Challenge #3: Connect and Reflect

Reading through the information in Chapter 3 brought back memories. The first projects I ever saw online were the Projects by Jen, like the Pumpkin Seed Count, the Oreo Challenge and more. This is a quick and easy way to get involved in an elementary project. It brought back memories of KinderKorner, one of the first online places I used to meet others teaching Kindergarten and to begin to share materials. I remember talking to Chris Craft about the Life Round Here project, when I met him at NECC. It also introduced me to the wonderful blog of Kim Cofino. Although I never got to be involved in these projects, I was a lurker, followed how they were set up and how they seemed to work. I did finally get one of my colleagues to join a read around the world project. The projects we tended to do, given the constraints of time, were shorter lived... connecting to Mary Beth's students in Philly around a tux paint holiday scenes shared on VoiceThread. I remember hearing Cherrie MacInnes present, maybe on a WOW show or Seedlings, and  emailing Cheryl Oakes to get more info, but I couldn't get the classroom teacher to commit to doing this.

One of the projects mentioned really sparked my interest. It was the Hudson Falls High School WWII Living History Project. Living so close to Hudson, NY, I would have thought I might have read about this, or heard about it in the local news, but I hadn't. The reason this project resonated with me was two-fold. One I have an abiding interest in the topic, enjoying the Paperclip Project video This is a 5 minute preview... you need the Veoh player to watch the whole thing, or rent/buy it from Amazon.


Watch Paper Clips in Educational  |  View More Free Videos Online at Veoh.com.
The other reason is because it is inter-generational, perhaps hailing back to my interest in folklore and Foxfire as a college student, but more recently because of a project I have done several times for Grandparents Day at my school. I have had my students interview their grandparents and make a Glogster poster about them. These are the best interviews I have ever seen my students do. They talked with their parents and in some cases interviewed them about grandparents that they never knew. They interviewed grandmothers in Mexico, in Spanish, had a parent translate some it, and used these in the posters. One student made a 20 minute movie, an interview, with his grandparents. These brought tears to my eyes and to those of my students, their parents and the grandparents, capturing bits and pieces of the lives of this generation, which will sooner than we would like, be lost forever.

I think the biggest barrier I face as far as getting involved in this type of project is time. I only see the students a couple times a week, and the expectation is that I will not give homework. I have yet to find a classroom teacher at my school who is willing to add this type of project to the curriculum.