Last night I was reading my PLN's tweets and after a rabbit trail of clicks I stumbled upon a school in Hong Kong tech page. I am always on the hunt for new technology resources and ways to effectively integrate it into learning and being the technology integration specialists I've been looking for an easy to use method of sharing. In walks Symbaloo. It's basically a bookmarking system, but it is aesthetically pleasing and can be categorized. My Type A personality was in love at first click. I then spent hours creating a webmix to share with my colleagues. I hope they like it and use it. It has different resources for collaborating, publishing, assessing, class discussion, researching, and favorites for sites teachers use on a daily basis. I'm thinking of taking the teaching part of this one out and sharing it with my students as well. Without further ado...
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On Thursday we had our first Mystery Skype of the year with a class we will work with on the Global Read Aloud. On Tuesday I assigned the students their roles and we went over all the responsibilities, the set up, rules and goals for the Mystery Skype. The kiddos were so excited, I forgot how much students love this activity.
Eager and excited students entered the classroom of 5A on Thursday morning and had a hard time focusing during our Morning Meeting and Readers Workshop time. Pretty soon it was time to set up and we were all ready. As soon as the call came in something that had never happened in the 15 Mystery Skypes I have done happened. One of my students used his critical thinking and search skills. He saw the teacher's name on the Skype call and quickly Googled her name. Within a matter of seconds he had her school and class website pulled up. I was facing a dilemma, what he did was awesome and was the fastest way to find the answer, however it wasn't within the parameters of the game we had discussed. I pulled him aside and explained just that, within this "game" it wasn't fair, but it was good search skills. He then worked with the old school atlas and globe to help his group, the think tank, for the remaining time. I probably made the wrong decision, but I didn't want him to ruin the game for a classmate or the other class. It's four days after and I still feel bad about banishing him to the atlas and globe for doing something that no one else thought of. We did have a class discussion after to reflect and we talked about how what he did was very clever, but didn't fit with our purpose and goal of the game--to use our critical thinking, collaborate, and solve the problem using the other class' clues. What would you have done? |
AuthorMrs. K has been teaching for eight years. She has taught in three different countries and loves each one for its uniqueness. Archives
October 2014
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