#12 Week 5 Rollyo

I have just finished exploring Rollyo. What a terrific idea! Now I need some time to think about how I want to use it. Tonight's not the night to begin this project, but I can already see the possibilities. This would be a great way to link curriculum topics for your staff. It would also be a useful tool for creating curriculum links for students to use on their projects. It would be especially useful if linked to the school website. Lots of possiblities I will need to explore.

Even though I realize I am behind in this coursework I am using ideas I have found. We have all 6th and 7th grade students blogging on ePals, which is a safe secure site that our school is part of. I thought since I was blogging I could definitely try it with my students. ePals has worked out really well as you need to register your students, and any staff you want to have privilidges. No one else has access to the site. The blogs about books are coming along nicely. As we also have non-readers, we have encouraged students to blog about anything they have read. A newspaper, magazine etc. So far so good. We set up the parameters ahead of time, and had parents sign a permission slip. We have had one student removed for inappropriate comments and language. Other than that so far all is going well. I would recommend it to others to try. I have had a couple of parent concerns, and by sharing what we are doing, and that site is open only to students in our school, they seem to be okay with this. Students are enjoying it from the conversations I am overhearing.

I used the Trading Card idea from Flickr with fourth graders doing National Monument research. What a hit! They each have a monument in Washington, D.C. to research. Two students are enlarging a map of the city, and students in groups of 2 are creating a trading card of their monument. We will print enough for all students so they can actually trade them, and then one will be printed to attach to the map. I have used heavier card stock, and tried printing 2 per page. On one I didn't cut off the end, but instead folded the paper back, and it actually stands! Two fifth grade teachers came by as we were trying this out, and they would also like to try the idea. The students are excited. I will have to take a photo and post it when we are done.

ssn