Google Scavenger Hunt

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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on May 31, 2007 at 4:51pm

Lucy,
How much time did your sixth graders have to complete the exercises? Are quicker learners able to assist slower ones, or do you personally provide all the additional support they need individually? Are the kids able to see each other's work? I'm just trying to get some context for the exercises. The exercises seem pretty challenging. I wonder how many students would more quickly and accurately complete them compared with me! I expect, though, that I'd enjoy the challenge as much as they did.

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Permalink Reply by Lucy Gray on May 31, 2007 at 5:15pm

My sixth graders are going to have a week to do this. They are pretty bright kids, and a couple seem to be sort of lost. They are not looking at each other's individual answer sheets, but that's possible to do with Google Docs and Spreadsheets. It's totally okay for them to help each other. My role is to circulate the room and troubleshoot as needed. Frankly, I think the most challenging part was getting them all to sign up for Google Accounts and then to access the document I created and make a copy for themselves. There will be one shared document for the spreadsheet results.

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Permalink Reply by Skip Zilla on May 31, 2007 at 6:57pm

Your students are nearing the end of the school year and will be moving on to someone else's charge next academic year. Have you had any general discussions with educators in your own school or at a conference away from school that address the question of the effect of discontinuity in the use of these great tools on students proficiency in using them? It seems to me that planning/coordinating the introduction and curriculum use of these and other tools must span a change of teachers, breaks in school attendance, and grade promotion. How do you think schools can best manage a kid's "portfolio" of developing tech skills over years she attends a particular school? (I won't even ask how she might best carry that portfolio to a new school.)

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Permalink Reply by Lucy Gray on May 31, 2007 at 7:19pm

Skip... did you intend to make this a separate thread here in the forum? You pose some great questions, worthy of their own discussion! We have not had a discussion about ensuring continuity, and I'm not sure it's possible in a school as large as mine, but I think it's time we had this discussion! Where's the reinforcement of skills throughout a student's academic career?

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Permalink Reply by Kristian Still on June 1, 2007 at 6:38am

I like the idea. We do something similar but through a chat function. We post questions and students open a 2nd browser, search and its a race to post the responses.

The other thought I have was to create a trailfire trail. Finding the website and asking them to search the webpage for the information?

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Permalink Reply by Lucy Gray on June 1, 2007 at 6:44am

Great ideas!!

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Permalink Reply by Sylvia Martinez on June 1, 2007 at 8:26am

Hi everybody,
I made a "sandbox" spreadsheet to test some of the features of this LOOKUP function, it's here:
http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=pGrggZgOtLXEJ45ijsLulZg

This is the non-editable version, to be able to edit it, the owner (me) has to add your email addresss to a list, then you get an email with a different URL and you can edit it, and we can chat (inside the spreadsheet) if we are both there. It keeps track of changes too (sort of like wikis do). It's really a must see thing to see the shared verson and play with it live.

If anyone would like to play, just email me and I'll invite you as a collaborator.

Then you can just change the top row or first column headings and watch it find things. Kind of cool.

The visible spreadsheet doesn't do justice to how much nicer it looks when you are a colloborator and can see it change in real time, and the footnotes don't clutter up everything.

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Permalink Reply by RA Funderburk on February 10, 2008 at 10:51am

I want to play in the sandbox. :)

Thanks!
RA Funderburk
funderr@hpisd.org

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Haffey on February 10, 2009 at 5:33pm

I'd like to play in the sandbox.

chaffey@norwood.k12.ma.us

charlie

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Permalink Reply by John Plummer on February 11, 2008 at 2:17pm

Filamentality is also good for making webquests or treasure hunts. You can keep them in their server or save them to your computer to upload to your own site. I made some webquests for my English students very quickly with this tool. It creates hotlists, scrapbooks, samplers, etc. Its well worth taking a look at :-)

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Permalink Reply by Denise Stewart on March 3, 2010 at 11:56am

I presented on filamentality last year. It is an awesome site and most importantly, it stays up for a year (or longer if you access it regularly). Oh, and it is free:)

http://www.kn.att.com/

Denise

www.ellteacherpros.com

www.teachingsuccesseswithells.blogspot.com

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Permalink Reply by Charlie Haffey on February 10, 2009 at 5:30pm

Love the project. I might suggest entering latitude and longitude as a single (decimal) number, or break up degrees, minutes and seconds into separate columns. That way you can sort the table according to lat or long, descending or ascending.

Charlie

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