Last year, I was pleased with the success of the web design unit I did with my fourth and fifth graders, but I wanted to find a way to bridge the gap between me teaching them a tag, and them successfully using it, especially early on in the unit before they “got” it.
One thing I tried was to insist that they split their screen. On one half was their Notepad document where they were coding their page, and on the other side was WebMonkey so they could be looking at the lesson, referring to the codes. For some there came an “Aha!” moment and then they took off, looking at codes, trying them out, tweaking them. They had learned to learn and I was thrilled to have launched them down that road.
For others, I felt like I was just outside of the Zone of Proximal Development. There would be momentary glimmers, but not enough spark for it to catch. The HTML was too abstract for them.
This year, I have a Promethean interactive whiteboard in my lab. I felt I was under-utilizing it until this unit began. Now it has become essential. Right from the first day, I used it to help the kids start being aware of file extensions, since this is the first time some of them had to type them in.
I created a simple matching exercise with the extensions on one side, and the file type on the other. When they paired the file type with its extension, the white hidden text appeared “magically” in the black box where the extensions were. The kids named this “the X-ray thing!” and keep asking for more such activities. As important as their enthusiasm for this type of activity is its effectiveness. I taught the same concept last year, but it didn’t stick. This year, after that one brief activity, when I say. “File extension, remember, the file’s last name?” I get instant nods and looks of recognition, and if someone is adding a photo to their web page and it isn’t working, I can say, “Did you remember to add the extension to the file name?” and instead of a blank stare, they’ll glance at the screen and say, “Oh! That’s the problem.”
Next, I introduced the concept of tags and taught them the four key tags that must be on every web page. Then they practiced putting these tags in place by dragging them around on the IWB. I don’t know if it is the large muscle movement helping to make the abstract concept more concrete, or the fact that since so many kids want a turn at the board, that we spend more time in guided practice before they try it on their own. Whatever the reason, it is working. When the kids leave the group area and head to their computers, I’d say 2/3 of them now seem to know what to do, compared with 1/3 after the first lesson last year.
I am only referring to fourth graders who haven’t done any coding; my returning fifth graders have amazed me with what they retained. I do think many of them didn’t get it last year, but as so often happens between fourth and fifth grade, things that seemed beyond them as fourth graders, be it editing their work, reflecting on their learning, or writing HTML code, they suddenly seem to understand it when they return as fifth graders. That was one of the many reasons I love teaching a combined fourth/fifth grade classroom for so many years back in the US. If I’d only taught fourth, I have never know that the lessons did finally take root, they just had a long gestation period.
As we move into more complex tags, the IWB has continued to be a powerful tool. As I mentioned in the previous post, the tag we use to insert graphics into web pages, is long and confusing. Kids often leave off a bit of it or put the bits in the wrong order. As I pondered how to make them more successful, I created a number of flip chart pages around this tag. The first page introduced the tag. Then in a large font size, it showed the tag as it would need to be typed. I colored coded it so I could point out what they were likely to forget, which parts were easy to accidentally flip, etc.
The next page was a matching activity so they could match the parts of the code with each part’s purpose. To keep everyone engaged, I had the student who were sitting in the audience be ready to give each try a thumbs up or thumbs down to indicate whether or not they agreed.
The final page had all the tags we had already learned in their proper places, and then all the pieces of the image source tag waiting to be inserted. That was a real challenge; sometimes it took the entire class working together to correctly assemble that line of code, but every class eventually succeeded. And in the work time after that, students had good success, and were very willing to help each other until everyone had an image on their web page.
Adding the IWB to this unit has been a positive experience all the way around. The students seem to be learning the content more easily and are clearly engaged. I’m learning to use the IWB. Life is Good.
Last year, my web design unit with my fourth and fifth graders went on forever. I started it in Front Page, which is how it had been done for a few years at my school. I was new to Front Page. After working with it with my students for a few weeks I decided that…
It had too much propriety Microsoft stuff in it.
It was too temperamental.
The kids weren’t learning much of value.
For me, #3 was the kicker. I felt they weren’t learning much because they were already comfortable users of Microsoft Word, and much of Front Page feels very Word-ish. And the parts that don’t feel Word-ish are their own strange Front Page thing that won’t help the kids anywhere else in life.
And so, I decided to teach them to code. Never mind that I was far from adept at coding, I just dove in.
Fortunately, I used a site called Web Monkeyas my starting place with the children. It steps through the basics of web design with irreverence and a blue monkey with a hammer– Who could ask for more?
We are using that site again this year, but more as a reference than a read and follow it step-by-step type of thing. Older or more experienced students could do that, but most of my 9-11-year-olds find that too daunting at first.
Thus far, this has been our sequence…
Lesson 1: Intro to HTML We start with quick look at the idea of HTML, including the concept of tags. They then open Notepad and add the html and body opening and closing tags, add a few words to the body, and then learn where and how to save it. At this point, a miracle happens (at least in their minds.) Their simple text document now has an Internet Explorer icon and when they double-click it, they can see their web page. Life is Good.
