Room With A View

My students and I have been checking in with the Go North expedition this week. Some academics, teachers, and adventures are travelling via dogsled to the ANWR area of Alaska. The expedition is amazing and well worth checking out. Not only are they taking all the food and equipment they’ll need to survive in Alaska during the winter but they’re hauling sat phones, laptops, still and video camers too so we can all tag along!
Right now the dogs are travelling by truck from Minnesota to Alaska. My class and I have been using Mapbuilder to track the team’s progress. We’ve created a map and have posted it on our school’s webserver. It’s our first attempt at using the program. You can find our map here.

Kudos to Tim Lauer for writing about Mapbuilder on his blog and to Tim Wilson at the Savvy Technologist for writing and podcasting about the Go North! Arctic National Wildlife Refuge 2006.

I’ve created a monster! Well not exactly but it feels like it. I’ve created a monster of marking. My class and I have started a wiki. I’m not ready to post the wiki’s url. We’re not ready to go public yet. We’ve only been working on it for a few weeks yet I’m having trouble keeping up with everything that’s happening on the site. In the past 24 hours there have been over 80 posts. Most of the post have just been minor changes but still I’m trying to keep track of them all.

I’ve noticed a couple of interesting things so far.

First, several of my students stay up too late. The wiki lets me see the time students post their work. Last week a student posted at 10:29 p. m. They’re fourth graders!

Second, one of my students was absent today. He wasn’t feeling well yesterday so I wasn’t surprised. When I checked the wiki tonight I see that he posted at 8:45, 11:25, 12:30, and 15:15.

Lastly, the writing process of planning, drafting, revising, editing, and publishing has gone out the window. The kids are writing, publishing, revising, publishing, and writing some more all at the same time. I’m not sure if this is a good thing. More later.

I’m finally taking the leap and starting a blog. I’ve had webpages over the years but I feel that a blog focussing on teaching and learning with technology is now in order. I’ll post more but for now this will have to be enough–at least I’ve removed the default text from this page.