Tag: education

The Zimmer Twins

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What it is: Who are the Zimmer Twins, you might ask?  Edgar and Eva Zimmer are 12 year old twins who appear normal but have developed psychic powers.  Strange things began to happen when the twins adopted a black cat named 13.  On the Zimmer Twins website, students can create their own cartoon movie endings to a story starter or create their own animated movie from scratch.  Students can create and edit movies solo or “Collab-o-write” and work together creating a collaborative movie.   Zimmer Twins runs well in Firefox, Internet Explorer, and Safari making it easy to get to and use in any classroom setting.  You will need Flash 8 (or higher) installed for the Zimmer Twins to work properly.  

How to integrate Zimmer Twins into the classroom: Your students are going to love this site!  They can direct and produce their very own animated movies.  The easiest way to start using Zimmer Twins in the classroom, is to use it as a story starter.  Students can watch a “starter” video and finish the story however they would like.  The first time you introduce the site, it might be fun to complete a video as a class.  Then students can take over and create their own ending to a Zimmer Twins movie.  These video clips make excellent story starters for journal writing even if you can’t take the time to make it into an actual video.  To use as a story starter, show the beginning of the short animation to your students on an interactive whiteboard or projector, then let students take over on classroom computers, working together, or writing a journal entry.  After your students are familiar with the Zimmer Twins website, they can start a story from scratch.  Students could direct “screen plays” of their writing, as a way to publish their finished work.  Zimmer Twins would make an excellent alternative to the traditional book report.  Students could create a movie where the main character is being interviewed, the story is being summarized, or retold.  Students could also create movies about historical events, describing a science experiment or concept, in math as a story problem, to demonstrate understanding of character education or for vocabulary practice.  My students have really enjoyed creating movies to show what they have learned on any topic, it is always a sure winner!  Are you looking for new ways to engage your students? Why not create a Zimmer Twins original yourself to introduce a new topic.  If you are looking for more great ideas for using Zimmer Twins in your classroom, be sure to check out the lesson plans on the teacher page, there are some good ones.

Tips: Students can create a movie on Zimmer Twins without registering; however, they will not be able to save their creation.  Creating an account requires an email address.  If this presents a problem in your classroom you can do a few things: 1. create a classroom account that every student logs into and saves their videos on.  Students will need to include their first name or a class number in the title of their video to differentiate it from others in the class.  2. Set up an account for each student using your email account.  You will have to check this email account to provide your students with their passwords. 3. Ask parents to set up accounts for their kids to use at school.

Please leave a comment and share how you are using Zimmer Twins in your classroom.

Webspiration Wednesday: Stuart Brown says play is more fun

Kelly Tenkely4 Comments on Webspiration Wednesday: Stuart Brown says play is more fun3595 views

A few weeks ago, I instituted Webspiration Wednesday at CHC.  To find out what exactly Webspiration Wednesday is, check out my original post here.

Continuing the play theme from last week’s Webspiration Wednesday, this is Stuart Brown’s take on the importance of play.

TED Talk “Stuart Brown says play is more fun”

Stuart Brown suggests that play is much more than just being a fun and joyful experience, it is intricately connected with intelligence.  So, why then, do we feel the need to strip it from education?  If play is such an important piece of learning and intelligence, then we should be taking every opportunity to connect learning with play.  Students should enter our classrooms every day, not with a sense of dread, but with a sense of adventure and excitement at what acts of play will happen there.  Play doesn’t have to stop in the early childhood classroom, play can, and should, continue into adulthood.  As Stuart rightly points out, play is necessary at every point in our lives.  It offers opportunities to experiment, and grow, and find new solutions.  Companies like Google and Pixar are keying into the necessity of play and if the work that comes out of those companies is any indication, play works.

How do you introduce opportunities for play into your classroom?  If you have a great story of play, I would love to post it on my other blog, Stories of Learning.

Webspiration Wednesday

Kelly Tenkely8 Comments on Webspiration Wednesday2991 views

Last week, I instituted Webspiration Wednesday at CHC.  To find out what exactly Webspiration Wednesday is, check out my original post here.

Today we gathered over a TED Talk by Tim Brown on Creativity and Play.

Tim reminded me of something very important, there comes a point in schooling where we begin discouraging play.  We ask students to sit in their seats, to fill in the circles completely with a number two pencil, and to stay on task.  There is very little time in schools for play.  I think that by making schools void of play, we harm our students.  There is a lot of important learning that happens during play and discovery.

In the video, Tim shows some pictures inside some major design firms (Pixar and Google).  At the beginning of the year, I asked students to describe what their dream school would look like.  I was very sad to learn that most of them couldn’t conceive of a school that looked different.  In our first brainstorming session, most of them talked about having more recess or a longer lunch and that was the extent of their wishes.  I really tried to impress on them that their school could look and be structured any way they wanted.  I was met with blank stares and confused looks.  The problem in the first brainstorming session was that students were doing what they do all day long in school.  They were trying to guess what I was thinking.  They wanted to give me the right answer.  But in this instance, there wasn’t a right answer, every answer was right.  I showed my students pictures of Googleplex and Pixar and explained that there was a lot of work and creativity that came out of both companies.  What they saw was a playland.  Nearly all of my students declared that they would work at Google or Pixar when they got out of school.  One of my students asked if I would help her write a resume so that Google would have it on file when she was ready to work there (she is 9).  We brainstormed a dream school again.  This time the students understood that there wasn’t a right answer, that the sky was the limit.  Few of them included desks in their dream school, nearly all of them included animals of some kind, and most of them wanted slides and piano stairs to get from one floor to another.  We collaborated on Wallwisher and dreamed together.  At the beginning of the project, I told the kids the school could look like, and operate, any way that they wanted, but there were two restrictions: 1. it had to be a place of learning, and 2. they had to justify why they included everything in their school.  Most of them cited an increase in creativity and innovation (we learned that word as we looked at pictures of Googleplex).   One of my students wanted  a huge cylinder tropical fish tank in the lobby with clear pipes branching out and winding around the school and through the classroom.  She thought the fish would be interesting to study and an inspiration for learning.  Another student wished for swing chairs hanging from the ceiling so that they could move while they learned.  Several kids wanted dogs in the school that they could read to because, “dogs won’t make fun of you when you make a mistake reading out loud.”  Once the students felt comfortable with not having one right answer, they let their imaginations run wild and came up with excellent ideas and suggestions.

