'em online on the laptop and have them practice for 10 or 15 minutes before they explore the Webliographer for fun, interactive, and educational links!

4th graders add desktop shortcuts and continue to explore their new mobile netbooks. This will be a real boon to our 4th grade writing program. I talked to a colleague of mine at ISTE yesterday whose child will be attending an independent school in Eugene, Oregon next year and one of the things she's most proud of is the mobile laptop cart that even Kindergarteners get to use one day a week. Is this the way of the future for our technology program? It's a possibility, as we continue to do what we've always done at USN--constantly re-evaluate our programs to do the best we can do for our students. Stay tuned! I'll be writing a detailed article about our new resource for the USN enewsletter, so stay tuned for that too!

Kindergarteners are visiting Kerpoof.com again this week to "Make a Story." This clever and powerful online art program is education standards aligned and we will be using it in the lab as just one more way to practice digital graphic literacy and in the process add to our skills banks the problem-solving and self-learning that mastering Kerpoof presents. Here's one of the Kindergartener's pics as an example:

1st graders login to their new student accounts and Making a Story and saving it online. In an upcoming class I'll show them how to open a file, save it on their computer in the My Pictures folder, then how to print that picture. If they are printing at home, do what I do in the lab, set your printer to "Draft" to save color ink!

2nd graders finish up My Lemonade Stand, the computer-resident software that I described in last week's post. This week, many more are muscling through the virtual 30 days of entrepreneurship that the program offers. Our high score for the week is as of Thursday over $3400 dollars. That's pretty good business decision making (and luck) for having started with a seed fund of only $2.00 on day one!

Four more weeks of school. But remember: Lifelong learning never ends, and online learning is ALWAYS available.

Week of April 12, 2010

Hey, all. It's a big week in the Lower School Technology for Learning Lab!

The Short Story:

3rd graders continue making progress in Keyboarding for Kids

4th graders are introduced to our new mobile netbooks lab!

Kindergarteners and 1st graders visit and produce art at Kerpoof

2nd graders create their own business cards using a Microsoft Word template

The Long Story:

3rd graders continue making progress in Keyboarding for Kids as we position them for writing success upon entry into 4th grade next year. The first 3rd grader has FINISHED all 64 lessons in K4K and has started through his second course of it, so it's proven that with diligence and effort, even when that effort is optional, we can do this! Please encourage your child to work and let them do so at home if at all possible. They need simply to visit the Webliographer and click the Keyboarding for Kids image, log in as they would at school, and carry on!

4th graders are introduced to our new mobile netbooks lab! This is a tremendously exciting new development that's been months in the planning and setup, and I'm proud to say that we are rolling (literally) the laptops out to the students this week. We'll talk about care and maintenance, rehearse how to login to the laptops and set up the necessary shortcuts on each child's individualized desktop, how to troubleshoot in case the wireless access is lost, and all manner of new things presented by the Windows 7 operating system and Microsoft Office 2007, which you may know is quite different from the Office 2003 the kids are used to using. Stay tuned for pics and more description of this newest innovation in the lab. By the way, MUCH thanks to Technology Assistant Spencer Engelbert for all his help, and also to the whole tech department...

Kindergarteners and 1st graders visit and produce art at Kerpoof, the immensely rich online drawing, painting, and moviemaking tool. K kids dive into the "Make a Picture" function, producing a printed coloring book sheet with their name on it and customized with a background and images of their own choosing, 1sters produce interesting wordlists and pictures with the "Spell a Picture" interface, printing those out at the end of the session. It's FUN! We'll do more yet at Kerpoof next week, after student accounts are set up with my new free teacher account. This will allow us to save, to customize each child's avatar, and to start building a collection of drawings. I am careful to talk about how this is a "commercial" site and though it offers lots of options without logging in with a paid account, there will be stages along the way where students may want their parents to upgrade. I encourage them to use the site's free parts instead...

2nd Graders create their own business cards using a Microsoft Word template, simply highlighting and typing or pasting clip art into pre-defined fields. I would love for them to be able to create these on their own, free-form, but having them only for 30 minutes limits me to this procedure. It works, but it is really hectic as each child works to complete his or her own single card on an Avery-based template. After the class leaves, I copy that card and paste it into each of the 9 other positions on the page, and I'll do all the printing after all classes have completed the design work. Here's an example of what the final product looks like:

That's it for this week. See you next!

