Gifted – unwrapping the present…

Even though students reported back to school on August 19th, because of gifted testing and placement and various other “paper pushing” duties required of me; I didn’t get started with kids in my classroom until after Labor Day.  This gave me a few more days to get acquainted with all the new Web 2.0 technologies I’d planned to introduce in class.

For my first day with students, in my all day pull-out class,  I had plans to show them all the wonderful Web 2.0 stuff I had learned about from my PLN during the summer.  Teaching these digital natives, they sometimes laugh while I flounder around as an immigrant with these technologies.  I’m thinking this stuff probably won’t be new to them- but it will be new using them in class.  In order to have a computer for each student -  I dutifully signed up for the computer lab…. for the the next four weeks!

I wanted this first class to be perfect,  so prior to going to the lab, we discussed our wiki, (which they kept thinking was Wikipedia- because other than that , they had never heard of a wiki) -that should have been my first clue!  I explained to them that any questions they had could be answered on the Assignment Page of our classroom WITHOUT walls (our wiki).

I tried to anticipate any question they might have; so I created screenjellies to SHOW them how to sign up for each site.  I also created  step by step instructions that I had typed out as I was going through the process of signing up my “dummy” student.  I wanted them to sign in and try EVERYTHING!!  They had a SMORGASBORG of Web 2.0 right in front of them.

With Parental Consent forms in hand and all students in front of a computer – I turned them loose!!  They had so much to do but all day to do it.  They had to join our wiki and other wikis that I signed us up for.  They had to sign up for and navigate around in Edmodo,  They were to play with Wordle, take pictures and video with Flipcams to use those pictures/videos with Animoto and Voicethreads. They were to sign up for an individual stock market account on weseed.com, then sign get their group signed up for our usual Stock Market Game after perusing weseed on their own.  Teams were to join eCybermission, check out this years problems on Odyssey of the Mind, examine our mission on First Lego League, play with Blabberize, & Vocaroo, and sign up for and play with Math and Science Gizmos on Explorelearning.com.

Well, they were SUPPOSED to do all of that!!  Even my carefully typed out step by step directions and meticulously created Screenjellies weren’t able to handle my students’ questions.  BUT, these are my digital natives so they should feel RIGHT AT HOME!!!  I thought they would TEACH ME how to use these sites more effectively!  Couldn’t they just click around and figure it out??

Some could, but I had to step back and think about the perfectionism that many of my gifted students display.  Even though some sites were learning games, some of my students didn’t look at them as games.  They were assignments given to them by their TEACHER.  I would urge them, “Just go play with them- try to figure it out!”  I had given instructions and Screenjellies to sign up and sign in… but the playing was up to them!!  I try hard not to be the sage on the stage… but because I assumed that they were accustomed to these technologies; I totally neglected to be a guide on the side.  This first day with Web 2.0 was a mess!!

So after that first day with my tangled web of 2.0 technologies, I totally re-did my lesson plans for the rest of the week – and we slowly untangled ourselves.  I projected the sites on the board in class and I walked them through different features.  I narrowed their choices and closed the SMORGASBORG – they had three sites with which to play.  It was then that my digital natives spread their wings… and flew.. like little flies so happy to be out of a tangled WEB 2.0.

Now each week, I introduce them to another couple of sites and show them the bells and whistles.  They enjoy the sites but,  since they’re not from the ATARI PONG generation (like myself), they aren’t as excited about them as I am.  They do enjoy the added computer time though.  They, (along with my PLN) have shown me more wonderful things that the internet has to offer us and what WE have to offer the internet through Web 2.0!

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 4th, 2009 at 6:22 pm and is filed under thoughts. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.