Engage Them!

Today was a wonderful day in my 6th grade computer class. Kids were engaged, having fun, learning, working nicely together, collaborating, discussing, asking questions, and posing for pictures for our local newspaper. Today was the final day to submit our holiday cards as part of the Holiday Card Exchange project we participated in.

I can not even remember how I stumbled upon Jen Wagner's website.. oh yes.. I remember, it was through a twitter event. I think I was not following Jen on twitter, but someone I was following was, so I clicked on her name, looked at her profile, clicked on her web address and the rest was history! Wa La! Instant connection. How very cool and powerful! My PLN has grown (one way is through my diigo groups) and it continues to grow each day I read something on twitter or on someone's blog, because within someone's blog is a link to another blog, and so on and so on. One could get sucked in! Hee - Hee!

So, back to my engaging story. I am loving this project for many reasons and so are my kids. One, it was so easy to participate in. Add an email here and an address there and you are a member of the Holiday Card Group. I have to thank Jen for all of her hard work! I was looking on the site and there are now 339 classrooms participating this year! What an amazing connection! These are connections from all over the world. What 10 or 11 year old would not love opening cards from students all over the world, reading them to the class, looking up the address on google maps, then using the satellite feature on google maps to zoom in to the school location, and then taking that information over to our own map of the United States and pinning up their location? All that is left for us to do, is to finish up with reading our cards. We received 5 cards so far, and are expecting 19 more. I looked in my mailbox before I left today, and there were about 8 more cards waiting for the kids! I have to admit, I was excited to see mail in my box.

So, when I was talking to the reporter today about what is it that makes this project educational, I had to say the collaboration, the engagement, the geography lessons, research, as well as overall techology use. The kids created their own cards for each school we sent them to. They also researched our town, Derry, and included interesting facts, weather and locations associated with Derry and New Hampshire. I also told the reporter, what I really liked was receiving the cards through "snail mail". It seems as though the written letter is somewhat obsolete these days. I hope it does not go away. At 39 years old, (and holding), I always look for my birthday cards from my Dad and wish my Nana and my mom were still alive to drop me a note now and again. It made this project that much more special to see the kids handwriting from the cards we received. How cute it was to see the kindgergarten letter and the 3rd graders writing! That is authentic collaboration.

I hope that what the kids take away from this lesson, is that there are so many different people and places out there in the world. The internet makes it possible to reach everyone near and far. It hopefully helps us to appreciate differences and learn new things that we did not know before today. It helps us to learn that the world can be "flat" as Thomas Friedman says, and my 6th grade kids are able to share in some of that notion.

I want my kids to enjoy this day in their educational life. I don't want them to worry about testing for the moment. I want to see their faces and their excitement on Wednesday when I bring in that pile of cards. I can't wait to go down my roster naming each student who's turn it is to read the card, and place the pin up on our in class map.

This my friends, is what a great day in teaching is all about!

I will take some pictures and add soon. Hopefully I can record a podcast with some of the kids thoughts on the project.