Signing the Declaration of Indepandence

In my social studies class we got to sign the Declaration of Indepandence! You get to pick what type of writing you want. You can choose Colonist,American or Patriot. You can choose black and white or color. It will give some background info. too. Also you will need a printer for this activity. I think this will get the students involved in history and it is a very cool activity to do in class.

Here is the address for this site.

iPhones Enhance Learning By: Alexander Fryer

This is a paper I wrote for school.

iPhones Enhance Learning
By: Alexander Fryer

Some schools are buying iPhones for students hoping to enhance learning. Apple came out with the iPhone in 2007 and is in its third generation.1 Digital learning consultant Wesley Fryer comments, “Modern cell phones offer a variety of capabilities, which are being used effectively by educators in different schools to support curricular learning objectives and boost student achievement.”2
For example, you can use a free service by Poll Everywhere to conduct a classroom poll. Thirty people can respond to and vote on your poll by texting their information in. There are many useful applications that you can use for learning such as: a graphing calculator, flash cards, and a dictionary. The iPhone can also be used for converting measurements, and taking notes in class. The camera is a useful tool for recording data. There are hundreds of educational applications being created each day.

The iPhone has a built-in iPod. This means that you can watch videos or listen to recorded lectures as podcasts. “Lectures are the worst possible learning format,” said Associate Dean Brian Brooks, according to the Columbian Missourian. “There’s been some research done that shows if a student can hear that lecture a second time, they retain three times as much of that lecture.”3 This will require teachers to record their lectures, but if a student will remember and retain the information it will make the extra work pay off with better test scores.

As a result there are many educational applications, and you can remember lectures three times better the second time. So, contact your school principal and technology director and tell them that you want iPhones in school!

Footnotes
1. Wikipedia article iPhone
2. Teach digital: Cell Phones for learning
3. Columbian Missourian: School of Journalism to require iPod touch or iPhone for students

Hobbit Room

At my school in english are curriculum is The Lord of the Rings and we just read the part when they meet Tom Bombadil in the Fellowship of the Ring. We had to do a project on one of the scenes and make a miniature on it, I did the scene when they looked into their room at Tom Bombadil's house. This is the passage describing the scene and pictures of my project are at the bottom so you can see how I did:

Its walls were of clean stone, but they were mostly covered with green hanging mats and yellow curtains. The floor was flagged, and strewn with fresh, green rushes. There were four deep mattresses, each piled with white blankets, laid on the floor along one side. Against the opposite wall was a long bench laden with wide earthenware basins, and beside it stood brown ewers filled with water, some cold, some steaming hot. There were soft green slippers set ready beside each bed.

DSC00684

DSC00688

DSC00686

DSC00687

What Is your favorite Girl Scout Cookie?

I’m doing a survey for math and my survey is on What Is your favorite Girl Scout Cookie. I thought it would be cool if I could see the worlds point of view. The different kinds for my survey are Tagalong; Thin Mint; Trefoil; Samoa; Lemon Creme and Dosidos. I’m a junior Girl Scout. I have been in girl scouting since Kindergarten or a Daisy. If you have any questions about the taste of the cookies or if you have any questions about anything please feel free to leave a comment.

Essay

This is a essay I wrote for school.

Choosing Friends

I came to Chisholm in the third grade so I don’t have as many memories as others. My best memory is the first day of school in Mrs. Fitzgerald’s class (or Mrs. Fitz. As I like to call her.) I was in a school three times bigger than my old one and did not know a single person in it. All I could think was, “Wow!”

I got to know a couple of people the first day. I know you aren’t supposed to judge books by their cover, but I couldn’t help eyeing a couple of people for friends. I mostly looked at how they acted around the teacher and other kids. Looking at kids I found two, Hadley and Landon.

Lunch was weird and at recess I took a big breath, plucked up some courage and thought, “I have to make a friend sometime so it might as well be now.”

I walked up to him, he wasn’t with anyone; perfect. We said “hello” and then I started to see if we had anything in common. First I asked him if he liked Star Wars. He did, so we started talking. Soon we also learned that we both liked Legos too. Hearing the bell ring we went to go line up. We talked a little more inside but the next day at recess we went and played soccer. The field wasn’t fancy, just two goals and a field with a ball.

That is when I became friends with Landon, he always played soccer. Hadley and Landon knew each other but weren’t really friends. Landon is more into sports and Hadley is more into academics. I am kind of the merging point between them.

We all got to be friends and now almost three years after that we are still friends. Over the years new people have joined our little “club” but we were the first people to join it: Hadley, Landon, and me.

The Test!

In third grade you have to take the OCCT test. Which stands for Oklahoma Core Curriculum Test. They are putting a lot of pressure on the third grade. They are saying stuff like the test will not be easy. We all say “duh duh duh”. If you have any suggestions on things I can do please leave a comment. There are diffrences on just passing and getting advanced. For you to get addvanced you can only miss 5 on the reading and 7 on the math. By the way there are 50 math and 50 reading questions.

Wookieepedia

I am a star wars fan.

I love star wars so I found this very interesting and you will probably to. I know about wikipedia but this is different. Wikipedia does not have a lot about star wars so that is why (for all the star wars lovers) they made Wookieepedia.  Wookieepedia is almost the same in every except wookieepedia is all star wars information. I hope you will enjoy this website.

I hope you are star wars fan to.

A Google Earth alternative to a salt map

Brother has an assignment for social studies in school that is due November 6th. The assignment is to create a salt map of the United States, showing the topographical relief. I’m guessing this is mainly the Rocky and Appalachian mountains, but we haven’t actually seen the assignment sheet yet so I’m not sure.  I remember fourth graders at my 2nd elementary school in Lubbock created salt maps for the regions of Texas, so I guess this must be sort of a fourth grade rite of passage. I searched for salt map pictures on Flickr tonight but couldn’t find any, but I did find these salt maps students in Wisconsin made of explorer routes. I can see there is some value in actually creating a physical representation of the U.S. geography in a salt map, but I’m guessing this project is one of those that ends up with the parent doing more of the work and perhaps more of the learning than the child. Perhaps I’m just being cynical and should have a better attitude. I am generally predisposed to NOT like classroom assignments where all the students are creating a product that looks essentially the same. Those types of assignments are very common in school, I think they are often easier to grade, but I think they can be less engaging and more boring since the involve little choice on the part of the student and therefore little buy-in.  I would rather see an assignment which is differentiated and gives students some choices.I’m wondering if the goal of the assignment is to better understand U.S. topography, if brother could learn how to give a virtual tour of major U.S. landforms using Google Earth? Then we could use a screencasting program (I recently purchased iShowU) so he could record a movie of his virtual tour. I’m thinking that if he can give a narrated tour of U.S. topography, flying around within Google Earth and narrating what we’re seeing on this “virtual tour,” that would be a more authentic assessment of brother’s knowledge in this area. I think he’d learn more exploring U.S. geography via Google Earth than just making a salt map. I am going to ask his teacher about this and see if she’d support this alternative assessment idea. I’m not sure if his teachers know about and use Google Earth currently, so this could be a good way for brother to both demonstrate his knowledge, learn with a powerful digital tool, and also teach others in his class (including his teachers) about Google Earth and how it can be used for learning. 

1 2 3