Getting Set up with Chromebooks, Peggy Rux, Pasteur Elementary

While it has been almost three months since my last post, I have not been able to make much progress with my fifth grade students on our healthy living publications.  The holidays, testing,  and a variety of surveys to complete are just a few of the obstacles our project has faced.  However, I think we are ready to begin again on our projects starting next week.

One thing that time has allowed is for the students to become much more comfortable using the Chromebooks.  Students really enjoy perfecting their keyboarding skills using typing.com! They have also had an opportunity to “play” in google docs and are familiar with many of its features.  We have not worked on collaborating yet, so I’m not sure how that will go, but we are all excited to get started.

So once again, students will begin working on a project using Google Docs. Since I am now teaching health class in addition to my other responsibilities, I decided to blend research with health. Students will create a publication on healthy living. Items students could include in the publication are articles, charts, graphs, checklist, editorials, interviews and comics.

The first step will be for each group to come up with a theme for their publication. Students are divided into groups of 5-6 members. Each member of the group will need to each contribute something to the publication. The task manager for each group will set-up the publication by giving it a tittle and recording the contributors. They will then share the publication with all the members of the group so they can collaborate online! I have created and collaborated with other teachers on documents online, so I am hoping that experience will help the students through any challenges they may face.

Once the publication is completed it will be shared with me for a final grade. I think this project can really be the start of new way of collaborating for our students. Many of them are not able to get together after school to work on projects and there is never enough time in the day for this type of collaboration, so I am hoping this has a positive impact on all the participants!

One final note, my husband brought these “dividers” home for me from his office and they are a great way for me to store, charge and distribute the Chromebooks. They are just simple file dividers, but hold six Chromebooks very nicely!