1 to 1 ideas

We are beginning to look at tablets (or laptops, or BYOD, or netbooks, or etc) for our students and the many, many, many aspects that are involved with that. 97 of them to be exact! I am working on completing a 12 page document which has 97 questions involving a 1 to 1 initiative. The first question, and probably the most important, is "why is your school interested in implementing a 1 to 1 initiative at your school". Can you answer that question? If you can answer that one, I have a few more. Is your network ready for 1 to 1? Are you teachers ready for 1 to 1? Is your budget ready for 1 to 1? Alright, 4 down, 93 to go! If anybody has some insights and wants to comment, by all means feel free!

image from Flickr search using Creative Commons

a little teaser

Nicole and I have been talking about some new games to use with the Wii. We have two new games planed with the 6th grades and one different game (new game but same math practice) with the 4th grades. You will have to check back with me next week to see how it goes! I will give you a hint - swish, swish, swish (and it's not basketball)! See you next week!

Playing Wii with the 6th grade

Nicole and I meet after each class to discuss how things went. We have been excited and impressed with the students work and how smoothly the whole process has been. So, with our discussions, we decided to open the Wii up to the 6th graders as well. Nicole wanted to play Brain Age with these students so we could review negative and positive integers.
Before class started I came in and created an account for the 6th grade. I also went through all the opening screens (there are a few with this game) and went to the correct spot- Practice, Compute, Balloon Pop, and Hard Level (so there would be negative numbers). During the game numbers come up on the screen (between 5 and 6 of them). The balloons are all different shapes, sizes, colors and they move (revolve and shake) around the screen. The task is simple, pop the balloons in order from lowest to highest. In the practice level you get 10 balloons to pop and see how fast you can accomplish the task. It is not all about just speed though, you have to get the correct order also! Nicole had each student do 5 balloons and then pause the game. We would then switch with the next student who would finish up that round. All of the students at their desks had to write down the smallest and the largest numbers only (and even that was difficult if somebody hit the wrong balloon too early). The students at their seats had to concentrate and pay attention to the screens to try and get the numbers. I also wrote down the numbers so Nicole would have something to compare the papers to (and even I have to say that I missed a few numbers). After the 2 students (and 10 chances) went by the game would give a brain score. Once a row was finished, Nicole took all of those scores and got an average for the row. Each row competed against each other for highest average score. Again, the students seemed to enjoy themselves and reviewed negative numbers quickly. I heard comments like "This is fun" and "This is hard" from different students during game play. Also got cheers as the students did well.

Decimal subtraction and yards to feet conversion

So, since our first day of Wii game play on Halloween Nicole has given the students a couple of lessons on subtracting decimals and on converting between yards and feet. Both of these are important to our game play because you can do both of these things while playing Wii Golf. If you have read past blog posts you know that these two issues made it more difficult to play with the 4th grade the first time we tried. So, Nicole gave the students a quick lesson about lining up the decimal points and doing straight subtraction. Then she discussed with them about how many feet were in a yard and how to go about figuring out multiples of that conversion. This made our second attempt at playing Wii Golf much more fluid.

According to Nicole, the class began the same way, with the students all getting out paper and pencils. Nicole again ran the room from the front. However, I wasn't able to be there at the beginning of class (I was working on a computer issue in another room with a guest speaker). Much to my enjoyment (and maybe a little surprise), Nicole had gotten started without me and really was rolling right along! When I got in the classroom (about 10 minutes late), the students were coming up and swinging then doing the math at their seats. When we got to a conversion problem (45 yards till the green became 17.5 feet) Nicole led the class. First, she rounded the 17.5 feet up to 18 feet (a multiple of 3). Then we figured out how many yards was in 18 feet and then did the subtraction. (Yes, you could go the other way and figure out how many feet were in 45 yards and then do the subtraction, teacher choice there). Soon there after we were able to also practice subtraction with decimals. We went from 17.5 feet to the hole to 6.8 feet. The students lined up their decimals and proceeded to subtract. As Nicole asked for the answer it took a couple of times for the students to get the correct vocabulary (10 feet and 7 tenths). I am sure that this will get better with practice.
The students were again excited to play and we still kept them involved in the process for the whole class period. I again heard several "this is cool", and "good hits" during the games. All in all, another successful day of game play in the classroom.

