A Teacher’s Thoughts

So, I have come across a few posts referencing Wordle lately and here is my try. I chose to use the text of the first of the year post on my class blog- from way back in September. I also added the text of all the student comments. The title of the post was “How I Learn Best“. I enjoy looking at this. I wonder how it would have looked different if I had them post their responses again at the end of the year?
Here it is. Give it a click to see the full size image.

Today was the final challenge in our Remotely Operated Vehicle Challenge. After about a week of planning and practice the groups from our two classes had their final challenge; navigate to a given location, put a cap on a jar. The simplified assignment from my previous post is:

Working with another 8th grade science class our students are attempting to model the types of communication barriers that occur when dealing with remotely operated vehicles. I got the idea from somewhere, (I wish I could remember, Jason Project maybe?). We added in cellphones and Google Earth to add technology to the challenge. And a challenge it is. Student groups are broken in two, half inside and half in a field well out of view. Student Robots are placed in the center of the field and must simply follow commands, sent as coded text messages. After executing a command, the student simply snaps a picture and sends it back. While inside, the team can rely only on the image sent to them and the images in Google Earth. The goal is to navigate to an assigned location and perform a task.

What worked?

• Code and Texting guidlines. Preset code was limited to 30 characters. This was more than enough. Texts were limited to no more than 10 characters. This seemed to be a good number as well.
• Reflection times. After some guided reflection students were able to work together well to define and propose solutions to the problems they may face. We did this after a trial run so groups had some real experiences.

What were the challenges?

• Cellphone availability. In order for a student to use his/her phone we required a signed permission slip. We did this to ensure students had permission to send text and images and would not incur any additional or unacceptable charges. Turns out that while about half the kids had cellphones, there were very few who had free text and images.
• Attendance. While I would like to think that a motivating activity such as this would keep kids in school each day, there were still numerous absences. Groups quickly realized they needed backup plans for missing people. When the absent student was providing a phone then it was more difficult. Groups lacking phones typically emailed the image and had texts sent via AIM.
• Group planning time. It was difficult for groups to anticipate things they may have to do during the challenge. Most figured that “left, right, straight, and back” would be good enough. In the end what they needed was hands-on experience with their code not working so they could revise.
• TimeThe constant. But really, we are dealing with 43 minute blocks. Our site is a bit of a walk from the other classes so there is about 10 minutes lost to transition. More time would give students a chance to do more reflection right when problems arise. A single class block however, allowed for little more than one or the other.

What would we do differently?

• Scaffold. Students need more practice working with each other. Groups should complete some other low level task before hand that emphasizes communication. This should be an activity without technology, which invariably presents its own challenges. So start simple.
• I would consider not using the phones inside at all, but rather have the mission control students receive the images on email and text back using some form of IM. This would cut the number of needed phones in half.

At the end of the day, the kids thought it was a worthwhile activity but thought there was too much down time waiting for texts or images to go through. I felt the activity presented a good degree of challenge for the students while tying in to a few key standards. This does work nicely as an end of the year activity but would certianly work well at the beginning too. When it comes to the technology involved we were certainly pushing the abilities of our communication devices (unlimited text and messages are currently an upgrade feature on plans) and our own resources (middle school students with phones) here.

The phone rings. It is a picture from the athletic fields behind the school. Kids quickly look at the image, then refer to a desktop displaying an aerial view of the same location using Google Earth. After conferring for a few minutes a student texts PU TW SP. Shortly after a blindfolded student picks up a jar from a bucket on the edge of a field, twists and removes the lid. What??

Working with another 8th grade science class our students are attempting to model the types of communication barriers that occur when dealing with remotely operated vehicles. I got the idea from somewhere, (I wish I could remember, Jason Project maybe?). We added in cellphones and Google Earth to add technology to the challenge. And a challenge it is. Student groups are broken in two, half inside and half in a field well out of view. Student Robots are placed in the center of the field and must simply follow commands, sent as coded text messages. After executing a command, the student simply snaps a picture and sends it back. While inside, the team can rely only on the image sent to them and the images in Google Earth. The goal is to navigate to an assigned location and perform a task.

We have only just started; the kids are in the planning phases. While the opportunity to use their phones definitely has their interest levels up, the need for focused practice in communication skills is apparent. Its funny but to the kids, cell phones are so common to them that they assume this will be easy. Those groups who have begun testing out their strategies have found just the opposite. Watching them regroup and reorganize has been satisfying. I will try to post more on this project as we fine tune the implementation.

I just spent the day helping my wife post her 6th graders energy presentations to a new edublog. The project isn’t really a blog but they are looking for comments on their work. If you have a few minutes and would like to offer some short constructive feedback please check out their presentations at Energy Solutions for Our Future

Ok, so it was the end of February, but the new labs are finished (minus some small punch list items) and we have been fully using our new space.

I certainly have more to add about the wonderful opportunities these labs will provide our middle school students, but for now take a look. The classroom is a combination lab/classroom space, allowing for students to move between equipment intensive investigation to areas where they can engage in group discussion or disruption free thought.

Each of the five lab stations is equipped with a power pole assembly feeding two 20 GFI Duplex outlets and a single data drop. This type of assembly is ideal for deploying laptops at each station, but I have less chance of laptops then desktops so the stations were designed to handle either. Whichever machine makes it to a station, the power pole assembly gets the computer off the wet surface, protecting people and equipment.

Having the technology built right into the lab stations facilitates easy integration of probeware, digital data collection, and analysis.

There are some adjustments still to be made as we work through this first implementation and the feedback from my students has helped greatly. I have to admit I feel very lucky to be able to work with middle school students in this type of lab environment.