Lesson 2: Body Tags The next week, after learning how to right-click, and the “Open with Notepad” their index.html file, they learn how to expand the body tag so that they can change their pages background color and text color. When I show them the handy chart of the 216 web-safe colors with their hexadecimal codes, you’d have thought I was showing them photos of Eden given the reverent “Oohs!” that are heard around the room, soon followed by genuine happy dances of joy as their pages change color.
In addition to the bgcolor and text tags, I teach them the font color tag. They oblige by joyfully creating truly garish text color combinations on their pages– we’ll deal with tasteful design after this pure joy has worn off.
Next I challenge them to figure out how to change the font tag to change the size of certain words. They leave feeling very clever and talk web design all the way back to their homeroom.
Lesson 3: Adding Images The img src tag is a real challenge for lots of reasons, including…
it’s length
the tricky words (is it img src or img scr? Most kids choose the latter for some reason.)
the need for quotation marks (which are easily forgotten)
the need for us to use ../ because we are on a network
the need to put the images inside their web folder
the need to know the file extension on the image.
A typical image tag ends up looking like this:
img src=”../susans/images/cardinal.gif”
They thought back ground tags were bad, so this is a bit daunting. However, I have carefully prepared a folder of animated GIF images for them to copy and use. The anticipation of having a flapping butterfly, a barking dog or a flaming, flying dragon on their web page pushes even the most reluctant to persevere.
I use my “first dones” as experts and soon everyone has an image on their page. As they leave class, I usually hear a few scheming to go online and find images of something they are passionate about, such as Runescape characters.– Means I need to have the “Can’t use copyrighted images on something we are posting online” talk soon, but not today.
For a few classes who were ready for it, I gave them the optional homework of going to Flaming Text to create a banner for their page. They need to put the image into their Digital Dropbox in Blackboard to get it to school, thus reinforcing a skill I’ve been helping them learn.
Lesson 4: Messing With Text In which we emphasis text using b and i or em tags. Then we learn to move text and other elements around the page using the p and p align tags. Finally we explore headlines and agree that it is vexing that with the font size tag, larger numbers create bigger text, but with the headline tags, H1 makes a larger headline than H6.
We’ll go on from there, but I’ll stop writing this for now. It is such a delight to teach my students something that they find so meaningful and engaging. The rest of us may argue that “real” webmasters don’t code by hand. However, my students see this as an important way to spend their time. A number of them have gone home and on their own created a simple page. I wasn’t offering extra credit; they did this for their own delight. If only everything was this fun to learn…
Michael Wesch has done it again, and done it well.
He’s a cultural anthropologist at Kansas State University and he created this video with his students. Or maybe I should say that his students created it with him, since it came out of a Google Doc worked on by all 200 of them. Like his previous video, The Machine is Us/ing Us, he shows some of the implications of Web 2.0.
At the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai, Will Richardson encouraged us to look at conversations outside of education to inform our practice and help us envision the needed changes. He made me realize how much of what I read has been written by classroom teachers, which is good, but limiting.
Being a cultural anthropologist, Michael Wesch brings a different perspective to the issue of 21st Century Literacy. For example, in “The Machine is US/ing Us”, he starts out showing how digital text is different than printed text and then goes on to show the implications of that, how it has changed and is changing the world. By the end, he is pushing us to reconsider key definitions of copyright, and even family.
This new video is yet another push that I need to start making changes. I do all this reading and thinking, but not much acting. I was much more constructive and progressive as a classroom teacher than I am as a technology coordinator. Part of that is due to the tremendous learning curve I went through last year working in a new school in a new country on a platform new to me. Part of it is working in such a large school. As a classroom teacher, I could still close my door and move ahead on my own, if need be. Now I am a coordinator trying to move 50+ teachers and more than 800 students forward.
Those are all valid excuses, but they are still excuses. As I get a better handle on this job, one of my obstacles now is empathizing too much with the classroom teachers. They are so stressed, always working so hard, that I am loathe to add more to their load. I too clearly remember the heavy feeling of not being able to add one more thing to my schedule without imploding.
When I was a classroom teacher, I turned to tech in part because it made my job easier, and also because I was finding it the most effective way to make the curriculum more engaging and meaningful. When I was a technology integration specialist in Malaysia, with some teachers I was able to share this vision, help them move along. I think most would did so would admit that it didn’t exactly make their job easier, but it was such a powerful learning tool that it was worth the effort. [I find it interesting that the projects I created with them were much richer, more worthwhile than the projects I did as prep activities. All I can say is that I was new to the job and kept teaching the outcomes, even though the outcomes were too skills based.]
So, it looks like my challenge this year, is to keep pondering the messages of Michael Wesch, Karl Fisch’s “Did You Know?“, and Kim Cofino’s definition of 21st Literacy Century, to make me passionate enough about all of this that I DO feel justified in adding on to the teacher’s burdens. Hopefully I’ll find a way to keep it from being a burden to them. Either way, that’s my job. I’d better get to it!
