Ocean Reports
Posted by LeAnn on June 3, 2009 in Language Arts, PowerPoint, Science
The 2nd graders in Kayleen Diaz’s class at Lafayette study ocean animals. The classroom is transformed into an amazing underwater world! We worked together to come up with a technology project that they could do while writing their reports. The students created bubble maps, researched their animal and organized the information into an outline. From that written outline they chose at least 3 facts from the different categories to include in their PowerPoint. They were ecstatic to present their reports to their classmates and were trying their hardest to come up with questions that would stump their audience. This was the first time many of them had created a PowerPoint. You can view projects from Sarah, Henry C. and Simon here. For more information about the process read on.
- Using a PowerPoint Template: Each student worked from the same basic PowerPoint, so the focus could be placed on content. So that the students wouldn’t have to navigate to save their projects, a copy of the Ocean Report (.ppt) was put into each student’s folder on the server. This also prevents the original from being overwritten. To prevent overwriting, you could also just save one copy in a main folder as a template (.pot) so when it is opened a new file is created.
- Student Checklist: A checklist (.pdf) was created so that anyone who was helping the student would know which part of the process he/she still needed to complete. The students did a fantastic job of becoming experts and teaching classmates techniques they had learned. (i.e. inserting action buttons) If you would like a copy of the checklist as a word document, so you can revise it, please leave a comment and I can email you one.
- Finding Pictures/Images: A word document was created (by an adult) with available pictures (about 10) and links so the students could copy and paste the picture and the source into their reports. This took less time that having students finding their own images on the web, but still allowed them choice since not all of the pictures needed to be used. The word documents were named by animal and placed in a Pictures folder on the server.
- Presenting the Projects: Because the projects were stored on the server, it was easy to bring them up on the presentation station when it was the student’s turn to present. Not only did the student use the handheld mic but we were also able to connect the USB cable (the document camera end goes in the projector) from the computer to the projector (it’s on a table) so the projector remote could be used to advance the slides. They looked so official!
- Student Reflection/Rubric: The student reflection (.pdf) focused on their presentation skills, not just their product.
- Publishing to the Web: A letter was sent home to parents describing this particular project and publishing it to the web. If the letter wasn’t returned, then the project wasn’t published. Since the students had a copy of the original PowerPoint in their folders each project was renamed with the student’s first name. Publishing the PowerPoints was a little tricky. If a PowerPoint is saved as an html page, it doesn’t always appear the same in different web browsers. So, sometimes the pictures wouldn’t show or the animation wouldn’t work. I tried some of the various online slideshow/sharing sites, but they also stripped the animation/interactivity from the PowerPoints or were blocked on student machines. The solution I found was to turn the PowerPoints into Flash movies. I ended up using a nifty free application called iSpring to convert all of the projects. Then we just had to give them to the school’s webmaster to publish on their school site. I was also able to use iSpring to post the 3 example PowerPoints directly to SlideBoom (blocked on student machines) to be able to embed them on this blog.