One of the EBL challenges last week was to visit the website “scribble scoop” and use creative tools to communicate one new thing that was learned. The kiddos weren’t really sure what to do at first and their interest was slow going. “what do you do on scribblescoop.com?” “I don’t know.” They were invited to visit the website and simply explore – look into the various posts, watch interesting videos, read short articles, and view images. But they were not told what specifically to watch, look at, or read. So they stumbled a bit. Sometimes we forget how often children are told what to do, even despite our best efforts to offer choices. Once they got comfortable with the website, what it had to offer, and the idea that they were not going to be told “how” to interact with the website, they gradually grew more and more excited. “Look at this blob fish! That is disgusting.” “Octopus escape! Look, he’s moving the cap off!” I observed them happily sharing their new knowledge with the people next to them and to friends across the room. “What if you went swimming and you see this!” “That is very scary. What did you click on?” “They have go-pro’s on their helmets so they can film the whole thing!” As I was getting ready to leave, the kids were engaged in their creative descriptions of what they learned. Many were drawing images of scenes from videos or still images and writing down some ideas: “scribble scoop makes fun of stuff.” “I’m drawing that thing – it’s a Pokémon.” “I’m not a very good drawer.” While I certainly love children using drawing as a means of communication, the experience the kids had exploring this site was certainly not fully communicated via their drawings this time!
1 Comment
This week I spent some time in Faff’s workshop on fonts! Sadly I missed the first part of the workshop as I was helping a sweet kiddo, so when I walked in the kids were already hard at work designing their very own fonts. They graciously explained that they were using the template Faff’s provided to creatively imagine their own letters/font. They likened this practice to a sort of “fancy writing.” Molly declared that she was making “butterfly fonts.” They would eventually upload these fonts to a website and then be able to actually type with their own personally designed font!
I asked if they were thinking about a consistent style for their font or just kind of going crazy with each letter. Chloe mentioned that she was just kinda going for it, while Cyri noted that “mine are all kind of similar. I’m trying to make them kind of wavy.” I told Tula that hers looked a little block like, and she informed me “that’s what they're supposed to be.” The template they were using had upper and lowercase letters, and then some symbols at the bottom. While some of the kids designed their own version of the symbols, Molly and Addy chose to re-imagine some new symbols. Molly told me that she was going to draw a butterfly in one space so that when she used that “letter” it would actually be a butterfly! I told her it was kind of like her own emoji! Addy seemed inspired by this and did the same thing! “I made it so that instead of getting these letters [the original odd symbols] when you press that button you get these things.” These kiddos were reinventing their idea of what communication could look like, utilizing the new forms of digital language that they are becoming so comfortable with. On Wednesday I spent some time observing an architecture workshop which helped our kiddos explore how to build a scale model. The first steps of this involved measuring a room and building it digitally on the websites “home styler” or “room styler.”
There was a lot of collaboration during this first step, as the measuring tapes and rooms were rather large! Molly, Jazzlyn, and Bodhi worked to measure David’s old office. “This is 13 feet exactly.” “But how many inches?” “It was exactly 13 feet.” “With how many inches?” “Let’s look at 13 feet to see how many inches it is.” “156 inches!” This back and forth exchange was interesting to observe. Bodhi wanted to record his measurement in inches while Molly and Jazzlyn were working in feet. Bodhi’s seemingly simple question got a bit lost in translation, and challenged the kiddos to think about which form of measurement they were using and how they were different. Next they had to transfer their measurements into the design website of their choosing. They had to create everything to the correct size, and worked to add walls, doorways, and other elements of the room they were creating (like a desk or bean bag chairs!). “Oh my god, it’s 3D! I’m inside my house!” They continued to work together to learn the details of the website. “What about a doorway?” Jovian asked Parker. “Go to ‘building’ and then look for ‘doors.’” “How do you get it bigger?” Jazzlyn asked, obviously trying to make sure her design was in the right scale. It was great to see the students so engaged with numbers, design, and visual thinking! These IDEA School kiddos love bugs – they always have! So Sally’s workshop on Wednesday about creating bug habitats was bound to please! To begin this work, the kiddos needed to do some research. Yes, it is easy to catch bugs in the wash, but what do we do with them then? Sally posed this big question to her group: what do we need to know to take care of bugs? The kids had a lot of ideas: “Their habitat, their food, their heat regulations” (Zoe). “If they live aboveground or underground” (Sebas). “How much food they eat” (Elliot). “Water, water, water!” (Jovian). “We can’t just put them in plastic containers – they’d suffocate!” (Ernesto). Sally jotted down their ideas as they spoke, highlighting the important elements of each comment, and noting the four main aspect of habitats: food, water, air, and shelter. They worked in pairs to do online research about a desert bug of their choice, and were asked to record two facts about each of these elements of habitat.
Aynsley and Dylan were researching fig beetles. “They eat bark and sap and stuff…but what kind of food do they eat…sweets and pollen.” As they began to do their research they realized they needed to be more detailed in what they wrote down. “Then we need to know about their habitat…they live in trees…but where? What kind of trees?” Later they asked me how to spell “palo verde tree” – it was clear they were getting more specific information! Sebas and Elliot were also busy researching grasshoppers: “grasshoppers have jumper feet.” They worked with Sally to do close readings of their research sources: “Do they have springs in their feet?” “What’s a host plant?” “…They have a ton of plants that they eat…so we could get a lot of different plants for them…” These careful details will prove extremely valuable when grasshoppers and fig beetles find their way into the classroom, which I’m surprised hasn’t happened already! |