Raising Chickens and Blogging with Kindergaten

Recently I was able to work with one of our kindergarten teachers on a project. Each of our kindergarten classes were raising chicks from eggs to hatching. I had never been apart of something like this. What an experience it was. One of the teachers came to me with an idea about making this more real world for her students and wanting to incorporate technology into this process in some way. We met to collaborate and I am quite proud of what resulted from that meeting. Once the incubator was set up and the eggs were placed inside, then the real fun began. There were tons of great classroom activities done by the teacher to make this a more authentic experience for the students. One day she had a local farmer come in to talk with the class about caring for the chicks and what to expect. This spiraled into a conversation about why chicks are different colors. Do you know why?

On the first day the teacher read the book "Are You My Mother?" by P.D.Eastman. From there the students were asked to create an illustration of the incubator and the eggs inside. The next step had the students learning about KidBlog.org and learning the steps to sign in to their blog.

After we logged in to KidBlog on our iPads, we had each student write one sentence about what they learned today. This was the most time consuming, as we had expected, since they had to type out their sentences. The students then used the camera feature within the KidBlog app to take a picture of their illustration and insert it into their post. And just like that we had 21 kindergartners, and a teacher, all sharing their experiences with the world.

Mrs. O'Neil's KidBlog

In the beginning of this project the teacher had wanted to class and community to be able to watch this process after school as well. Our tech department was able to pull together a web cam and laptop for us to use. We decided to use Ustream to broadcast this event throughout the week and weekends. I am so glad we had done this. The chicks began to hatch on a Friday afternoon, the classroom teacher took the chicks home with her, and the students watched throughout the weekend as they continued to hatch. 

Before the chicks hatched we were able to connect with a few different classes and teachers doing this same project. We joined a Wiki and were able to connect with one class in Illinois via Skype. 

21st Century Pen Pals

A few weeks ago I came across a post on Skype in the Classroom from a class of 2nd graders in Delta, British Columbia looking to connect with a class. The teachers in this classroom were looking for a way to motivate their struggling, or resistant, writers. I thought this was an amazing idea and shared the idea with some colleagues. Fortunately a co-worker also thought this was a great idea and it would fit well with what was going on in her classroom. So our journey began.

The four of were able to collaborate via Google Hangouts and were able to iron out most of the details. We had decided each student would read a piece of writing to another student on the other end, really the entire class, and that student would then respond to the writing. Jann Kwasnicki  developed a Feedback Script for the students to use and allow them to take notes before they provided their feedback.

Christina and Erin, the two classroom teachers, were able to collaborate via a Google Doc. This also allowed for us to pass some notes back and forth about what was working well and not so well. As well as any upcoming changes that needed to be made.

Each student was so proud to share their writing. The feedback received was well thought out. In addition to  the writing project, the students definitely learned a bit about social skills as well. Overall I think it was an incredible experiences for our students....and the teachers as well. If you want to check out our work we created a hashtag to use throughout the experiences as well #BCtoCT.