Second Life

My second time in Second Life....

When we were meeting in second life for class I thought alright, a little strange but lets give it a try. I had been in second life once before so it was not completely new to me. The first time I figured out how to control my avatar and move around one section of second life. So it was time to log in for class, 4:30. I got logged in fine, could hear and speak with others in second life. It kinda reminded me of the game the Sims. I was ready to roll but then we had to solve minor issues.(I'm not blaming anyone) Any time you use a new technology for the first time there are glitches and it takes twice as long to try to complete what you thought you could get through. But it got me thinking-

Craig brought up the point that second life could be a place to meet as a group in a virtual world that is more interactive than a conference call. I could see how this is possible because the leader/professor could speak and play a presentation on the big screens. But I think there is a huge learning curve. We are the tech savvy people in our school and we were having trouble connecting and moving around. I could not imagine some of the teachers or students at my school being able to understand and follow what was going on in second life. I understand there is value of getting people together that normal would not be able to meet all together, but for an individual school I think that a lot more can be accomplished meeting in person. I just thought there were too many time that people were not paying attention to the conversations that were going on and following what the group was doing. I took us about 10 minutes just to move from one floor to another.

VARIOUS AREAS OF SECOND LIFE
So I was fine in second life when it was just the TIE class in the NLU building but when Craig told me to go check out another part of second life- I kind of got scared. I teleported myself from an address on a notecard and instantly started receiving IMs that I was not allow to be in their area with many obscene words. I was floating in what looked like the night sky and message were all popping up on my screen. I knew I was not in danger but I was scared and confused at what was going on. Without responding to any message, I found teleport message of where I had come from- clicked on that and was back in the safe space of NLU's building. Very interesting to say the least. Then I went into the NASA area and there was no one around, so I just explored what was around there.

Overall, I guess that point of meeting in Second Life was to experience the different worlds and another life. Which I did- but I felt like I could have done that on my own in 15 min rather than the hour and a half we were in second life. I felt like there was a lot of waiting for everyone to move as one and then waiting for everyone to respond. I think it would work out a lot better if everyone was knowledgeable and experienced in Second Life.

Evaluation of a Website

Teaching students that what they read is not always true, is a new concept to the classroom. When students used printed resources, such as textbooks and encyclopedias, these sources were reliable and students did not have to worry about incorrect information. But now that students are researching on the Internet they need to learn how to critically evaluate the source of their information. Anyone can create a website and put incorrect information on their site. Wikipedia is a very popular website that students use as a creditable site, and believe what they read. Students are unaware that Wikipedia is a wiki, which means that anyone can log in and change information on a page. Students should not be using Wikipedia as a primary source for research projects.

So how can we evaluate a website site to check its creditability?

Students need to look at who produced the websites and determine if it is an authentic website. “For students, the new tool means developing critical-thinking skills to evaluate endless reams of data, while resisting the distraction of Web ads and the temptation to plagiarize content from the Web” said Colhoun in an article But I Found It On The Web (http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0425/p16s1.html). To determine the creditability of a website many items need to reviewed, such as the authority, accuracy, objectivity, how recent it is and coverage. In today’s age of information evaluation skills need to be second nature when reading anything. "Training a kid to have a critical eye is very, very important," says Catherine Davis, a veteran teacher and managing editor for Yahooligans.com, an Internet directory for young adults” (http://www.csmonitor.com/2000/0425/p16s1.html).

Kathy Schrock Guide for Educators has many value resources to help teachers teach students the importance of critically evaluating a website.

http://school.discoveryeducation.com/schrockguide/eval.html

Google in the Classroom

Google Docs

Watch this video to see google docs in action.

This video shows how google docs can quickly be shared and changes in minutes with the use of multiple editors. (Though the content does not relate to school curriculum the concept does.)


In the classroom....
Use google docs to write a collaborative write along story. The teacher or a student can write the first paragraph of a story, then share it with another student who adds on the next paragraph, who shares it with another student- this process can continue through the entire class or just a specific group of students. By the end, the students will have a very interesting story. Another added bonus, when students are adding their own paragraphs they can also go back an edit what has already been written. Google keeps track of all the changes made to the document and who made the changes. This story is never completely finished it is always a working document that can be changed.