Week of April 5, 2010

The Short Story:

4th grade-Quest Atlantis

3rd grade-K4K

Kindergarten -Boowa and Kwala MyFirstClicks center number 22, Vegetables and the Garden

1st grade-Fairytales websites on Webliographer

2nd grade-My Lemonade Stand intro (Pitt business cards)

The Long Story:

4th grade-4th graders Quest the light Atlantis! Continuing to move into and along through the winding time-traveling mission of Mesa Verde, we find that we can help Lorisa, the girl who is hiding from wrongly judgmental classmates on a field trip to Mesa Verde National Park by going back and forth into three periods of history and talking to Puebloan culture denizens, all along the way learning more and more about their rich and fascinating culture. I took a few pics of my own as I pursued the mission over the weekend and I'll add a couple here:

In this first one, chestertesterusn, my student avatar, is viewing a video about the Puebloan culture inside the museum. Later on, he'll have the chance to pursue a detailed scavenger hunt by investigating the displays in the museum, like the one at the wall in the right hand side of this picture.

In the second picture, you can see the first questions of the scavenger hunt itself. You'll note that these questions reflect knowledge about details key to understanding this very interesting lost culture. Part of one class session has been dedicated to demonstrating how to facilitate the taking of this little "test" by minimizing the window rather than closing it and reopening it as answers become clear. Stay tuned for more info as more and more Questers progress into this fantastic educational unit!

3rd grade-Keyboarding for Kids proceeds apace. I'm feeling better all the time as at least several students in each classroom pass the 20 lesson mark toward completing the program. Whether any of them will actually finish all 64 lessons before the end of the year (when it is optional, not required) remains to be seen, but I have high hopes that at least a few of them will. Parents, if you have not yet bought into this valuable learning opportunity for your child, help them out by encouraging them to make progress and to make it the right way, with HOME ROW KEY POSITION, ALWAYS!

Kindergarten -K kiddos will visit Boowa and Kwala MyFirstClicks center number 22 this week, "Vegetables and the Garden." This is a review lesson in the 50 lesson continuum that was introduced the second week of school, and the gentle, satire-free activities encourage the use of mouse control, arrow keys, and more for their completion.

1st grade-The 1sters visit Fairy Tales websites on Webliographer. They've been exploring fairy tales in the classroom, but they may not have visited the ubercool Grimm Fairy Tales site or the gently fun Snapdragon version of Goldilocks.

2nd grade-My Lemonade Stand is an out-of-print software version of a classic, but it's so well done that we keep using it year to year. In it, a budding business boy or girl has 30 days to make (or lose) a fortune, beginning with a budget of a mere $2.00 and deciding quantity, price, and whether or not to even sell each day based on the weather "Forcast" (even good game programmers can misspell things--and you'd better bet I point that error out each time I introduce the game). The forecast includes High Temperature, Humidity, and Percent chance of Rain, also all good concepts to reinforce, and a skillful (and lucky) player can amass wealth well into the thousands in the 20 or 30 minutes it can take to work through the 30 days of business. Ms. Pitt's ready to do her class's business cards, so we'll do that this week. More on that project next week, when we'll all get it done...

See you then!

Oh, and here are the K-1st grade Spring pictures I promised last week--all in a slideshow for your joyful Springtime viewing!

Hello, April!

Be sure to see the previous post (below) for news about Doodle4Google!

The Short Story:
3rd graders--continue progress in Keyboarding for Kids
4th graders--continue progress in the Mesa Verde Mission in Quest Atlantis
Kindergarten and 1st graders--create colorful "Spring" drawings with Drawing for Children
2nd graders--analyze and review "Money" games at Internet4Classrooms

The Long Story:

3rd graders--are setting themselves up for success by diligently working each week in Keyboarding for Kids, and if they show an interest in doing so at home (which many are reporting in lab class) please allow them to practice as often as they can and will. Please also make sure that they are using only home row key position!

4th graders--continue progress in the Mesa Verde Mission in Quest Atlantis, helping Lorisa understand the value of her ancestry and exploring in great detail the rich culture of the Puebloan people. At the end of April, our school will stage an International Fair, an annual celebration of cultural diversity, and Caroline, a 4th grader, has volunteered to organize a group of her classmates to cook and share food from Hopi history. I plan to be there with a poster display and Quest Atlantis running on my laptop connected to a large flat panel monitor, taking advantage of the opportunity to share this amazing, challenging, and fun way to learn. In more Quest Atlantis news, Middle School Technology Coordinator Jake Wilson has decided that QA will benefit his 5th graders. He's signed up for the mandatory 8 hours of online teacher training in April and I'll be going into his classes in a couple of weeks to re-introduce former Questers to Quest Atlantis and to show the new 5th graders how it all works. Amazing!

Kindergarteners and 1st graders--are using Drawing for Children to create fun, fun, fun, little drawings celebrating Spring! I'll pop in an example I shared with them right here, but check back for a long and entertaining slideshow right here next week!

