That's my poor attempt at a word blend for Bloom and Google. Here's why. I am working with my team to become a sort of school within a school. We want our team to move ahead when it comes to technology integration. I came across this great blog post by Richard Byrne (@rmbyrne) on his blog Free Technology for Teachers. By the way, this is an incredible site for resources! He is actually sharing the work of another amazing blogger and tech-leader, Kathy Schrock.
Anyway, back to Bloogle. As my team is figuring out how to best integrate technology in order to create the optimal learning experience for our students, we are finding ourselves stuck between an overwhelming number of resources and trying to figure out how to use those resources most effectively. In trying to incorporate technology, we don't want to lose sight of learning objectives, standards, and anchors because--well, let's be honest--the kids must do well on the test! I hate admitting that.
I take a lot of time to teach my students Bloom's levels of understanding. I challenge them to take their own learning and understanding to the next level...and they do! Yet I also tend to overwhelm them with technology tools. I try to show them Web2.0 possibilities, but it gets lost when we jump from program to program to achieve different outcomes. They are overwhelmed by passwords and account creation...in fact, that takes up a great deal of our class time.
I am a big fan of Google and believe that they are leading the way when it comes to integrating tools and content. I am excited to say that my school finally took the jump to allow each student a Google account! now, we can use these great programs with them. One user name, one password. Consistency!
She has created a resource where you can see which Google tools support different levels of Bloom's Taxonomy. I especially love that each icon is a button that takes you directly to the program! Very useful. This is something I would share with the teachers on my team, but also with my students. In fact, we just had a discussion this morning about how we do not want to use technology to deliver information, but let the kids use the technology to demonstrate their learning to us...duh. As if this is new. We just want to keep reminding ourselves.
I'm not sure if I have mentioned this, but we recently rewrote the social studies curriculum. I was teaching the Middle Ages around the world. Even I had trouble seeing the relevence and worth of this content in the 21st century classroom. My new course is Global Awareness. We look at world issues, follow current events, and use technology to make global connections. People worried that 7th grade might be too young for this type of curriculum, but I think it's a perfect age. They are open-minded, interested, and inquisitive! Plus, our department wanted to test a sort of backwards approach theory. In 7th grade, students will learn where we are currently and generate an interest in social issues, culture, and geography. Then, studnets might be interested in learning the history of how we got here and what came before us.
This is my first year teaching this course and so far I think it's going very well! Students are going home and talking about real issues. They are asking questions that matter and debating topics that impact them directly.
I am excited about all of the great resources out there that help to support my textbook-less classroom. Thank goodness I hopped on the Twitter bandwagon when I did. You can check out our Links page for all of our great finds. Well, mine anyway. Ian has yet to link up.
Here is one that I found via Twitter yesterday. I can talk to the kids all day about the state of affairs in different countries, but numbers don't mean much unless that have something to compare them to. IfItWereMyHome.com is a great website that does just that.
If you choose one of the countries from the tag cloud on the bottom of the page, it creates a map that overlays an image of that country on top of the U.S. to give an idea of the realtive size. Then, there is a list of comparisons that relates infant mortality rates and income per capita, but it kid-friendly language. For example, If you lived in Burma instead of the United States, you would make 93.76% less money. By the way, I never realized how big Burma was!
We'll be using this in class to make comparisons to different countries as they come up in discussion. I have also been working closely with the math teacher on my team (new to Twitter, @JohnMVenner) who has been creating infographics with students to represent country data. This will bea great resource for us to share as we work to make our 7thgraders more aware and empathetic of the way people live around the world.
I was recently looking for something just like this! I love the way it is so easy to navigate and how the color coding offers a quick glimpse of the chain of events in each country. Also, I am a keep it simple kind of girl. When you hover your cursor over each event on the timeline, a short summary of events pops up in the upper left country. Even better, they give you a link to more complete article. I showed this to my students and they loved it! Definitely check it out.
Update: Today we started the research activity as part of our World Water Day unit. The kids were really interested in the articles provided by water.org.
Today is World Water Day! You can visit water.org for excellent resources. They also have great videos to share with students. Here is one that I will be showing....
