Sunday, December 13, 2015

Using 'Board Builder' to Discuss Winter Holidays

Discovery Education has a great tool called Board Builder where multiple media files and text can be compiled together for a specific topic. I created a board that introduces three winter holidays: Christmas, Hanukkah, and Kwanzaa. I included a video and definition for each holiday as well as an end-of-activity quiz.  Check out the board at:

Winter Holidays

Note regarding quiz: If I had a class to assign the board to...a student would be given one question at a time, in random order, and they would know right away if they had answered correctly or incorrectly

If my school had a subscription to Discovery Education I could ask my students to create their own Board Builder projects. I might ask them to compare and contrast different countries' holidays, cuisine, or children's games. They would be tasked with finding videos and images, publishing their own writing, and creating a quiz on the material presented.

Howard Gardner (2006) states that, "the respectful mind notes and welcomes differences between human individuals and human groups...[and] the ethical mind ponders...the needs and desires of the society in which one lives" (chapter one). These projects could be great discussion starters for the class, and even act as foreign diplomats. Students would be learning about multiple countries, cultures, and religions through research and writing, and they would have a chance to stand in others' shoes when compiling an original quiz. Learning about other societies could springboard a better understanding of their own country and cultural traditions. This would be a great activity to develop their respectful and ethical minds.

References:
Gardner, H. (2006). Five minds for the future. [Kindle version].


Five Minds

I had a lot of fun using PowToon, but I'm having difficulty embedding my video into Blogger. You can still check out my thoughts here: Five Minds

Saturday, December 12, 2015

Collaboration and Respect Online

Pixton is a comic-making site where I can task students with creating their own comics or even group them together to collaborate on a comic project. In the past I've used it for...

- social studies unit on Olympics
- science unit on animals and habitats
- grammar lesson on verbs
- math lesson using UPSL format - Understand, Plan, Solve, Look back and explain
- and of course...free writing time

Once I've approved a comic it's available for all my students to view in the gallery. They can browse their peers' comics, rate them and leave comments. We talk about the importance of being respectful and "filling buckets" online.