2nd graders--examine the 26 learning games about "Money" at Internet4Classrooms (each spends 10 minutes with the game whose number matches their own computer number, then chooses any of the games with numbers higher than 18 to "test drive") and reassemble to demonstrate the best ones for their classmates. Via this exercise, I'll choose a particular set of games we'll all do on this topic next chance we get. Next week, we'll begin making business cards for their own imaginary businesses in the Business Unit! More on that later...

First Week After Spring Break!

I'm glad to be back with my kiddos, though I did have a fun and relaxing Spring Break. Now, with only 10 weeks or so of school left to go, I'm racing to get goals and instruction finished. Welcome back to you and yours!


The Short Story:
3rd Grade--Keyboarding for Kids
4th Grade--Mesa Verde unit at Quest Atlantis
Kindergarten--Katie's Room
2nd Grade--Virtual-swim.com
1st Grade--Math at Internet4Classrooms

The Long Story:
3rd Grade--Keyboarding for Kids work continues. Typing correctly in home row key position is an invaluable skill and this is the very first year we've instituted K4K for the third graders. I was gratified to receive a compliment from a parent just yesterday, as he mentioned his child's work on the computer at home. If you have any problems installing and running K4K at home, please pop on over to the USN Lower School Webliographer to the Keyboarding topic, where there's a great link to the Ellsworth Publishing website page for "Troubleshooting." You'll be glad you did!

4th Grade--The Mesa Verde Mission at Quest Atlantis continues. This set of missions begins with a missing girl on a field trip. She's hiding from her classmates at the fantastic QA replication of the real life Mesa Verde National Park because she is of Hopi descent and she fears ridicule from her classmates about the primitive culture her ancestors enjoyed 800 years ago. One classmate in particular has been vocal about his low opinion of the "Puebloans," and a conversation with him turns up in the mission's trajectory. There's a detailed "scavenger hunt" which requires the quester to learn a great deal about the Puebloan's life style and culture, then a journey into the past is in the offing. This is a well designed, beautifully illustrated, thought-provoking experience and I'm happy to provide it to our children. More than that, I'm pleased to be learning with them as I pursue the Mesa Verde Mission myself!

Kindergarten--In Katie's Room, located online at the Thomson Online Courses "Growing with Technology" website, early learners get a gentle introduction to the "home row" keys on a computer keyboard. I demo the first activity at the projector-connected computer then I send the kids off to "break the codes" by typing on their keyboards with the correct fingers. There's more at the website, including activities about computer terminology and more, and we will be back.

2nd Grade--Virtual-swim.com is a fantastic website that is subtitled "Aquatic Animation for Analysis and Education" and which allows the user to look in virtual unlimited 3-dimensional ways at a whole host of swim strokes. Lisa Preston, chair of our Physical Education department and a stellar teacher, comes in to demonstrate this website for our second graders toward awakening a visualized understanding of the physical elements of the breaststroke. She's even concocted a little 3 question Google Survey the children can fill out during their lab session to demonstrate understanding of the concepts. Parents may want to visit the site with their children, and I guarantee the visit will be a learning experience.


1st Grade--1st Grade Math at Internet4Classrooms is rich and varied, and though we've found a few of the games' links lead to broken or dysfunctional websites, having 20 or so links to online interactive math practice and drill websites gathered together by topic (fractions, telling time, money and counting, etc.) in one place is very handy. This week the 1st graders visit the site after a brief demo and choose a topic to explore, after a brief demo. It's interesting that most of the children choose to go straight to the ones I've demonstrated, even though they have full reign to go to any of the dozens of games. These resources and those like them are available anywhere with an internet connection and a computer to make it, and options for online lifelong learning will only increase.

Second Week in March, Come On, Spring Break!

The Short Story:
3rd Graders work in Keyboarding4Kids.
4th Graders are re-entering Quest Atlantis!
Kindergarteners are enjoying an introduction to Stacker Blocks followed by Free Choice Options.
1st Graders revisit the Literacy section of the BBC Bitesize learning website to share a couple of the games before engaging in lab Free Choice.
2nd Graders share their favorites at BBC Bitesize Science full class before they turn to Free Choice Options.

