Terry Smith's Blog (17)

For challenging global interactions for students in grades 4-8, check out the Landmark Games - signup beginning on Feb 1.

http://www.kidlink.org/drupal/project/landmark

The 2012 Monster Project is wrapping up! Participants from Taiwan, Myanmar, Russia, England, Canada, Illinois, Wisconsin, California, Massachusetts, North Carolina, Connecticut, New Jersey, Florida, Louisiana, and Maine are in the process of voting for this year's TOP Monster.  We had 43 monsters created around the world all based on a single blueprint created by all classrooms. 

This year was especially vibrant with many participants skyping and blogging between classrooms. There…

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Monster Project is rising up in full force again this Fall - www.smithclass.org/proj/Monsters

Preparing for the new year in teacher education at Western Illinois University.  Lots of excitement about iPad use as all faculty were given one. I'm looking to have my college kids (pre-service teachers) skype/facetime elementary classrooms and get authentic tips about using projects and technology in a time when all we hear is Common Core standards and testing.

It's almost that time of year again -- time for the most challenging academic game on the Internet!  Kidlink Landmark brings classes together in two categories of difficulty (Primary & Challenge) to play a competitive, riddling game using landmarks of the world as content. Past competitions have had between 60-80 teams participating from across the US, Czech Republic, Russia, France, Pakistan, China, Canada, Australia, England, and New Zealand.

 

Registration begins Feb…

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For those of you in colleges of education, how early do students begin to get actual classroom time? In year one, two? Is it a functioning role or a passive role? I am curious as to how others are doing it, thinking of changing to improve the experiences of teacher education candidates befroe they hit the real world.

For those of you who are teaching courses in teacher education programs, does your college or university have content providers for materials/books/software etc for math & science or do you gather your own content sources?

Also, does your college/university department seek to align to state objectives?

Terry Smith
www.smithclass.org

Kidlink 2009 at http://www.kidlink.org -- In the Challenge group and the Primary group, we have come to the end of three weeks of scouring the world for famous landmarks. Now it's time for the big list: naming the actual locations, the mystery answers to student-written clues. But the trick in questioning....all questions must be of the form answerable by Yes or No, which makes the detective work even more complicated. The crafting of the clues was step one of the mind challenge: staying with… Continue

At the conclusion of our collaborative writing project, the Top Ten Writers have been named to the Hall of Fame, chosen by their peers. 1001 Tales is a multi school project which started last year, created by Clay Burrell, an American literature teacher in Seoul, South Korea. It had a high school group and an elementary group. Clay from Korea, Jeff Dungan of the Dominican Republic, and myself from Hannibal, MO met in Skype and in about 40 minutes had our plan together for how we'd use… Continue

The tallying is about to begin - we are coming to the end of the 3-week Kidlink Landmark 2008 game. Kids from many different countries have been exchanging questions during the past 15 school days, narrowing questions, drill-down type questions, trying to decode the clues to find a specific landmark on the face of the Earth. Is it in Egypt? Does it have anything to do with a temple? Was it famous during the 1800's? and so forth. I'll compile the lists of… Continue

I’ve been using the word globalization and doing international kid

projects for a long time. It was just recently that the “realness” of

the so called flat world struck me — and my students. Benazir Bhutto

was killed in Pakistan - and the significance was enhanced because my

students and I had been engaged with a class from Karachi for the past

six months, Ms. Elahi’s grade 5. As we had shared details about

culture, videos, poetry, and worked together in the… Continue

It's been three exhausting sessions - and rewarding - we put together a podcast of "all about Hannibal, Missouri" incorporating explorers, Twain, the river, poets, and basic population/schools info. Gave kids a really involved way to really learn about their town. Lots of kid ideas incorporated as we improvised our way through it all making sure everyone had a part. Hope to tie all the pieces together by Monday. It's funny, right here in Hannibal, most of my kids are unaware of Samuel Clemens'… Continue

Well, the votes are in from around the world: Japan, Taiwan, England, Pakistan and a bunch of the continental United States. Bilbatauri Nussa Chauri (translates as Lady Monster with the Big Nostrils) has been chosen by all kid participants as this year's best monster name. Students ages 4-13 contributed descriptions and worked as classroom teams to sculpt the final product -- now we can all compare. Interesting - everyone had the same set of directions, so now over the next few days we'll see… Continue

OK - Pakistan signed up and I discovered that the teacher really likes doing digital video projects, so we're working on ways to incorporate a monster theme into kid-created videos with the Karachi kids - an offshoot of the main collaborative effort to build a friendly monster based on the descriptions of 20 or so elementary classrooms from around the globe - and be done by Halloween! Taiwan kids are emailing, Japanese kids sending drawings through the mail, even have a group of the "littlest… Continue

We're into the first real week of the Monsters Project and some new teachers have been attracted this year. I emphacize that this is a "starter" project for teachers wanting to get involved with global education. I am adding a wiki to to the project this year - it has been basically web-based in the past, that is, participants send me their contributions or links and I add them to the project web site. The wiki will be an experiment to see who wants to try it, to use it to add content and share… Continue

Etsuko from Fuchinobe Elementary in Sagamihara City, Japan sent the intro packet from her International Exchange Club and it arrived today. Her kids (5th and 6th graders) will begin exchanging photos, drawings, and cultural email with mine. Etsuko has been a great help in the past four years. She speaks English very well and helps teachers in Japan connect with English speaking groups, such as our Monster Project. Fuchinobe has been in the… Continue

Midwestern temperatures are finally beginning to fall, making life a little more bearable for kids in our, old un-airconditioned building in Hannibal, Missouri. I just started this year's group of kid bloggers in Classblogmeister, and already the delight is evident in their eyes. They want to write in their blogs and I'm happy to see it, to take this attraction and use it to help them hone their communication skills, blend… Continue