The project is starting up for 2012!  Australian classrooms dominated the project last year as far as the most from outside the US! Will they do it again? How about the Canadians - will we see more? The United Kingdom monster builders? Turkey? Russia? And the Missouri teachers always seem to come out in full force!  Everyone should keep an eye on New Hampshire - they have grabbed the top monster award twice. Will no one out do them this time?



Quick List of Dates:

Sign up and choose your part between September 12-24

Descriptions sent in no later than  September 30

Build the Monster between Oct 1 and Oct 22

Send in your photo and Monster name by October 28.

All Monsters built by Halloween - October 31!





Monster Web Site: See the Timeline link  and Classroom Suggestions for New Teachers PDF.

www.smithclass.org/proj/Monsters



I'm looking forward to another exciting year of networking, sharing learning, and collaborating around the world to create our "blueprint" for this year's Monster.



By for now from Monster Central,

Terry

We have completed this year's the project again with a group of Primary players (43 teams) and Challenge players (23 teams) demonstrating that social studies applied in a project basis is not only stimulating learning, but is "The Hardest Academic Game on the Internet" according to Michelle Huseman, 4th grade teacher at Eugene Field Elementary in Hannibal, Missouri.

Go to http://www.kidlink.org/drupal/project/landmark to see the intro video and learn how to play the game if you are interested in being in next year's worldwide competition.

The TOP teams from this year are posted - Mrs. Lowe's Class from Australia clawed their way to the top - again!

Terry

Landmark 2012 Coordinator

This year's Global Monster Project is well under way with 27 Monsters at Monster Central the last time I dared to look. Teachers are as creative as ever  with educational technology using Wallwisher, Glogster, Smilebox, Animoto, Audacity, Garageband, Movie Maker and PhotoStory.



I'll be watching for more Monsters to creep into Monster Central in the next few days, then we will have the big VOTE - trying to name the best Monster of 2011 by the selection of the Monster makers themselves.

Go to www.smithclass.org/proj/Monsters to see the action!

This space will soon have photos of Lara Tarasevich and her students in Russia while they were skyping with my college students at the University of St. Francis. The purpose of the meeting was to demonstrate to my teacher education students how they might use video in thier future classroom. Mrs. Tarasevich is an excellent example of a global teacher.

Check back soon!

Do you know the stories of the rivers of Illinois?

Throughout history people have tried to find out where rivers would lead them. They have been amazed with the river's awesome power and beauty. Click above to begin an interactive lesson!

Student teachers Kristee and Michelle teach our 4th grade friends about movement on a coordinate system using the grid carpet. Using letters and numbers, the students locate specific points with their feet!

Here is Barbara's sample photo inserted. I copied the location and then used the HTML Insert code. I changed https to http in the code and it worked.

The Monster project has been tracked down by the Joliet newspaper. You can follow the link to read what we were doing at St. Raymond's Elementary School with kids and future teachers from the University of Saint Francis.

Click Here to go to the story.

The Monster project is starting up again for 2010, so if you would like to join, check out the details and time line at the project site.

http://www.smithclass.org/proj/Monsters

Augmented reality is a  blending of virtual reality, like when we're in Quest Atlantis, with the reality of things in the real world. In this video we are crossing the line between what is real (our classroom)and what is created by the computer (animated colorful objects floating in the air). You can try this out yourself by going to http://ge.ecomagination.com/smartgrid/ .

We're always talking about how to be creative in our classroom and how to put our ideas together into even bigger ideas (synthesis). Well, just imagine if you were asked to help someone understand seat belt safety. And you were asked to make a meaningful family connection. What would you do? The following video is one way to do this. What would you do to get the same message across? What main ideas would you use? Would you do a video or a photo slideshow or a cartoon or an MP3? Or something totally different?

After the field trip to Clarksville, Missouri to learn about bald eagles from raptor experts, and watching the eagles swoop from the sky to snatch fish from the Mississippi River, we went online to do a Web Quest about Eagles. This was also great preparation for our upcoming mega-research project called Landmark 2010.

We have little pieces of Russia in the following Voicethread. Mrs. Tarasevich's class from Aban, Russia sent us a surprise package. Ded Moroz (Father Frost) and Snegurochka (Snow Maiden), matreshka, and a valenok. We learned that in Russia, Father Frost brings presents to the children, especially if they recite a poem! Special thanks to Mrs. Black from Naches, Washington and her students Warren and Brian who have added so many voice comments to this Voicethread. Also on the last page we have two very nice comments from the students in Mrs. Tarasevich's class in Russia. This is how Voicethreads were meant to be used! 

After three days of design and construction time, our monster, named Psycho Maniac is comfortably on the wall at the top of the stairway on the 3rd floor of Eugene Field School. He is a friendly greeter to all who travel the long distance up three flights of stairs to get to the highest point in our building. All went well with the sketching and practicing, but building the skateboard proved to be a very hard problem. The wheels kept falling off. Being stubborn problem-solvers, our team sorted out the difficulty, changed the design slightly, and added four blue wheels using pipe cleaners. The passport was another problem, because no one in our class knew what a passport was! Again, the problem was soon solved by a clever team of girls! If you want to see more monsters, go to the Monsters 2009 project site.



We have Monster Movie MP3s on the Monster Project Site. Hear Billy and Davion's very scary Don't Answer the Phone! - and More!

You can leave comments on this Voicethread. Click on my small picture to see the words I wrote. Click the arrow on the bottom right to move through the pictures like a slideshow. If you click directly on the picture, you can zoom in and out and move around in the picture. If you want to go to the main Voicethread site, then click HERE and you will be able to leave your comments alongside each photo. If you have a microphone, you can leave a voice comment. If not, you can type in a text comment.


A Get Well song from kids at St. Oswald's Primary in Burneside, England.