The Long Story:
3rd Graders continue to work in Keyboarding4Kids. I had planned to report progress to their teachers last week but in light of the relatively little time they had to work last week due to the introduction of the Google4Google competition I moved that back a week. Teachers will get a comprehensive report to help them identify students who may need some additional motivation to work, and to identify them early on.
4th Graders are re-entering Quest Atlantis! After an hiatus generated by a couple missteps in online chat, we are re-entering with the goal of completing initial activities and then diving into the Mesa Verde Quest, a series of task performances with an underlying theme of cultural diversity. Here is an online slideshow to give you a taste of how rich this environment is, followed by a statement about the unit from the Teachers' section of the QA website:

Mesa Verde Overview: The Mesa Verde Unit provides students with an opportunity to travel back in time to learn more about the Ancestral Puebloan people who inhabited an area in the American southwest until about 800 years ago. Along the way, they'll learn about the characteristics of a civilization, features of the Ancestral Puebloan culture, and how to balance your cultural heritage with the need to fit in as a teen in today's society.

Students will visit the Spruce Tree House cliff dwelling at a virtual representation of Mesa Verde National Park to witness how this ancient society created their unique arts, beliefs, customs, and lifestyle amidst the harshest of conditions, and they will attempt to determine why these cliff dwellers suddenly left their beautiful stone city. Additionally, students will explore their own heritage and the artifacts that have shaped their OWN story, learning that we all contribute a chapter in the greater human experience.

Kindergarteners get an introduction to StackerBlocks, the wonderful freeware software program we have on all our lab computers. It's a Tetris-like game, with good customization options and I've used it in the lab for years. Spacial literacy skills are hard at play and predicting and manipulating the falling blocks is good practice for those neural muscles. After the introduction, kindergarteners may make their own Free Choice options and many do choose to begin working with Stacker Blocks 3D. It's available at the Webliographer in the Downloads section for download at home, too!

1st Graders get to share favorite BBC Bitesize Literacy games from last week before a quick reminder about Stackerblocks and Free Choice options. I blogged all about my "Free Choice" guidelines back in September (you can read that here).

2nd Graders share their own fave BBC Bitesize Science activities from last week's pair-off exploration, completing the jigsaw activity (where a large set of activities is distributed amongst the group for visiting and then the group reconvenes for sharing), then heads off to Free Choice.

With Kinder, 1, and 2, I am recording just what choices the children make during their Free Choice, and I plan to report the results next week in a spreadsheet created graph. I'll be explaining to the older children just how I came up with the graphs and how to interpret them!

Happy March!

The Short Story:
Everyone gets a short introduction to Doodle4Google. Entries are to be submitted no later than the end of school Friday, March 26. I'm telling the kids this year to doodle as much as they would like to, but please to only submit final versions they really really think can win the competition. See the winners from last year's Doodle4Google competition!
3rd Graders work in Keyboarding4Kids.
4th Graders may work on Scratch projects or on updating their blogs after visiting last week's posts about Scratch and editing/revising to make them more polished.
Kindergarteners visit the BBC's "Little Critters Activities Centre" for math and reading practice.
1st graders go to the Literacy Section of the BBC Bitesize learning website for all manner of practice with their interactivities.
2nd graders pair up to examine BBC Bitesize Science activities then demo them for the class at the projector.

The Long Story:
Everyone gets a short introduction to Doodle4Google. This huge annual competition nets the winning drawing $15,000 for their efforts, plus $25,000 more in grant funding for a computer lab at their school. LOTS more can be found at the official website. Entries are to be submitted no later than the end of school Friday, March 26. This year, as in past years, our K12 school may submit only 6 entries to the state competition, and I'll put together a panel of volunteer teachers to do the judging for our school. I love the theme this year: "If I could do anything, I would..." Reminder: This is an ENTIRELY optional competition. I tell the children that if they want to do a drawing they certainly may, but they should not submit it (to the basket on my desk) unless they really really feel it could win the national competition. At USN, we're not so much about the concept of competition, but if we look at this as analogous to a sports competition with a nice award for the winner, we're in a healthy mindset to compete on an artistic level.
3rd Graders work in Keyboarding4Kids. Remember that this too is optional (at least for homework). The kids know their login process, "usntigers," "usntigers, "their password" parents check your email for individual password help), and that they are to accomplish three good scores (20 wpm or better, 3 errors or fewer, and then move on to the next line or the next lesson. HOME ROW KEY is the only way to successfully do this work. If you notice your child typing out of that standard touch-typing position, please correct them immediately and monitor that they always work that way--I would rather them not do the program at all than to be doing it incorrectly!
4th Graders may work on Scratch projects or on updating their blogs after visiting last week's posts about Scratch and editing/revising to make them more polished. This gives them a chance to see how easy it is to revise a previously posted blog, and to read the approved comments I've shuttled through the approval process since they made their posts last week. We also discovered today that a digital template of the Google doodle outline can be imported to the Scratch painting platform and that can be used for its design. Fun!
Kindergarteners visit the BBC's "Little Critters Activities Centre" for math and reading practice. Little Critters does a good job of engaging the younger set in very simple "fill in the number sentence" practice with Count Hoot, and the three stories that can be read and clicked through are fun and attention-keeping. The mix of audio narration with the screen-displayed words and actions is hard to beat for immersing young ones in the world of reading and writing.
1st graders go to the Literacy Section of the BBC Bitesize learning website for all manner of practice with their interactivities. There are 9 wonderful activities at the site, and I can attest that they are engaging by the number of chuckles I hear coming from the headphone-outfitted 1st graders!

