4th Graders 1st Prim Practice

I absolutely have to thank Chris Hart for being with us yesterday when we finally got a chance to experience the real wonder of the Reaction Grid; the building! You can't imagine the excitement in a room of about 28 4th graders who are creating prims. It was awesome! Thanks also to Kyle and Felix for their work on the RG. Your team is great!! Mr. Ross and I taught the kids how to take snapshots and save them to their inventories, so I was able to go and retrieve them later. Here is a taste of our first venture with prims. (See video below)

More Work on Hooverville

With the shacks looking fairly authentic with walls that are not perfectly aligned and mismatched materials, today the students added barrels that could have fires in them. (See video below)

The 4th Grade on the RG

It was chaotic, it was exciting, it was fantastic! 4th graders at Lowell School had their first experience with the Reaction Grid today. We went through a lot of basic procedures today such as assigning computers, setting up partners because the class is more than twice the number of computers available, finding the software, and logging in. The classroom teacher, Mr. Ross, and I let the kids have this class period for basic exploration. We wanted to see what they would discover on their own and by the end of the period, they had learned to add friends, chat with each other, fly and walk. This class will be studying the solar system and associated topics. To help, they will have a 3D model of the planets and a virtual moon that goes through the phases. Their first building activity will be to create their own planet. I'm very grateful to Mr. Ross for not only lending me his class, but also for learning very quickly how to take snapshots of the students so we can document as much of this as possible. (See video below)

Back to Work on PESD Island TSL

Although I'm doing prep work for PESD Island RG, today my Edison students continued working on their Social Studies connection and are getting closer to having a Hooverville on PESD Island TSL. Here's a little video of them working.

Getting Ready for the Reaction Grid

I have been spending my vacation prepping for 4th graders at Lowell School and their first visit to the virtual world called the Reaction Grid. I have strengthened my friendships with teachers from Michigan, etc. who have already brought students in to work. It is very much like Second Life, but focusing heavily on elementary education. Since our classes are larger than can be accommodated by the grid, students will be sharing avatars unlike the middle school students who have their own avatars on our Second Life Teen island. This means that students will learn how to collaborate more closely, be resilient when there are technical issues, and be creative with the tools within the grid. We will use the same tools that the middle school kids use, but will expect a different level of sophistication at this grade level. (See videos below)

Winter Wonderland in the Desert

Since it's really only sweater weather here in Phoenix, I thought it might be fun for the students to build virtual snowmen today. They also got free skates so they could skate while building, but none of them really noticed all the WORK they were doing while they were having FUN!! As always, the kids took snapshots and then sent them to me via their epal accounts. (See videos below)

Early December Building

We ran into a couple of snags this week when both classes ended up losing an entire class period due to bus evacuation drills. We get less than two hours a week, so this didn't help. Some students had to start over on the tables because they did not clone the prims, or they cloned them and then moved them to the side which makes it difficult to align them again. Getting a bird's eye view helps line things up with the grid on the workspace, but kids are only using a touch pad and it is more difficult to build without a mouse. Things too far out of alignment do not get the full 10L for the day's building. A few curricular projects began this week too. (See videos below)