PE4_Museum_Box

Greetings!

I blogged a week or so about a great Web 2.0 tool, Museum Box.  This tool allows you to create a museum-like drawer, filled with cubes of information.  I chose to use this tool for my RILS project because I thought it was a great alternative assessment to offer my 7th grade Life Science students.

Here's a link to the site - it's user friendly.  You have to create a login and password, and it is easiest to use if you register your school.  That way, all of your students accounts are accessible to you for grading.  On the site, they state that it can take up to a week for your account to be created...something I did not notice early on.  It's been a week, and I still have no teacher access to my students.  However, my students are doing great things with this tool.  So check out the site and the youtube video...

http://www.museumbox.e2bn.org

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6fDRktWIGg

My students had just finished a unit on "plants", so I thought this would be a great way for them to show their understanding of the topics we'd covered.  I created a lesson where they'd build a drawer which held 6 cubes.  Each cube had a specific topic assigned to it, and each cube could have 3 images or illustrations or photos, and the other 3 sides of the cube had to have text - information about the topic.  I made an example with three cubes, just so they'd have an idea of what it looked like when completed.

 I allowed the students to self-select their groups of three students.  They were really excited, because I usually choose their groups.  With a little group "manipulation" on my part, they were off to work.  They decided who was responsible for which part of the work - some divided up into researchers and creators, others chose to create 2 cubes per person.  They are referencing their notes in their interactive notebooks, we took photos of their origami "perfect flowers", and they know they have to site sources on any images or information that doesn't come from their notebooks. To date, we've spent 3 class periods working on the project.  The first period was largely going over instructions, modeling, and them getting together to plan in their groups.

 Today was day 3 in the computer lab, and their projects are really coming together.  We figured out, after trial and error, that in their groups, 3 people can use the same account (login and password), and by saving frequently, can access each other's information/cubes.  Very cool!  Unfortunately, I am not optimistic about having my teacher information by tomorrow, which would have allowed my access to all of their projects.  I'll need to opt for gathering their login and password tomorrow to grade their projects.

This screen shows you an "exploded" cube, with all faces visible.  My students have gotten really good at manipulating images, citing the sources in the caption spot under the image, and sharing their information amongst team members.

We're shooting for a deadline of tomorrow by the end of the class period.  I will, in my next post, link to completed projects so you can see just how clever and talented and exceptional my students are.

Regards,
Paula