2nd graders pair up to examine BBC Bitesize Science activities then demo them for the class at the projector. I assign partners by proximity-paired seating and charge them to know the game well enough to explain to the class how it works. I also challenge them to use an outside voice when they explain, and it might take instructions for them to "get mad at me" before many 2nd graders' voices are loud enough to fill the room. By using this "jigsaw" process, all the games get to be explained and we will hopefully build some interest in revisiting BBC Bitesize Science!

Last Full Week of February

Where does the time go?

Here we are in the last week of February with only two weeks until Spring Break and there's much to do, much to do...

The Short Story:
3rd Graders continue Keyboarding for Kids
4th Graders perform a screengrabbing mashup in their kidblog using Scratch, the PrtScr button, and Microsoft Paint.
Kindergarteners visit PBS's Between the Lions website
1st Graders work on math skills at the BBC Bitesize Math site for their grade level
2nd Graders do the same at their grade level's Bitesize Math site, focusing on Shapes

And then of course, there's
The Long Story:
3rd Graders continue Keyboarding for Kids and I'm proud of the way many of them have waded into the program and are making real progress. "Mileage does vary," though, and as I anticipated many are still struggling into it, some likely developmentally unprepared for either the physical challenges, the regular practice, the understanding of the importance of this skill, or all three. My goal over the month of March is to improve the numbers in all three areas so that our 2010-2011 4th graders have a real jumpstart on their work.
4th Graders perform a screengrabbing mashup in their kidblog using Scratch, the PrtScr button, and Microsoft Paint. This activity is a good example of why a computer lab curriculum needs to be at least to some degree flexible. I came up with its design just yesterday, when I was helping a teacher learn how to do a "screengrab," basically taking a snapshot of a desktop window and creating an edited image of it for a website archive. We've neglected Scratch the past few weeks, concentrating on blogs and blogging, and I wanted to fuel the interest in that program, so 4th grade students

1. opened Scratch and found a project they'd either created or edited
2. screen-captured its display with the PrtScr key on their keyboard
3. opened Paint and edit/pasted their picture then(if needed) with the Select tool, then saved it as a .jpg file in the My Pictures folder
4. opened Firefox and clicked in the Webliographer to go to the USN4th Kidblogs
5. created a New Post and uploaded their screengrab into it, resizing as neccessary
6. wrote a few sentences about their selected project.

Wow. Here are two examples of the products in our password protected Kidblogs, more or less selected randomly:

and

Kindergarteners visit PBS's Between the Lions website where there are great, fun activities ranging from Movie Clips to Stories to Games, all geared to enhance kids' literacy skills. One of my basic intrinsic goals in my work is to expose children to fun ways to learn, to broaden their knowledge and appreciation of just how many ways there are to practice important skills, and to get them in shape to pursue their own means of life-long learning online. "Between the Lions" is one good source for that.

1st Graders work on math skills at the BBC Bitesize Math site for their grade level.

2nd Graders do the same at their grade level's Bitesize Math site, focusing on Shapes.

I may be Bitesize Math's newest big fan. This site holds a wealth of engaging content, and one screengrab of my own (from the 1st grade site) will give you an indication of just how many activities are available at each grade level.

The Middle of February

The Short Story:

3rd Grade--K4K

4th Grade--Math Options: TimezAttack, Multiflyer, and ArithmAttack

Kindergarten--Starfall-- Learn to Read

1st grade--Starfall-- It's Fun to Read

2nd grade--Funbrain.com's "Changemaker" and e-learningforkids.org's "Money"

The Long Story:

3rd Grade--Third graders continue their orientation to Keyboarding for Kids, the online-accessible touch-typing learning system we are using with them for the very first time this year. It is so important that they are typing through the lessons using "home row key position" so that they can learn to type without looking at their hands, so if your child is working on this at home (and quite a few, to my pleasant surprise, are!) please remind them to use that approach to typing! Finally, I have added the K4K Troubleshooting support page to the Webliographer for those who want their children to work on their typing but may be encountering difficulties connecting to it online.

