Comments from Madame Godin |
| Answers to Catherine’s Questions 1. How the project went (from your perspective). I enjoyed the project. Although I felt confused at the beginning because of the amount of work that was involved, in the end I found that it was very workable. The limitations were created by the size and type of class of students I have this year. Listening skills plays a huge part especially when learning how to do web pages, save material and copy information into another file. I have some very special need kids in the class and work had to really be brought down into small chunks and they had to be watched by an adult so that their information wasn’t lost in cyberspace. The other limitation was the computer lab…when the computers are working they’re great…but, need I say more. We have a large school and fortunately the lab is used often, unfortunately if you’re trying to complete projects! I found staff very flexible and accommodating. 2. The impact of this project on your student's learning, include comments on the impact of using the Internet and Information and communications Technologies. In September, we used the computer more for searching sites for information. I found that by the end of the project, the kids are much more at ease about copying and pasting information into various files and a confidence for their general use of the computer. The fact that we used the internet to go into a site, create something that was immediately posted was a tremendous experience for them. 3. Describe what curriculum outcomes/expectations were achieved and/or not achieved and why. The students not only were able to achieve Technology curriculum outcome, specifically to grade three…copying, pasting, saving information, use of the internet but also were able to achieve outcomes in the area of language arts. The students were able to work cooperatively in groups to produce a brainstormed, rough draft and then were able to fine tune it and have it ‘published’. 4. What the students learned about writing… Reading and writing walk hand in hand and I found that the students were reading so much more because they wanted to read what friends had written. Weak writers were given the opportunity to develop some very basic skills, ie.. develop a setting, opening sentences, writing prompts. 5. In what ways did students work together both during the project and in creating the website? The students had many opportunities to work collaboratively with other students in the class and to create the website they had the good fortune to work collaboratively with other schools. This project was ‘non-threatening’ to weaker writers because they could be placed in a small group where their ideas were added to those of others to produce a ‘out-off-this-world’ idea. 6. Your contribution to the project. Our classroom part of this project consisted of collectively making a page for Characters, Settings, Writing Prompts, Opening Sentences, Closing Sentences, Message Board Posting (3 entries and replies) My contribution as a teacher was in teaching the students how to create their work in using technology. I had to do a lot of instruction on the importance of correctly following instructions (esp. when saving) and how to deal with frustration if you lose your information. 7. Please share some of your student's thoughts on this project.(this is important) I’m including the letter that we wrote to you collectively. It is a reflection of the kids feelings…many expressed the same thing so we took the opportunity and did a lesson on how to write a letter to someone…making it interesting without constant repetition. I did get some frustration with kids when we tried to log in onto the Message Board. The first time it was down and the next time I discovered that it couldn’t take so many logging in at the same time. I know that there have to be time limitations to projects but I feel that we could have done even more had we had more time. Having said this, I enjoyed working with you Catherine. I found that your positive comments, which I shared with the kids, were very supportive. This project was well thought out and it made me focus much more onto the writing aspect of language arts. |
[Evaluation of Tools4Writing Project]