Google Forms

Google forms is a part of Google doc. When in Google docs, click on create new and then click on forms.

To the left is an screen shot of all the types of questions you can include in your form. Once you create the form, added participants email addresses and sent it off. Now all you have to do is wait for their response. Once participants complete the survey their responses are automatically summarized in a spreadsheet for easy analysis. You have skipped all the steps to input the data and can quickly see the results.

In the classroom...
In Math or Science students can create a project or experiment that they need to collect data for multiple people. For example as students begin to learn about graph they can collect data to figure out what students like, dislike and want to change about school lunches. With the information collected in Google Forms students can evaluate the spreadsheets and create their own graphs to present the data they gained in the survey.

Google Presentations

No more fusing with flashdrives, email attachments and formatting not showing up. Log onto your Google presentation from any computer with Internet access. Also as with Docs, presentations can have multiple editors for collaboration.


In the classroom...
For a Kindergarten or 1st grade classroom, they could create a collaborative presentation about the four seasons. The teacher divides the students into four groups, one for each season. Then each season is divided into two groups, one group creates a slide about activities that occur during that season and the other creates slides about how people dress during that particular season. To learn about the other seasons, students can present their slides to the class.

Google Sites

Google sites let you make websites that can be viewed by everyone or only the people you invite to the site. The owner of the site is also able to control who can edit the site and who can just view the site.


In the classroom...
Incorporate a daily scribe into your classroom. The scribe will write a summary of what happened during the day on the classroom Google sites page. Each day a different student will be able to post their opinions and observations about what is going on in the classroom. Parents can also be invited to see the page and read about what is happening in the classroom. You can also set it up so other students in the class who are not the scribes can respond to the daily posts. This summary of the day is an active way for students to reflect on the important topics that were discussed and will reinforce what they are learning.

Another idea for Google sites is to keep an ongoing glossary (could be specific to a subject or topic). If you create a science glossary students could add science words they feel are important words to remember. This should be a list of words that the students come up with, not a list of words assigned by the teacher. Let the students become responsible for their own learning. Challenge them to add words but do not give specific words for each student to add. Student can also add on to other students definitions. Within the definitions students can add images or links to help other students gain a deeper understand of the word.

Interview of students who are using Google Apps.

Quality of Webquest

When I began looking for webquests there were tons for every grade level and every subject. Some were very intriguing and sounded interesting, but after taking a closer look many did not stand up to the challenge of inquiry.

I created a rubric to evaluate the inquiry of webquests from my definition of inquiry- (An authentic task, that requires active questioning and higher order thinking skills to promote exploration and individualized learning). As I was evaluating the webquest many of them did not even earn half the points in my rubric. I found that the webquests for younger students did not involve any inquiry learning. For the younger grades, webquests were basic regurgitation with the use of websites instead of textbooks. The tasks they were asked to do were not authentic, and most importantly did not encourage students to use Bloom's higher order thinking skills. Out of ten webquest, only one came close to earning a perfect score.
I think that many teachers used webquests as a preplanned lesson so that students can be self-sufficient during classes. Or they think of using a webquest so they can say they used technology in their classroom. But many projects I saw used the computer and Internet as a glorified pencil and encyclopedia.

The webquest, Hero of the Year Stamp earned an 8 out of 12 on my rubric of inquiry. The basic concept was that students had to research and choose a hero they wanted to design a stamp about. Along with choosing how to represent the person, the students had to write a persuasive paragraph to the committee at the post office explaining why they should choose their stamp. They also had to include a timeline that showed important events in the hero’s life. I thought this webquest was engaging to students and had aspects that could be related to the real world. Students where given some freedom to decide who their hero was and how they best could represent that person on a stamp, while incorporating their creativity and applying their knowledge to make the stamp. But I also think some things could be changed to incorporate more inquiry. I think that the evaluation did not leave enough room for individualized learning. The students were all given the same task of creating a stamp but I think that the task could have been more open ended. Overall this was a very good webquest with many parts of inquiry.