4th Grade--We have used the computer lab so much this year for writing related work that it struck me that we need to be sure not to overlook some of the other benefits computers and online resources can bring to bear on our learning. Consequently, I offer our 4th graders three options this week (see above, The Short Story, for links). All three take an approach to learning with what is termed "skill and drill" technique--sort of a technology-enhanced flashcardKin approach, and it's been interesting to see the choices the students make. Predictably, the "ArithmAttack" activity is overlooked: It's a simple javascript flashcard interface with timer and a running count of correct answers and incorrect ones. The Multiflyer online activity can win half the students or more--a trip through the Solar System (including the space rock formerly known as the planet Pluto) with energy points earned by entering correct multiplication products. Edging Multiflyer out in most classes is TimezAttack, from BigBrainz.com, a "defeat the troll" 3D interface which has you, the little green alien, working your way through a dark dungeon encountering trolls you must defeat by clobbering them with your multiplication problem answers. The whole educational foundation of this game can be viewed at the BigBrainz website. While you're there, you may see that you can purchase a full version of this program for US$39.95. I want to emphasize that I do NOT recommend people purchase this (or any other program) for their home computers. In TimezAttack's case, the upgrade purchase provides several additional environments for practice of the same skills covered in the basic FREE version. If this is something your family decides is important, by all means, go for it.

Kindergarten--We visited Starfall a few weeks ago, and now I'm taking our Kinderkids back to "up the ante" to the next phase: Learn to Read. It's all part of my plan to get them interested in how to practice the skills their teachers are expecting them to gradually master as they get older, and practice them in a safe, interactive, fun, engaging way. I really like the way that many of Starfall.com's activities culminate in a printable product, but one that is printable in black and white (cost saving) and also usually includes something to be completed by the child in pencil on paper. Most kids either printed from the "Make Your Own Calendar" activity or the "All About Me" one.

1st Grade--Also working at Starfall again, but just like the Kindergarteners, they are moving up a level, and their new level is "It's Fun to Read." At Starfall, it is fun to read, and the reading contains everything from classic poems to brief information about famous painters. It's fun, it's engaging, and it's learning.

2nd Grade--Visited the 2nd Grade Go Here page from the Webliographer and worked out with Funbrain's Changemaker activity and with one of e-learningforkids.org's wonderful games geared to opensourcing online pre-K to adult learning. We'll be exploring e-learningforkids.org's site more often and soon.

Come on last week in February. We're almost ready for March!

February 8th through 12

The Short Story:
3rd Graders: Practice for touch-typing success with Keyboarding for Kids
4th Graders: Flex their blogging muscles at kidblog.org with comments
Kindergarteners and 1st Graders tidy up and finish their Valentine cards with Drawing for Children
2nd Graders: Are working at the A+Math "Money Flashcards" experience and then visiting U.S. Mint's official government site, H.I.P, Pocket Change

The Long Story:
3rd Graders have been set up for success at our online Keyboarding for Kids web interface. Unlike the 4th graders, 3rd graders are not required to work at their keyboarding daily, for homework. I still encourage them to practice, now and over the summer and to help them understand the importance of practicing correctly, I'm working with them in February to make progress in the computer lab. In that process, the kids will encounter the small nuances in the program that might frustrate them had they not had that supervised time in-lab. 3rd grade parents, if your child does have problems accessing the site at http://keyboardingonline.com, please let me know via email. I'll try to help. Copious online help is also available at the troubleshooting tips page at Ellsworth Publishing.

4th Graders continue to blog, toward beginning to understand the power of this medium. I will enable comments this week and hopefully we'll move past some of the issues we have previously encountered concerning using the platform at kidblog.org as more of a chat interface than a blogging one!

Kinderkids and 1st graders will finish and print their Valentines from a template they've liberally modified with their own creative approaches to Drawing for Children. Here's a slideshow of our work:



2nd Graders are working for 15 minutes with "how much is it?" money counting flashcards at A+Math and then visiting the wonderful games at the U.S. Mint's official government website. These games are perhaps a bit less flashy than some the children may have encountered online, but they are fun and challenging and some allow for partner play, such as the darts game, and all have some bit of learning built in. Practice with trajectory, acceleration, speed, and timing are all good things!

See you next week! We'll be off Monday for Presidents Day, so enjoy the long weekend with your families!