On this day, we like to not only teach our students about the global water crisis, but also about solutions. On a local level, we use this time to teach safe and conservative water habits. I am so lucky to work with a team of people who are always enthusiastic about interdisciplinary projects! Here is what we did this year to celebrate World Water Day.
Thursday, March 17
I introduced World Water Day to my social studies classes through an apple demonstration and a water commons simulation. I also wrote on the board, "we all live downstream." This was our essential question of the day. We opened up with this and then kept coming back to it after each activity.
For the apple demonstration, I brought the largest apple I could to each class and told the students it represented Earth. I asked them how much of the Earth is water, to which they quickly replied "75%!" So I cut away 1/4 of the apple and told them it represented the land on our planet. I picked up the other 3/4 and told them that it represented the water. We agreed it looked like a lot of water so we started to discuss how there could possibly be a water crisis? I cut a tiny sliver of the apple and told them that it represented the freshwater on our planet, 3%. Then, I cut 1/3 of that away. I asked why we couldn't drink it. 1/3 of our freshwater is locked up in glaciers and ice caps. Then I cut the remains 2/3 in half. I asked why we couldn't drink one half of what remained. The students promptly replied: pollution (we discussed what kinds of pollution exist), access, political boundaries, fear of attacks, etc. It was a great discussion and got us ready for the next few days. We also got to eat the sliced up apples! ...any excuse to give healthy food to students!
After the demo, I followed up with this water commons lab.
After lab, we discussed, again, what it means to say that "we all live downstream." I think the message really began to sink in. All the pieces were in place for World Water Day.
Friday, March 18
Again, I can't thank my team enough for jumping on board. Our science teacher gave all of the students a weekend task. They had to track their water usage for one weekend. She found this great handout in a Google Doc. We only used the tracking sheet for our purposes.
Tuesday, March 22 - WORLD WATER DAY!
During 3rd period, all of our classes did the same thing. We all looked at the data that the students collected over the weekend and also looked at some of the curriculum resources from water.org and held whole-class discussions. We mostly discussed some of the facts provided by water.org and watched the video above.
The afternoon was the best! Each teacher had a team of about 20 students and each team had their own color to help with team unity. First, we read and discussed "Women Bear the Weight of Water" which we used from water.org. It can be found on page 8 of the following curriculum resource.
After discussion and some team building, we headed outside. We started off with water relays. Teams of 10 had to pass off gallon jugs of water, on their heads! Then, we had an endurance competition. 10 representatives from each team had to walk as many laps as they could carrying a one gallon jug of water, of course, on their heads. It was great! The kids had fun coming up with cheers and making posters. We gave them all team colors to help their team spirit. In the end we had a reflection worksheet and follow-up discussion. This really was a fun way to let the kids get a glimpse at what life is like for people who have to travel far distances to get water for their families. Also, it was great for morale!
Wednesday, March 23 & Thursday, March 24 - Follow-Up
Math and social studies are taking the reigns from here. In math, the students are doing a few things. They are looking at real water bills and learning how to decipher them and determine water usage. Also, they are using GapMinder to find the water usage for other countries. They will use this data to create an infographic where the area of a country's circle will represent the water usage for that country.
In my social studies classes, students will be grouped to research the water crises in India, Kenya, Honduras, Ethiopia, and Bangladesh. This was also borrowed from water.org, excpet slightly modified to fit my needs. They have great information on these five countries, short enough for quick research but thorough enough to really impress the point that people do not have equal access to safe drinking water. You can find the lesson on page 4 of this curriculum resource, again, from water.org.
We had a great day today and I am really looking forward to seeing the student's infographics and mini-presentations. Hopefully you can use some of these ideas in your own classroom. Happy to share...afterall, this lesson wouldn't have been possible without others' willingness to share!
Are you as excited as Ian is?!? So...only four years into teaching, we have accumulated quite an archive of resources. Each night, we read other people's blogs and benefit from what they have to share. After he and I went to TEDxNYED (amazing experience by the way!), we decided it was our turn to share. Here is our best attempt at blogging about what we find and how we fix it to make it our own.
Goal: to blog about one new find and/or fix each day! Ambitious? Yes. Possible? Totally.