We need to help kids understand that there usually isn’t only one right answer.  They have been so primed to believe that every problem has one correct answer because we overload them with tests and worksheets that tell them that it is so.  We squash creativity.  Pretty soon they become adults who don’t know how to play and as a result, aren’t creative.  How do you encourage creativity and outside the box thinking in your classroom?

Stories of Learning: Story #2

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Megan Palevich (@mrspal) was nice enough to share a Story of Learning with me yesterday.  Her story is entitled “To Kill a Mockingbird Meets the 21st Century”.  This is learning her students will remember for years to come.  I have a feeling that they will always have a special place in their hearts for the characters that they met on this social networking journey.  Thank you for sharing with me Megan!

Read the story here.

Megan has an excellent blog called Middle School 101, a great addition to your RSS reader!

Why Drill and Skill are Necessary in Education

Kelly Tenkely35 Comments on Why Drill and Skill are Necessary in Education13873 views

I am a very creative person.  I love discovering, thinking, designing, and having a finished product to show.  I learn this way. Before I can create to demonstrate knowledge, I need to build a good foundational understanding.  Lately I have notice that “drill and skill” are getting a bad reputation in the education community.  Drill and skill games are sometimes seen as a waste of time, a memorization of unnecessary facts, or a lesser use of computer time.  I believe that drill and skill has an important place in education, particularly in the primary years where basics of learning are built.  These activities give students an opportunity to practice a skill and become familiar with it before creating with it.  Drill and skill games and activities give students room to find patterns and build understanding.  Consider a lesson on homophones, we could just ask students to create illustrations of each word using a program like Tux Paint and upload them to a presentation or class wiki.  But without some drill and skill practice, students may not have solidified their understanding of the concept.  They will most likely complete the assignment, but because they haven’t practiced the skill first, they haven’t had adequate time or interaction with the concept to recognize patterns and make connections.  If we begin with some drill and skill, students create with a more solid base of understanding that can then be built upon.  We offer the student the light-bulb moment when they start to recognize patterns or connections in content.    The mistake that is often made in education is the belaboring of drill and skill.  We burn students out with the constant fact practice, never giving the chance to actually do something meaningful with those patterns they have discovered in learning.  I am finding that, as in everything in life, learning requires a balance.  Don’t completely cut drill and skill from your classroom and don’t go overboard with it.  Give students an opportunity to practice the skills that they are learning, and then allow them to do something with them.

iLearn ezine debut

Kelly Tenkely1 Comment on iLearn ezine debut2496 views

Well, I had planned to have this issue of iLearn completed months ago….better late than never!  This issue has articles about 21st century literacy, iPods in education, technology lesson plans, 100+ of the best FREE educational apps for the iPod, and tips for managing a computer lab.

SM@RT Education Technology Services Inc. Education 1 to 1

Kelly Tenkely5 Comments on SM@RT Education Technology Services Inc. Education 1 to 116451 views

What it is:  Today I was truly inspired by a fellow blogger.  Mike Summers is relatively new to the educational blogging scene and even relatively new to the education scene, but as I read his posts I was inspired for change.  Mike has written 23 posts and after I read his first three I couldn’t help but spend the next hour (and every 5 min. break between classes) to read all 23.  As I read the posts on his blog, SM@RT Education Technology Services Inc. Education 1 to 1,  I kept saying aloud, “exactly! This is right on with what I have been thinking, this is what keeps me up at night.”  After getting through about half of the posts it was time for lunch, I joined my colleagues in the teachers lounge and reiterated what I  had been reading.  It started an amazing discussion with those who were present.  When I finished reading I was ready to take on the world.  If there are so many like-minded educators and people who are passionate about education succeeding, why are we stuck in the rut we are in?

How to integrate Education 1 to 1 into the classroom:  This is a blog that you should take the time to read and respond to.  I am passionate about technology and technology integration in the classroom, but I know that putting the best technology in the world into the classroom is not going to change education.  Education needs to change on a foundational level.  We need to transform the way we are teaching from the 3 R’s  “RAM, Remember, Regurgitate” and teach our students how to think critically, creatively, and collaboratively.  We need students who are problem solvers.  Technology is always going to feel forced in the traditional classroom because it invites students to create, solve problems, and work together.  In the traditional classroom technology acts as a replacement for a chalk board but does essentially the same old thing.  It may be  more visually appealing but it is not transforming our students.  (More of this in my next issue of iLearn ezine…taking longer to complete than expected!)  Read Mike’s blog, it will inspire you, it will change the way you approach technology, your students, and your classroom.  Next, start a conversation with other educators.  There has got to be a way that we can change education and shape it into something that we can be proud of.  Something that will benefit our students and make them better human beings.  Isn’t that why we entered education in the first place?

 

Tips:  I would love to hear from those of you who read Mike’s blog, what do you think, did it start conversations?   

 

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using Education 1 to 1  in your classroom.