ePals
ePals is an online network of educators committed to creating collaborative experiences for their students. Membership is free and it's very easy to create an account on the site. Once you have created a teacher account, there are a few ways to participate. One option is through an experience. An experience is a structured project or collaborative experience that relates to a given topic or concept. There are many pre-made experiences that teachers can choose to engage in. Alternately, teachers can choose to create their own experiences and connect with other classrooms. The final option is a bit looser. Teachers can simply post requests for buddy classrooms that collaborate and connect with each other for a less structured purpose or activity. These can be digital pen pals or buddy rooms.
For the purpose of this assignment, I am going to suggest a Teacher-Created Experience. The Experience, called What's the Weather Like?, will be a collaborative weather data collection activity in which classrooms from various climate zones - perhaps 2 or 3 other classrooms - will gather and compare daily weather data over a period of time. While I did create an ePals account, I did not post this experience since I'm not currently in the classroom.
Teacher Notes:
For the purpose of this assignment, I am going to suggest a Teacher-Created Experience. The Experience, called What's the Weather Like?, will be a collaborative weather data collection activity in which classrooms from various climate zones - perhaps 2 or 3 other classrooms - will gather and compare daily weather data over a period of time. While I did create an ePals account, I did not post this experience since I'm not currently in the classroom.
Teacher Notes:
- To get started, view the introductory data collection lesson by clicking here.
- This project would take the introductory spreadsheet lesson plan and make it more collaborative by expanding the scope to conditions beyond our own classroom and community.
- In leiu of the Google Form suggested in the original plan, I have modified it to reflect an extra field that would allow multiple classrooms to share the same form and then sort and compare the data accordingly.
- After collecting data over multiple weeks, students could publish their comparisons on our Kidblog forum and comment on one another's blogs. Also, students could connect via email or Skype to discuss their comparisons and findings.