2nd class, 1st day

As I continue posting notes about using the Wii in my school, I will probably combine both classes into one post (unless something extraordinary happens) to keep the posts from getting out of control. However, I wanted to make the first post for the separate classes separate. So, this is the 2nd half of the 4th grade Math class.

(picture is one of the student's page collected at the end of class).
As class started Nicole again passed out paper and pencil and explained what we were going to do. As she was more comfortable in how the game progressed, this time she ran everything from the front of the classroom. She put the problems on the board as they appeared throughout the game. The students again had to write down each problem as they came up and Nicole went through the classroom asking different students for the answers. She would then go through the problem up on the board using the correct terminology (borrowing, carrying, etc) reviewing step by step. For example, the first yardage was 396 to the hole. The student hit the ball and they had 164 yards left to the hole. So how far did he hit the ball? 396-164 = 232 yards (which happened to be one of the longest hits of the day). The students went on coming up and hitting the ball as they were supposed to. They were very excited and especially excited when the ball went in the hole! There was a good amount of cheering during hits and several "oohs" and "aahs" as well. This half took a little longer to play and the last person got to go as the bell was ringing. At the end of class we again collected the papers to see what the students had written down.
We had the same issue in this half as we did in the first, the student unfamiliar with decimal subtraction and with conversion from yards to feet (or feet to yards). One difference with this group, Nicole did have to remind a student to write down the problems as they were busy focusing on the golf more so than the Math. I know, hard to believe isn't it!

4th grade Subtraction, class 1

Let me begin by saying that since this is my first post about using the Wii in the new school this post may be a little longer winded than usual. There are a couple of different things about my new school. First of all, there are more kids (almost 3 times as many). So, we have two classes of every grade. Our 4th grade is the class that we chose to begin the Wii project with. Half of the class has Math in the morning (first period), and the other half is in the afternoon (after lunch). Nicole and I had obviously already decided what we were going to play and discuss how she would keep track of classroom management. We decided to begin with Wii Resort Golf (the Resort game came with the Wii so no cost involved with another game yet). We were going to play 3 holes on course A. The course doesn't really matter, and there are 3 to choose from so the students can have different views and starting yardages at least a few times. (Of course, even if they play the same course each time will have different yardage because each hit will be a different distance.) The option for holes is 3, 9 or a full 18 so we decided that 3 would be the way to go.


So, I went in first thing and set up the Wii in the classroom. We have the projectors hooked up via video cable and audio goes directly into a radio via an input cable. I just hooked up the Wii using the included cables (again, no real cost involved). When the students came in we had the system up and ready to go at the intro Wii page. As soon as they walked in most of the students recognized the music and asked about playing the Wii (we had told them that we were going to play it earlier so it wasn't a complete surprise or anything). Nicole had each student get out paper and pencil and take their seats. There was a lot of excitement and even a few Ohhs and Ahhs as we got into the setup for the game. Nicole had all the students put their names on their papers and number them first through 10 (we will need more numbers than that). The yardage to the first hole was 396 yards so we had all the students write down that first number as problem number 1. We gave the controller to our first student (for this time we just started in the front and rent in row order) and had him swing away. After he hit all the students put the distance left to the hole (which is what the computer tells you) and they figured out how far he had hit the ball! This went on two more times until we hit our first snag. The student hit it on the green which changed the distance from yards to feet. At his time the 4th graders do not know how to convert from yards to feet (or vice versa) so we just skipped this problem and went on to the next (since this post Nicole has done a lesson on conversion so this problem has been solved). Our next problem came in with decimal subtraction and addition. Once you are on the green it gives you the distance to the tenths place. Again, the 4th graders didn't have much experience with lining up the decimal places so that took some time to show (Nicole did it right there during the lesson). They understood the idea of lining up the decimal points and doing the operation well enough. Then we came to our third different thing (not really a problem, just something different) of the class. The next person hit the ball and went beyond the cup which makes a new math problem. She had 43.2 feet to go to the cup, but she hit it beyond the cup 18.3 feet (she really got a hold of the club!) so, how far did she hit the ball. We asked the students to decide what operation we were going to need to do; and, after a little prodding, we got the correct answer of addition. Again, not a problem, but a different task at hand. We had enough time for everybody to hit and since there was still a few minutes left in class they wanted the teachers to hit. Both Nicole, myself, and the 4th grade homeroom teacher (who joins the class for Math) had a turn. The students were all very excited when we hit the ball (we wound up putting it in the cup). At the end of class Nicole collected all of the student's sheets so she could go over them.

