Week 2 - Day 5

Friday we did a little bit of review as well as add a couple of new things. First we talked about the learning projects they were assigned to think about and complete this week. We have given them a few examples so far and also had the teachers try to complete some for themselves. Now, we thought it was important that they think of projects which they could use for their classes.

The teachers had come up with some good ideas, but we’re still expanding the box and not quite outside of it. For instance, One teacher wrote a mathematic word problem in Write – we suggested that she see if it the kids could draw the problem/solution in paint. Another project worked with Write and asked kids to match up various parts of the body to their function – ear to listen, eyes to see. This is an idea that they might not normally have written materials like worksheets to complete, but would also function better in Memorize as an interactive game. This could also include the kids taking photos of their ears, eyes, nose, etc., copying the photo into memorize, and then matching the photos to their functions. For examples like this, we worked with teachers to see what other activities they could incorporate into their project and tried to make the project as interactive as possible.

After the discussion, we showed them the blog we had created for their articles. Blogspot isn’t the ideal format, but there are better options on the way. Still, the teachers we excited to see their stories and pictures on the internet, and that a few people from other countries had already commented on them. They immediately asked if it were possible for every class to have a blog and how they could go about posting and updating it more regularly – that’s the enthusiasm we like to see.

From there, we moved on to a small project of our own. We had already planned to work with Write that day since the idea of write was clear, but some of the functions still needed explaining. We asked the teachers to start by writing a title on the top of the page. They then passed their computers around the room, each person adding another sentence and redirecting the story. This took a little longer than expected since many of the teachers haven’t ever done a project like this. They were confused as to how they were supposed to write a story if they didn’t know how it ended. Eventually, we got the process figured out and the stories completed.

When they got their story back, we wanted to follow up from a filler-activity we did on Thursday. We had written a few questions on the board and asked them to identify the ‘keywords’ present to help them to utilize search better. Today, they were supposed to identify a keyword or theme in their story and then find a picture on the internet to compliment that. After they found the picture, they needed to import it into the Write activity. This all went pretty well but took a little longer than we expected due to the extended explanation at the beginning. We worked on editing and formatting for a little bit, but then it was time for the class to be done.

Monday, we start student training in the afternoon. We think that the students will pick it up quickly, but dealing with 50 students in the hot afternoon will be a bit different than 10 teachers in the morning.