Recently we started discussing the topic of Manifest Destiny, the Oregon Trail, and the Santa Fe Trail. There's a video game that if you were raised in the 80's and 90's you might have played to see if you survived or not. Originally I was going to do the game on the iPads with my students, but they were having technical issues at the time. So here's what I did in its place.
1) GOOGLE IT/Find It - There's lots of things available online, however some of which you have to pay for. So be careful. I found a great sheet a teacher made of a general store and the costs. I also found the blog for how they were doing it. I took the budgets they created to go with their general store list. Students then were randomly assigned a profession and had to budget their income with supplies for the trip to try and make sure they used most of their budget on supplies, but then also have a little extra in case of a "rainy day" (budgeting = life skill).
2) Adapt It - I also created Fate Cards in tables in word Fate Cards for things that could happen to along the trail (tornado, snake bites, river crossings, etc.) and costs to them (having a Native American cure the rattle snake bite was $5.00 or they could roll the dice to see if their child survived the bite).
3) Adjust - we then began our adventure. My first class of the day I just had them adding to their totals; My second class of the day we had a list of the number of fates and they wrote down what they were going to do and then added the costs as well. I found that adjusting it to include the list made them a little more accountable in their final numbers.
They then did their math (cross-curricular development?) and then we talked about minimum totals that meant their either survived or died along the journey.
Tuesday, November 26, 2013
Two Unsung Heroes of Smart Notebook
Two Reasons to Love Smart Notebook: Hyperlinks and Screen Capture!!!
Here are reasons to love the two...
Hyperlinks - Allows you to create more interactive games. Hyperlinks basketballs to questions, having a hoop that is linked to a sound so if they hit it, it makes noise, hyperlink to videos online. I even have an archery one that links to other slides so that whatever the students hit first is the amount of points they scored for their team for answering a question correctly. Hyperlinks allow you to link between slides, websites, etc. so that you can create whatever kind of experience you want for your students without going far.
Screen Capture - ever need something off a pdf that you can't access, but you only want one little part? SCREEN CAPTURE! Using the camera option of smart notebook allows you to take a photo of what you want and use it. Now there are some down sides - 1) If you want to make it bigger the quality goes away as you enlarge. If you want to make it smaller, it looks great!!! An example: reallygoodstuff.com has this great underground railroad quilt, but to save on paper I used to make it a group project and with certain students working really hard and others not exerting as much effort the quilts can always be hit or miss in their final results. By using the screen capture I can capture the individual quilt squares, shrink them onto one quilt and then have each student responsible for their own quilt and it only takes a piece of paper. We then practice summarizing skills on the back of the quilt by taking the little paragraphs listed for each square and then shortening it to hit the key points in five words or less.
Here are reasons to love the two...
Hyperlinks - Allows you to create more interactive games. Hyperlinks basketballs to questions, having a hoop that is linked to a sound so if they hit it, it makes noise, hyperlink to videos online. I even have an archery one that links to other slides so that whatever the students hit first is the amount of points they scored for their team for answering a question correctly. Hyperlinks allow you to link between slides, websites, etc. so that you can create whatever kind of experience you want for your students without going far.
Screen Capture - ever need something off a pdf that you can't access, but you only want one little part? SCREEN CAPTURE! Using the camera option of smart notebook allows you to take a photo of what you want and use it. Now there are some down sides - 1) If you want to make it bigger the quality goes away as you enlarge. If you want to make it smaller, it looks great!!! An example: reallygoodstuff.com has this great underground railroad quilt, but to save on paper I used to make it a group project and with certain students working really hard and others not exerting as much effort the quilts can always be hit or miss in their final results. By using the screen capture I can capture the individual quilt squares, shrink them onto one quilt and then have each student responsible for their own quilt and it only takes a piece of paper. We then practice summarizing skills on the back of the quilt by taking the little paragraphs listed for each square and then shortening it to hit the key points in five words or less.
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