All in all, everything went well. The students seemed to get what was going on and all worked on math for the entire class period. I heard some good comments, my favorite being "This is the funnest math class ever!"
pictures from nintendo.com website Last picture copy of student's work collected at end of class

New year, New school, Same ideas

So, I have been gone from the blog for several months. What in the world have I been doing? Sometimes I ask myself that very question. This time I have an answer. I have moved to another school (in my same area) and I have a different role in this school. I am still the Tech Coordinator, but have a lot more technology to coordinate. It is a bigger school (almost 500 students) and they have about 200 computers. So, I remain busy trying to make sure that all my teachers are using technology to the best of their ability. I do miss my old school and staff, but lucky for me I still get to keep in touch with them often and Chris and I are still talking about all different aspects of teaching and tech.

Speaking of Chris and I, we were chosen to present at the annual FETC (Florida Educational Technology Conference) this January! We are excited. Our topic? Using a popular gaming system in your classroom. i.e. - The WII! If you are going to be in Orlando at the end of January for the conference, please come check us out! You can find out more information about the FETC by visiting the website - www.fetc.org

So, you may be wondering, with this presentation opportunity, are you going to be able to bring the Wii and your research into the new school? Well, wonder no more, the answer is yes! I was lucky enough to hook up with another teacher who is interested in the idea of using games to teach content in the classroom! Her name is Nicole and she is the math teacher for our 4th-6th grade classes. I was talking to her about some of the things that Chris and I had done in the previous school and I could see that she was interested. We brought the idea to administration and got our principal's blessing. With that vote of confidence Nicole and I started talking about how we can use the Wii in the classroom!

Problem 1, get a Wii!
But wait! As I was crawling around on the floor of one of our coaches/athletic director's office, following a Cat 5 cable, (a postition that any tech person is very familiar with) what did I come across? A brand new Wii! Still in the box! One of the parents had donated it to the coach for athletics (they use it with the Dance Dance games and other move oriented activities throughout the year - note to self make sure to add that game opportunity to list of uses for Wii in school). "Do you mind if we borrow the Wii to use in the classroom?" I asked. "Of course you can use it" she said! Problem 1 out of the way!

Problem 2, hook it up.

The classroom has a projector hanging from the roof, pointing to a interactive board. I was able to get a video/audio splitter and hook the Wii right into the feed going to the projector. The classroom has speakers so the audio goes into there. Bam! 77 inches of Wii goodness booming out of 100 watts of dolby power. Problem 2, in the bag!

Problem 3, what software will we use?
But wait! I still have the work that Chris and I did with our 5th graders when we started this whole thing 2 years ago! We will turn our focus back to Mathmatics and concentrate on programs that worked. We can use Wii Sports and Brain Age for starters. We can focus on subtraction, addition, averages, ratios and integers (both negative and positive). Nicole and I have also begun discussing using other software packages (more posts about those later) as we branch out in the class. Problem 3, piece of cake!

Problem 4 - which class will we use?

After some discussion, Nicole decided (and I agreed) that we would start with 4th grade and go from there. Because I have already worked with 5th graders I was excited to be moving to a different grade to see how things worked. We will have some issues with them not being as well versed in the standards such as conversion from yards to feet but that is the exciting part! Problem 4 - No Problem!

Problem 5 - when do we start?

As you will see, we have already started! I have been lax in my posting (insert many excuses here) of what we have been doing, but that will all change now! As of this posting we have already used the software 5 times, (4 times with 4th grade and 1 time with 6th grade), and had good results. I will work at getting my notes and thoughts posted here during this week for anyone that is interested. Nicole and I have already been planing ahead for other Math lessons and other software packages. All in all I couldn't be happier with the new information that we have been able to gather. Please keep watching for new posts and new ideas for using the Wii! I am sure that new problems will arise to keep us on our toes...