Friday, May 23, 2003
Fifth Graders Living the iLife, Part 2: three days on a tour bus
Two weeks ago, I stepped onto a tour bus with four iBooks, four digital cameras, forty-four fifth graders who had just spent the past two days learning how to use iPhoto 2 and Keynote, and high hopes. I've worked without a net before, but this time I felt like I was working without even a rope. Would the students be willing to participate in a technology project during their three-day trip, or would the equipment just sit on the bus? Had they learned enough about the hardware and software in such a short time that they would be able to put it to good use? Would my hotel room have enough electrical outlets to charge all these batteries? Did I remember to shave? I passed out a laptop and a camera to each adult chaperone, all of whom had agreed to help make this 'great experiment' possible. When I looked over a few minutes later to find one of the students showing her chaperone how Keynote works, I got that good feeling I'd been waiting for. I figured this just might work after all.
The students did a fantastic job of sharing the equipment. One of the few things that they didn't instinctively do right was that they were so fond of taking close-range pictures of each other against meaningless backdrops. Once they were reminded that they were going to need to turn their pictures into a presentable project, they began to find more worthy items to photograph. Because our trip had multiple destinations each day, having the iBooks with us on the bus (something that I had debated up until the last minute) worked out quite well. Students who were sitting with each other generally worked in pairs to upload photos, edit them, move them into Keynote, and create slides that contained meaningful information about each photo. Because we only had one iBook for each eleven students, this was not easy to orchestrate. Each pair of students was given only fifteen minutes of bus time with the iBook. The lesson learned here was to bring more iBooks, something we'll be able to do next year.
Then there was the issue of the lone digital camcorder that became a last-minute addition to our arsenal. I was concerned going in due to the fact that none of the students had been trained on how to use it. When we entered Sea World, I pulled one student aside, taught him how to use it, and allowed him to film for a bit. I told him that it was time to give the camcorder to the next student, and my fears about training vanished when he prompty took it over to her and taught her how to use it. Is there any well-designed technology that these kids can't eat up? But even so, the camcorder didn't make its way around to every student, so while it was a nice addition, it wasn't going to be the heart of the project.
I'm not sure whether it was the time spent in close quarters with so many children, or the fact that I was in the Magic Kingdom, but by the third day of the trip, I was feeling childish enough to pull out the camcorder on Thunder Mountain and film the ride. I share this only because the footage, which I had expected to watch once and delete, came in handy later. What was more exciting was the long bus ride home at the end of the trip. It was after dark, and the bus driver had turned off the lights. The only lights that could be seen were the glow of the four iBooks, which slowly made their way around the bus. By all rights, they should have been asleep by now, after three exhausting days away from home, but no one wanted to doze off and miss their chance with the laptop. So much for the fear that the kids wouldn't want to be bothered with the technology.
While I was pleased with the results, not everything went right. I made a conscious decision to break one of my own rules, which is to never, ever pull brand new equipment out of the box and immediately try to put it to meaningful use, without first becoming completely familiar with it (I'm speaking of the cameras, not the iBooks), and we ran into some issues as a result. Such things were to be expected with such an experimental project that had been assembled in such a short time. In addition, I failed to give the other adults on the trip adequate training with the equipment beforehand. This was entirely my fault, not theirs, and something that can easily be corrected next time around. The final pitfall was that looking back on the Keynote slides that the students had created, a few slides were so pointless that they warranted deletion. However, the students did an excellent job of adhering to our one hard and fast rule that every single slide had to have perfect spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar.
Once we got home, there was plenty more work to be done on the project. The teachers had agreed ahead of time to allow me to take the participating students in small groups the following week so that they would be able to complete their slides. Upon returning to work the following Monday morning, I became so stunningly busy with my other job duties that it would be a full week before I would get the chance to come back and work with the fifth graders. I feared that they would lose interest before I could get to them, and wouldn't want to put in the hard work this late in their last year of elementary school. But these fears were also erased as students asked me when we were going to work on the project every time I passed them in the hallway. The final results, which I'll write about in Part 3, were certainly worth waiting for. In fact, they were better than I ever could have imagined.