Last Week of January 2010

The Short Story:

The classes I was able to see this short week did...
3rd grade--searched images for printing and cutting out for posters for their Master Art Unit--copy and paste using Windows clipboard
4th grade--began blogging in a secure, closed platform called "kidblog.org"
Kindergarten--revisited Boowa and Kwala "Special Occasions" page with St. Valentine's Day activity
1st grade--watched a fabulous video about Ezra Jack Keats from YouTube and explored Keats resources on the Webliographer
2nd grade--visited 2ndGoHere! at the Webliographer to do word problems from Syvum.com

The Long Story:

3rd graders continue an internet search and MS Word copy-and-paste extravaganza as they collect images from the internet to print, cut out, and glue onto their posters for their Master Artist Unit report. This unit used to be my favorite when I had my own 3rd grade classroom, and the computer skills this project entails will stand them in good stead for the rest of their school experiences and beyond. Many of the 3rd graders finished their work and were able to login to Keyboarding for Kids, the online typing program that will get them up to speed quickly with regular attention to it. They're just beginning, and my goal with these students is to get them so interested in achieving progress that they will work as often from home as they possibly can.

4th graders embarked on a new adventure (I'm serving them up right and left this year) as they took to kidblog.org for an introduction to blogs and blogging. I'm working on a presentation for them at prezi.com that you can visit here. Check back because it's a work in progress as I tweak out details with the kids. At Kidblog, the students select their usernames and use an assigned password that follows a convention that is fairly easy to remember. With Kidblog, a teacher can set up the blog to be viewable only by students and teachers or make it viewable to anyone who registers for an account. The latter option can open up commenting to a broader audience, but at least at first, we're keeping it locked down. Any 4th grade student or teacher at USN can post, read, and comment at our blog, but no one else can see anything more than the subject lines. I only just discovered this ad-free, secure platform for our kids, and the possibilities are still just potentials, but check out this exchange:

Mr. Merrick's Blog:

Some people are loving it. Some are exploring it more deeply than others, and a few really don’t “get it” or see what it’s worth. I would love to hear your own opinions here. Remember to be appropriate and to use the spellchecker before posting. Don’t be telling me what you think I want to hear. Tell me what you really think and why!

What do you really think of Scratch?

Response from one student:

I like it a lot, but i wish it had better instructions. I had to work a while to make a decent project. They should have some more instructions for each little thing so you know how it works and how to use it and stuff. But scratch is really fun!

We will be continuing to explore blogging for several weeks. Talk to your child about the experience!

Kindergarteners are revisiting Boowa and Kwala and checking out the activities at the "St. Valentine's Day" page at Special Occasions. We'll not really be able to visit those as we get closer to Valentine's Day since we'll be making digital valentine cards with Drawing for Children. More later on that!

1st graders viewed a great video about Ezra Jack Keats at YouTube.com. Normally YouTube is blocked at school, more for the toll it takes on our bandwidth than for other issues it presents. I can override that blocking and did to view:

We also took some time to check out the Keats sites on the Webliographer. Ask your child to take you on a tour!

2nd graders visited 2ndGradeGoHere! at the Webliographer and did math word problem work at the website Syvum.com. We'll expand on this next week, offering a choice of word problem topics from a a substantial set of options, then emailing results to their teachers from the site.

February, here we come!

Week 3 of January, 2010

The Short Story:
3rd Grade--We're continuing with Keyboarding for Kids, the fantastic online touch-typing program from Ellsworth Publishing, and we're seeking out images for Master Artist reports.
4th Grade--We're continuing with Scratch projects and we'll be blogging about Scratch beginning next week
Kindergarten and 1st--We're doing free draw pictures with Drawing for Children.
2nd Grade--We're engaged in drawing and writing support for in-class story writing projects.

The Long Story:
3rd Grade--Third graders are using their 30 minutes of computer lab time to seek out a favorite image of their artist, then revising a template so that it contains the correct information for a printed cover for their upcoming Master Artist unit reports. This entails some basic Google search strategies: enclosing in quotes, spelling correctly, using the Google "Images" feature; as well a copying and pasting skills in conjunction with the concept of the Windows clipboard function. Graphics manipulation skills such as resizing and maintaining the relationship of height and width (aspect proportion) are called into play, as well as spelling and grammar (capital first and last name of both artist and self) without a great deal of preliminary setup. The template strategy allows fast and clean work; and when 3rd graders are finished and their document saved on the network, they are logging into Keyboarding for Kids. There's not much time to make progress, but the login practice is needed at this stage of the process.

4th Grade--We're still working in Scratch, saving completed projects on the network in the appropriate folder so that I can review and upload to the "USN Tigers Stuff" gallery at the Scratch Wiki. I've found a marvelous secure blogging solution at KidBlog.org and we'll go there next week to begin blogging by commenting on my own blog post, "What do you really think about Scratch?" Watch here for more on that initiative!

