Animal Project Update

The project isn't finished, but the kids and I have learned enough to this point to make it worth posting.

The 4th graders learned to access the server. The pattern was familiar. The fist time they accessed it was a little on the painful side. Students were having a great deal of difficulty with the idea of Lastname, Firstname. Students were very focused on accurately capitalizing their names, but failed to properly capitalize passwords (names are not case sensitive on our system.) After saving files, they were a little overwhelmed at the idea of dragging and dropping to the "my files" folder (they have a my files, a drop box, and a message board--private, drop box, public, respectively). The very first day, it took the entire class period just to get them all signed in and save one file.

Progress was quick, since we were meeting every day. Students got into the habit of logging in. By the third day, "log into the server" was a single direction instead of a series of steps.

Students learned to rename files. At Valley we save to the desktop and then drag to the location. So, I had students renaming files on the desktop and dragging to the server.

The one mistake I had was having 4th grade students name files based on the date. Students working on a "physical characteristics of" inspiration file would then name it "physical characteristics of 2.17." That was a mistake. Later down the line, if a student spent more time on a file, his would be 2.23, while another student was only 2.21. And the idea of "open the most recent" was lost on them.

In retrospect, I will use 1, 2, 3, etc. with that young of a student. I think it is much easier to say "open the highest number."

At the beginning of the project, I spent time explaining what a server is and why we saved to it. I had to repeat this often, as students would save to the desk top, and think it was alright to "trash" the files right away (my policy is to always keep a public desktop--physical or virtual--the way you found it--so we always trash our files). I'm still not sure that all students understand the importance of the multi-step process. But, one of the nice things about being a specials teacher is I can reinforce for the rest of the year, and revisit the same topic with the same students next year when they are older and wiser.

Despite sometimes cursory understanding of the server and school procedures, the students did remarkably well. Only three students "lost" files (later recovered from the trash) and only one student had a total loss.

Inspiration was a very easy program for the kids to master. I took about three minutes with some how tos, and they spent a great deal of independent time getting it done. The biggest obstacle was (amazingly at this age) students who wanted to talk instead of work.

Students who finished quickly were able to explore changing shapes and colors on their maps. Most students, again, needed to be shown the basics and were able to run with it. A few who weren't able to start right away needed some extra help. This gave me the opportunity to let some of the students be teachers.

I strongly feel that students need to build confidence in their skills. Part of this is giving them exploratory time to teach themselves. Part of this is allowing them to share skills and teach one another. And, allowing them to teach one another also allows them to see that other kids their own age have something of value to share.

Surprisingly, toggling the diagrams into outlines and printing them out was a challenge. In retrospect, it had been several weeks since the students had printed. And, since it wasn't really very fun or engaging, it was a class where a lot of time was spent on refocusing the students. It has been a process all year demonstrating the process of printing for students and having them complete it themselves. It was probably very short sited of me to let them go for so long without printing.

In retrospect, I will change the labeling/numbering system for files. I will make sure to more clearly explain, and continue reinforcing, the concepts of saving on a server and why we are saving twice. And, I will print provide class time on three different occasions to print the three different diagrams so that a) we are not doing all of it at once b) I don't end up dedicating an entire class to printing and c)students continue to have practice and reinforcement of printing through the project and I don't risk some student forgetting this process.