Kristen Wideen @mrswideen

Learn to incorporate global collaborative projects with your primary students. Discover strategies and resources for engaging students in all curriculum strands with authentic student examples.This presentation will highlight resources for facilitating learning through global collaboration. Student blogging, global read alouds and collaborative projects will be explored in depth.

Support notes from Kristen

Thank you so much for attending my session.  If you have any questions or comments you can find me online in a lot of places.  Listed below are some of the ways you can get a hold of me:

Twitter: @mrswideen

Class Twitter: @mrswideensclass

Professional Blog:  Mrs. Wideen’s Blog

Email: mrswideen@gmail.com

Here are a few ways to connect with other classrooms.

Skype

Download Skype Here: http://www.skype.com/en/download-skype/skype-for-computer/

Skype In The Classroom: https://education.skype.com

Mystery Number: Here

Twitter

Twitter:  Download Here

Index of Twitter Chats: Here

Blog post about activities you can do with your class on Twitter:  I Created A Class Twitter Account, Now What?

Blogging

Download Kidblog Here.

Download Edublogs Here.

Primary Blogging Community Here.

Quadblogging Here.

Collaborative Projects

Projects By Jen http://projectsbyjen.com

Epals http://www.epals.com

Skype or Google Hangout

Mystery Skype – skype to someone and you have to figure out where they live.  Students ask questions to the Skype connection

Mystery number – using Skype or Twitter – one class chooses a number the other class tries to figure it out.

Sharing an inquiry – any question can be explored between classes

Primary Blogging Community – project linking up classrooms to blog together – now has 80 classrooms working together K-4

What is the Primary Blogging Community?

The PBC is a community of primary teachers (children aged 5-10) that want to share their students’ learning via their classroom blog and their students’ personal blogs.  Classrooms will be grouped with 3 or 4 other classrooms from around the globe.  The program is 8 weeks long.  The first 4 weeks will concentrate on the classroom blogs only.  Each week, one of the classes will be the focus class and the other 3 classes will be visiting and commenting on the focus class blog.  The following week, the second class will be the focus class, and so on.   This is a chance for the other classes to see what is happening in your school and class, to discover where in the world you are located and to learn about how to write a good blog post and to watch how you model and work together to write good comments.  After the first 4 weeks, we switch the focus from your classroom blog and concentrate on student blogs.  The same rotations occur but the focus is solely on your student’s individual blogs.

Flat Stanley Project – everywhere that Flat Stanley went the students blogged about this.  Example of a multi-media Flat Stanley site

Here is a Flat Stanley blog

A key point for blogging – kids need an audience!  If you close your blog the students have no audience and they will lose interest.  Consider the potential of teaching other students around the world.  Kids need the feedback and comments.

Example of a project that connects – ePals