My Journey into the World of Elementary Tech

I have just finished my first truly collaborative online project. I have participated in other “collaborative” projects over the years but they could be compared to a preschool classroom where everyone is doing their own thing. You might look over your shoulder to see what someone else is doing but you aren’t interacting with each other. Scary Spuds is  different and was set up by Amber Coggin. (I think she is someone to keep your eye on. She’s young and full of ideas and before this project was finished she was already started on another one that is bigger and better!) Since this was our first attempt at doing a project like this we kept it small, just the two of us. We matched up our 2^nd grade classes, I used two 3rd grades as well, to work on descriptive writing. It was fun and easy. I think the hardest part was just trying to explain how it all worked to seven year olds. It wasn’t until the end that the light bulb went on and they could see how it all turned out.

I learned a few things from this project. One is that next year I would start a little earlier so I’m not trying to put all the finished pictures online at the same time I’m trying to get grades done. That was not a great combination. Next time I would also approach the classroom teachers to see if they are interested in helping with the writing. That would help speed up the project and not take up a lot of classroom time. At the end we had the classes ask each other some questions about their communities. My kids were quite surprised to learn that most kids in Alabama had never seen snow! They also felt very sorry for them. Next time I would ask these questions at the beginning of the project to build some community.

During our last class I had the students reflect on the project. They liked making the Scary Spuds the most. The thing they found the most frustrating was that there wasn’t enough detail in the writing of their partner class to make the spud look just right. One group read the wrong description when they recreated a spud. One of the students felt badly about that. I tried to use that as one of those teachable moments about learning from mistakes.

All in all I felt it was a very successful project and am looking forward to the next one.

Filed under: Collaboration, Language Arts | Tagged: Amber Coggin, Collaboration, Scary Spuds