Monday, December 27, 2021

Virtual Artifacts

 This is the last full week of 2021. Hooray! Just when I think we've taken two steps forward with dealing with the latest iteration of COVID, we take three steps backwards. We significantly reduced the amount of people we saw this year for Christmas and avoided non-essential outings - although I am quite tempted to make a run out to the craft store to pick up items so I can scrapbook.

My immediate family and I spent a lot of time together, hanging out, playing Animal Crossing New Horizons and chatting. One topic that came up was the introduction of new vocabulary. My husband taught me about AWFuLs (Affluent, White Female Liberals) and about NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens). 

This is my husband's explanation to me: A NFT is a digital asset that represents a real-world object (e.g. music, videos, illustrations, or in-game items). NFTs are unique or have a limited amount of them in existence by design. The example my husband gave is when Vincent VanGogh painted "Starry Night". Someone owns the actual painting of "Starry Night". A NFT is a digital equivalent to that. That doesn't mean that people can't obtain prints or copies; it is just that the original item is owned by someone and worth something. Some see it as ridiculous and frivolous as collectible trading cards, whereas others see it as the next evolution in art acquisition and production. It has similarities to bitcoin and cryptocurrency.

I myself don't pretend to understand all of this, but I can relate to sentimental value being placed on digital creations. I've been playing Animal Crossing New Horizons and the special DLC (downloadable content) Paradise Planning. I've created over forty virtual vacation spots for various villagers. As one of my November blog post said, I've really enjoyed making these digital places. Unlike my scrapbooking, I won't print physical copies of the photos I've taken - but I can enjoy and share them via this digital means (my blog). Having said that, I always print out a copy of the year's blog posts in a bound book (thanks Blog2Print!) so I guess I will eventually have a physical copy of all of these builds. Be forewarned - what will follow is a ton of screen shots! (Some of the homes I have remodeled, so I will only include the most recent versions.)

1st = Eloise Relaxing Reading Room


Apple's Apple Orchard

Julia's Guitar Music Room

Cherry's Fashion Show Runway

Cleo's "Bathed in Elegance" Home

Nov.15/21 = Truffles' Game Show Program

Nov.16/21 = Patty's Grilling Place

Nov.19/21 = Pizza Power Island Restaurant

Nov.20/21 = Bianca's Winter Wonderland

Nov.21/21 = Ken's Dojo

Nov.21/21 = Second Sip Island Café

Nov.23/21 = Winnie's Stable of Stars

Nov.24/21 = Kevin's Planet Peace Force HQ

Nov.26/21 = Frobert's Bingo Hall

Nov.26/21 = Bertha's Basket Bungalow

Nov.27/21 = Shino's Japan Rock Concert

Nov.28/21 = Alice's Elegant Cottage


Dec.1/21 = Lucy and Brie's Toy Place


Dec.1/21 = Goose and Peewee's Muscle Mansion

Dec.2/21 = Alphonso's Cake Sky Castle

Dec.2/21 = Deidre's Little Slice of Fall


Dec.2/21 = Northern General Island Hospital

Dec.3/21 = Keaton's Beachside Cafe

Dec.3/21 = Prince's Robot Battle Arena

Dec.5/21 = Renee's Blank Slate

Dec.8/21 = Vivian's Dance Workout Place

Dec.9/21 = Harry's Messy Manor

Dec.11/21 = Poshingtons Island Boutique

Dec.12/12 = Cesar's Half-Built House

Dec.14/21 = Ketchup's Tomato House

Dec.16/21 = Ione's Diva Residence

Dec.16/21 = Melba's Fairy Tale Forest

Dec.17/21 = Phoebe's Flames

Dec.18/21 = Analise's Saint Eligius Sanctuary

Dec.19/21 = Elmer's Sock Store

Dec.19/21 = Julian and Timbra's Cloud 9 Chalet

Dec.20/21 = Egbert's Number Niche

Dec.21/21 = Olaf's Matador Ring

Dec.21/21 = Hazel's Comic Illustrator Corner

Dec.22/21 = Sasha's Moon Manor

Dec.22/21 = Velma and Ozzie's United Sq P.S.

I haven't yet uploaded photos taken after December 23 (and I missed Mallory's November 30 house because it wasn't pasting in chronological order), but you can see that there's a lot!