Thanks to Bud Hunt for Tweeting about it. (How exactly, should we credit Tweet sources? It there an APA citation format for Twitter yet?)
The K12 Online Conference has begun! They started a meme to help publicize the event. Here’s my response.
1. Watching the dialogue develop- Many of the bloggers I follow are presenting at this conference. I’m interesting in hearing what’s new in their thinking, what new steps their thoughts have taken.
2. Professional Development with/for Learning 2.0 – I know how tremendously web 2.0 technologies have impacted my own professional development. As a tech coordinator, I am struggling to provide PD for my staff that helps them move ahead, and embrace these technologies, both because they make the curriculum more engaging, and because at the moment, our students are getting left behind.
3. Practical Knowledge and New Frontiers – After attending the Learning 2.0 conference in Shanghai, my staff is starting to bring these disruptive technologies into their curriculum. I want to be well informed to help them do this. I also want to have my own thinking pushed.
I am on holiday in Krabi, Thailand, enjoying the sun, sand and surf. I had looked forward to finally doing some substantial blogging while here since I’d have time to really reflect and write. Instead, I’ve been watching the tide roll in and out. I’ve never really done that before. It might sound a bit like watching paint dry, but it holds my attention.
Also spent low tide climbing around on rocks, exploring mud flats and tide pools– who’d have thought so much could be living in the water in crevices in boulders?
After that, someone had to check out and follow the animal tracks in the sand. Do rats live on beaches? If not, what four-footed critters with feet the size of rats live on beaches in Thailand?
I couldn’t come this far and not swim in the blue-green water and comb the beach, and eat dinner near the shore watching amazing sunsets while local guys play a mean game of soccer on the beach.
In the evening we had a massage and ate ice cream and watched “Return of the King” for at least the sixth time (and it was still good.)
Tomorrow we head back to Singapore, where I’ll get to publish this post and maybe even add a photo or two. No words of wisdom besides these… Go spend some time by the sea.
Last year I realized that our keyboarding program was not meeting our needs. The problem wasn’t the software or instruction, it was the lack of access to the computers. Typing is better learned in shorter sessions many times per week than one long session of equivalent length. (There is research to support that statement, but it is back in Minnesota in my Hamline materials, instead of here where I need it. Just call it packing mistake #236.) Unfortunately, our lab spaces are maxed out as it is, no chance to get the classes in more often. And since we are stuck in the tech integration-as-prep-time mode, I can’t front end load extra typing sessions early in the year. Therefore, a home option seems best.
This week, I’m introducing my fourth and fifth grade classes to Custom Typing. It is an online subscription typing program. We piloted it last year and were pleased with the students’ progress. I was also pleased by the great customer service we received. We usually received a useful response within 24 hours. This fall, I was able to upload the accounts via a database file. It was a life saver as I created more than 700 accounts.
This year I made it available to any fourth or fifth grade class as long as the teacher agreed to…
assign it as homework for at least 3 nights per week
monitor student progress on a regular basis
become familiar enough with the program that they can provide student support for basic problems.
This introductory lesson that I taught this week has the kids logging in, choosing an animated coach, choosing a background, and going through the introduction. They loved choosing the coach and the backgrounds. They found the intro deadly dull. They found the initial exercises long, but most were able to complete their first quiz. They needed a score of 61, but most has a score over 100. That was just the hook they needed.
Of course, it is not free of problems. One problem is that the workstations at their homes were probably set up for adults, not children. Fortunately, the site has a good ergonomics section built in. It has helpful photos to supplement the kid-friendly text. Some teachers are making it an assignment to view that section and report back on how their home workstation measures up.
Another problem is that children are unlikely to voluntarily cover the keyboard to prevent peeking. However, this program works well enough that the students in the pilot last year did get past the peeking stage. Each exercise is long enough that they stop looking since they “know” the keys.
I asked the teacher to attend this first session so I could get them up to speed with the program. Initially I had not set up student accounts for the teachers themselves, but a number of them asked for them, so I made them for everyone. Teachers us a different login to get to the student accounts and records. I didn’t get much feedback from them. I’m sure they wished they could be having their prep time instead, but they are great sports and attended anyhow.
Next I need to create the support materials for teachers to send home, and to help teachers generate student reports. At least the children have all been able to log in and seem to be enjoying it.
I am only referring to fourth graders who haven’t done any coding; my returning fifth graders have amazed me with what they retained. I do think many of them didn’t get it last year, but as so often happens between fourth and fifth grade, things that seemed beyond them as fourth graders, be it editing their work, reflecting on their learning, or writing HTML code, they suddenly seem to understand it when they return as fifth graders. That was one of the many reasons I love teaching a combined fourth/fifth grade classroom for so many years back in the US. If I’d only taught fourth, I have never know that the lessons did finally take root, they just had a long gestation period.