Kindergarten and 1st Grades--It's Free Draw time at Drawing for Children, the freeware graphics program that is our program of choice in the computer lab. I'm being selfish here: I want to upgrade the lab bulletin board from the November turkey drawings. Plus, giving students choice is important to the development of their own decision-making skills and allowing them to explore the potentials of D4C is essential to their understanding just how to explore software and online programs. It's all good, and watch for pics here soon.

2nd Grade--Second graders are approaching their story writing projects variously in different classrooms. Ms. Pitt chose to have her kids type up their stories from their hand-done storyboards, a procedure that will take a few class periods (since typing is still tentative at best in 2nd graders) but which I will facilitate as completely and as quickly as possible. Other classrooms are drawing illustrations for their stories, which we'll print out and they can use in their handwritten stories.

In a sidenote. I took a professional day Wednesday this week to attend a full-day professional development workshop at Vanderbilt University which featured Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's keynote address and a score of experts from Microsoft. Between you and me, much of the day flew over my head completely--I am more of an end-user kind of guy than a programmer, but I did get some exercise "liveblogging" and I won a nifty MS Visual Studio backpack at the end of the day raffle. I needed a new backpack, as my old Targus ebag is getting a bit frayed. If you want to check out my work during the morning, go visit scottmerrick.net and play the CoverItLive blog file!

January 11 Week, What Goes On?

The Short Story:

3rd Grade--Google Image Search for art class image and Keyboarding for Kids

4th Grade--Keyboarding for Kids and Scratch

Kindergarten--Starfall.com "ABC's" -- finishing final letter

1st Grade--Starfall.com "Learning to Read" -- finishing final units beginning with vowel blends

2nd Grade--"Winter in Six Words" for the Winter Wonderland Wiki --Drawing

for Children digit

al drawing

The Long Story:

3rd Grade--Google Image Search for art class image and Keyboarding for Kids. Our Keyboarding for Kids work took a back seat this week in computer lab as students searched for and printed full page versions of one representative piece of art from the artist they've chosen for their Master Artist Unit research topic. These will be laminated by the teacher and taken by the student to Mr. Douglas's art class, where he will proceed with his annual art reproduction project, teaching the kids to transfer/copy images to their own paper via the age-old method of gridding it out and copying grid by grid. We used the doubly safe-search Google search embedded in the Webliographer, illustrating the difference in search results that can be obtained by placing two words, such as an artist's name, in quotation marks as opposed to simply typing them. The quotation marked terms usually return significantly fewer, better targeted results, since you are asking Google to look for

those two words, together, in that particular order. We also navigated the school network 'way down into the folder structure, starting at My Computer and burrowing down to S:\LS\Classes\3 Third Grade\3rdART until we found alphabetized artists' images collected by 3rd graders over the years in this activity. It looks like most of the students were able to do all of this in a rather hectic 30 minute

session, and we'll get the few remaining students up to date by finding images in books, scanning, enlarging, and printing them.

4th Grade--Keyboarding for Kids continues, and we looked together at the Scratch Wiki,, a repository for a growing collection of student work, with its Projects and Galleries, including our own USNTigers Student Stuff one. Students are cautioned to create their own accounts only with their parents' permission and to follow the policy of the website publishers by reporting any content they see might be inappropriate. This is a common means of policing sites that might have tens of thousands of visitors and users per month, and with community compliance, it is quite effective. Still, visiting the site gives us a chance to discuss the concept of "appropriateness," and I encourage students to share work only to the "most appropriate common denominator," which is to say that what may be appropriate in some households may not be in others, and if they even think what they are posting may be offensive in any way, not to do it!

Give this project a look-see!

Kindergarten--Starfall.com "ABC's" -- finishing final letter: The K kids proceeded last week through Starfall ABC's to varying degrees of accomplishment. I remind them that the site is available anytime, anywhere, from any computer with internet access, and this week we all complete the final 10 letters of the alphabet, from Q to Z, to show those who didn't get as far along the variety and the fun of the activities for each letter at Starfall.com.

1st Grade--Starfall.com

"Learning to Read" -- finishing final units beginning with vowel blends: We took a similar approach here to last week's 1st grade beginnings in the more advanced section at Starfall.com. We all completed the final 5 unites, from blended vowels, "Vowel Teams," through "Y as Long E." The room got very quiet as kids worked through these, a sure indication of engagement.

2nd Grade--"Winter in Six Words" for the Winter Wonderland Wiki --Drawing for Children digital drawing: With the exception of Ms. Pitt's class, who were charged with beginning to type storyboarded stories in MS Word and began those quite successfully, 2nd graders finished their "Winter in Six Words" for the Winter Wonderland Wiki. Next week and the following one, I'll be doing voice recordings of their narration on a Voicethread to share with the world! Then we'll post that on the WWWiki.