Two weeks ago, I stepped onto a tour bus with four iBooks, four digital cameras, forty-four fifth graders who had just spent the past two days learning how to use iPhoto 2 and Keynote, and high hopes. I've worked without a net before, but this time I felt like I was working without even a rope. Would the students be willing to participate in a technology project during their three-day trip, or would the equipment just sit on the bus? Had they learned enough about the hardware and software in such a short time that they would be able to put it to good use? Would my hotel room have enough electrical outlets to charge all these batteries? Did I remember to shave? I passed out a laptop and a camera to each adult chaperone, all of whom had agreed to help make this 'great experiment' possible. When I looked over a few minutes later to find one of the students showing her chaperone how Keynote works, I got that good feeling I'd been waiting for. I figured this just might work after all.
The students did a fantastic job of sharing the equipment. One of the few things that they didn't instinctively do right was that they were so fond of taking close-range pictures of each other against meaningless backdrops. Once they were reminded that they were going to need to turn their pictures into a presentable project, they began to find more worthy items to photograph. Because our trip had multiple destinations each day, having the iBooks with us on the bus (something that I had debated up until the last minute) worked out quite well. Students who were sitting with each other generally worked in pairs to upload photos, edit them, move them into Keynote, and create slides that contained meaningful information about each photo. Because we only had one iBook for each eleven students, this was not easy to orchestrate. Each pair of students was given only fifteen minutes of bus time with the iBook. The lesson learned here was to bring more iBooks, something we'll be able to do next year.
Then there was the issue of the lone digital camcorder that became a last-minute addition to our arsenal. I was concerned going in due to the fact that none of the students had been trained on how to use it. When we entered Sea World, I pulled one student aside, taught him how to use it, and allowed him to film for a bit. I told him that it was time to give the camcorder to the next student, and my fears about training vanished when he prompty took it over to her and taught her how to use it. Is there any well-designed technology that these kids can't eat up? But even so, the camcorder didn't make its way around to every student, so while it was a nice addition, it wasn't going to be the heart of the project.
I'm not sure whether it was the time spent in close quarters with so many children, or the fact that I was in the Magic Kingdom, but by the third day of the trip, I was feeling childish enough to pull out the camcorder on Thunder Mountain and film the ride. I share this only because the footage, which I had expected to watch once and delete, came in handy later. What was more exciting was the long bus ride home at the end of the trip. It was after dark, and the bus driver had turned off the lights. The only lights that could be seen were the glow of the four iBooks, which slowly made their way around the bus. By all rights, they should have been asleep by now, after three exhausting days away from home, but no one wanted to doze off and miss their chance with the laptop. So much for the fear that the kids wouldn't want to be bothered with the technology.
While I was pleased with the results, not everything went right. I made a conscious decision to break one of my own rules, which is to never, ever pull brand new equipment out of the box and immediately try to put it to meaningful use, without first becoming completely familiar with it (I'm speaking of the cameras, not the iBooks), and we ran into some issues as a result. Such things were to be expected with such an experimental project that had been assembled in such a short time. In addition, I failed to give the other adults on the trip adequate training with the equipment beforehand. This was entirely my fault, not theirs, and something that can easily be corrected next time around. The final pitfall was that looking back on the Keynote slides that the students had created, a few slides were so pointless that they warranted deletion. However, the students did an excellent job of adhering to our one hard and fast rule that every single slide had to have perfect spelling, capitalization, punctuation, and grammar.
Once we got home, there was plenty more work to be done on the project. The teachers had agreed ahead of time to allow me to take the participating students in small groups the following week so that they would be able to complete their slides. Upon returning to work the following Monday morning, I became so stunningly busy with my other job duties that it would be a full week before I would get the chance to come back and work with the fifth graders. I feared that they would lose interest before I could get to them, and wouldn't want to put in the hard work this late in their last year of elementary school. But these fears were also erased as students asked me when we were going to work on the project every time I passed them in the hallway. The final results, which I'll write about in Part 3, were certainly worth waiting for. In fact, they were better than I ever could have imagined.
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