Digital Explorers

We’re piloting a club in school we’re calling Digital Explorers; more details can be found here, but this post represents the reflections from the initial session.

During the first Digital Explorers session, the students were to:

• Create an account in Edmodo.
• Identify some attributes of an explorer and post them to a Wallwisher wall.
• Choose then use an online tool to create an avatar (Clay Yourself or DoppelMe)
• Upload their avatar to their Edmodo profile.

A brief overview and initial instructions to create their Edmodo account were provided through a site within our SharePoint learning platform. The reasoning for this was to ensure that all activities delivered through Digital Explorers remain ‘live’ and thus are always available for students unable to attend the live sessions. An added benefit is that students unable to be in school for whatever reason, have a valuable and hopefully interesting set of activities to become involved with.

Given that the skills I hope Digital Explorers club can foster include that of independence, especially from the need for teacher guidance, and the capability to develop initiative, I tried to do as little as possible after greeting the students. It was simply a matter of pointing them at the instructions and letting them get on with it.

Observations:

One other issue arose when one of the Explorers was faced with the choice of avatar generator. Having asked me “Which one do we use?” and being advised that the choice was hers entirely, it was noteworthy that that elicited a further query “But which one is the best?” Inidicative perhaps of the degree to which teacher reassurance is needed, for that student at least.

We did encounter one technical issue where when Clay Yourself generates the final image, it tries to do so in a pop-up window. Our settings in IE cause a drop-down message bar asking whether to temporarily allow pop-ups for this site. Unfortunately choosing ‘yes’ then refreshes the page resulting in the created avatar being lost! One to remember.

A further activity was available in which  we were going to capture a webcam photo, then look at how we might use that, but manipulate it in such a way as to make it less identifiable (Textorizer & Photo2Text). Though we didn’t get that far, it will be interesting to see whether any of the Explorers find the time to do that. Although no-one managed to post their created avatar to their Edmodo profile, I suggested they might care to do that before the next session. As I write this, encouragingly, two of them have already done so.

(Photo – cc licensed ( BY ) flickr photo by Gastev: http://flickr.com/photos/gastev/3600242127/)

>101 Questions?

Recently Dan Meyer kicked off a Math(s)-themed project which has gained considerable traction. There are two sides to the project, but both hinge on either a single photograph or 1 minutes worth of video which acts as stimulus material. The 101 Questions site is clean and uncluttered, encouraging the user to focus on the main conceit – ‘What’s the first question that comes to your mind?’ when you are presented randomly with one from a database of images and videos.

On the one side are the contributors – anyone challenged to present an image which ‘perplexes’ the viewer sufficiently to want to ask a question. On the other side are the viewers – those challenged to provide an answer to that simple question.

Which set me thinking how this idea could be introduced in any subject in the curriculum as a way of stimulating questioning in our students, questioning rather than answering. I wouldn’t want to put words in Dan’s keyboard, but I guess having students ask questions demands of them much greater metal processing than answeringquestions the teacher has asked, to which there are often a finite number (one?) possible responses.

So maybe a lesson starter might consist of a randomly generated image (or images) for which the students have to say/write ‘What’s the first question that comes to your mind?’ The 101 Questions site could be used to provide the images, or they could have been preselected (Flickr, Picasa) in order to set up activities to come later in the lesson. Reviewing the questions that students have suggested might initiate interesting discussions – they get to drive how the lesson starts. Are you up for that challenge?

Then there’s the flip-side. Once students are used to thinking of questions about images, make them the source of those images. Have them search for images they think would perplex others and challenge other people’s thinking. Gather the images by whatever means are open to you and present them to the class. How will they react to images chosen by their peers? What will their questions be like? How will those who submitted the images feel about the responses? Managed well, it could be a rich, metacognitive experience where students learn about their learning, about each other … and maybe a bit about your subject too!