I'm not the only one thinking about digital properties. The Association for Media Literacy recently announced an exciting collaboration about digital estate planning and the importance of arranging for what happens to your virtual assets when you die.




https://q107.com/news/8386984/canada-planning-digital-inheritance/

Monday, December 20, 2021

Inquiry Project Conundrum

 It's the "winter break" - which of course means that I'm still thinking about school. It always takes me several days to reset my brain.

Last week, I wrote about my collaborative partner classes. That's only part of my teaching assignment. I provide prep coverage to several in-person and virtual classes, for a variety of subjects. I teach health, media, "library", "problem solving", and social studies. 

I am a teacher-librarian, and I teach social studies. A huge chunk of the social studies curriculum in Ontario is based on the inquiry process. It's a natural fit, but natural doesn't equal easy.


Recently, I was pretty pleased with myself because I designed a controlled inquiry project for my Grade 1 and my Grade 2 students. I don't like inquiry projects that generate cookie cutter responses. I also don't like inquiry projects that lack critical thinking components, because then it's too easy to plagiarize content. I'm influenced by Carol Koechlin's Ban Those Bird Units and Trevor Mackenzie's Dive Into Inquiry. I was convinced that by now, four months in, the students would be ready for this type of task.




I've been working with these students online since September. It's not been easy. Many of them are at the early stages of their reading potential, so requiring written work was something I try to shy away from as frequently as I can. It took them a long time to become familiar with different sorts of file types (e.g. a Jamboard, a Google Slides deck, etc.) Attempting to schedule semi-private oral interviews with every student took a very, very long time, especially when I only have three forty-minute periods with them per week. 


Hello and thank you FlipGrid for providing part of a solution. I've done a few mini-tasks with the students to get them comfortable with the web-based, platform-agnostic video-posting tool. Most of them have figured out how to post a clip. Using FlipGrid meant that I could listen/watch the students outside of class and I have a better idea about how much is their own work. Part of the sharing for this inquiry project will involve a FlipGrid video.


For the Grade 1s, the unit theme is "Our Changing Roles and Responsibilities". I was actually inspired by one of the prompts in the actual expectations to help formulate this question template to guide their investigations: "Are you a better X or Y?" The goal is for them to compare two roles that they currently hold. There is no right or wrong answer. Here is my process outline I posted, as well as the single-point rubric that will be used to assess the project.




We also brainstormed the different roles that the students have and created a list of the actions a person good at that role would exhibit. (The snippets I snagged to show here on the blog do not show the entire list. Other roles include "friend", "member of a religion", "team member", and "pet owner".)



I was checking in with the students during class to see how they were progressing with their inquiry. I asked some of them to tell me about their personal inquiry question.

"My question is 'Am I a better chef or a driver?'", declared one student.

"My question is 'Am I a better sister or a ninja?", announced another student.

A third student showed me their Google document, where they are to write their question, and the sentence read: "Am I a better friend". 

I had to reiterate that we were supposed to pick TWO roles that we CURRENTLY held, so we could compare. Thankfully, other students selected roles that are part of their identities.

For the Grade 2s, their unit theme is "Changing Family and Community Traditions". We've already conducted family interviews as well as peer interviews, which was the inquiry prompt for this grade. Instead, the inquiry question I used was "How many different ways can we sort five holidays?" Here is the steps they need to take to complete the inquiry project, and the assessment rubric.



I'm trying not to compare the in-person Grade 2s to the virtual Grade 2s, but when I do, I worry about the online students. Mrs. Commisso's Grade 2 students were able to research several different holidays and use subtopics to organize their information. They used Jamboards and Google Slides and paper graphic organizers to sort and share their facts. I've simplified the task for the virtual Grade 2s. They only need to share one fact from each holiday, and they were allowed to select up to four holidays that they were already familiar with for their comparisons. We learned about a couple of holidays (Divali, Boxing Day) together. Despite this reduction, I'm really worried that many of the students are not going to be successful and I'm not sure what to do to support them even more than I already have. This is not to say that everyone in the class is lost. There are several students who have embraced the mini-lessons on making a chart and have developed several charts comparing their holidays. Once again, I'm not asking for a lot of writing; I just want evidence of original thinking. 

This will be the last big assignment dedicated for this unit of study. I hope that my inquiry project was not too ambitious and that students will be able to demonstrate that they have learned a little something during our time together. Fingers crossed!