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Book Publication Day!

5/19/2016

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The day has come, and our If You Learned Here eBook is ready! We should all be proud of what we have created together. It is something you will want to read multiple times to notice all the details, and share with friends and family.

From your iPad*, please 
click here to download your copy. Be patient -- the file may take some time to download. Remember to “open in” iBooks (with the arrow in the upper right corner) so you can enjoy the finished publication. If you “open in” Book Creator by mistake, you will get an editable version, in which elements may move as you swipe from page to page. 

Here are iPad Screenshots showing how to download the book.
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* If you aren't using an iPad, you can also read the book using the Readium extension for Chrome or Calibre for your computer. You can also get the iBooks app for your iPhone or iPod touch! If you have trouble with the ePub format, you can download the PDF instead.
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Download this flyer for a QR code to post in your school!

As you read and share, please sign our Readers’ Guestbook, which is the final Padlet for this project. We look forward to seeing pictures of people all over the world reading our book! If you have friends in other schools who did not participate in our project, they can join the fun by reading our book and contributing a photo and comment to the Padlet.

We also encourage you to revisit our mentor text, If You Lived Here, and notice commonalities between the two books.

Happy reading!

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Write & Publish Begins!

4/17/2016

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The time has come to create a lasting record of our global connections. Together, our students will write a book for a global audience. We ask all pages to be submitted by Tuesday, May 10 (new deadline). We can't wait to see what you and your students create!

Each school will create two eBook pages and an About the Author page. We have created a template to ensure our eBook is engaging, informative, and also visually cohesive so it can be a useful resource for readers from this project and beyond. Use the PDF of the eBook directions and the tutorials below to guide you through the publishing process.

Your four videos should provide much of the information you need to complete your eBook pages. Look at last year's book for inspiration. See also our mentor text, If You Lived Here by Giles Laroche.

Please follow the directions below carefully, and as always, email us if you need assistance!


Step 1: Download Book Creator.

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Book Creator App
The Book Creator App is available for iPad, iPhone, Android, and Windows tablet.

Step 2: Download the template.

On your iPad or tablet, tap this button:
Download eBook Template
You have also received the template link via email.
Tutorial

Step 3: Make your pages.

eBook Directions (pdf)
Tutorial

Step 4: Submit.

You'll email the pages straight from Book Creator to ifyoulearnedhere@gmail.com.
Tutorial

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Theme 4: Our Reading

3/27/2016

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Theme 4 focuses on Our Reading. In your school’s 90 second video, please share favorite books with us! 
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The Basics...

Your post this week can take any form you wish. Here are some ideas:
  • Record a book talk for a favorite classroom book.
  • Choose 3 top classroom books and have students record a 30-second review or book talk for each.
  • Do “Micro Book Reviews” - figure out the one word or phrase that best captures the essence of a favorite book, and create a video of book covers subtitled and narrated with their very brief reviews! 
  • How about “title tweets” of 140 characters?
  • Borrow a “page” from the 90-second Newbery Film Festival and tell the story of a chosen book in 90 seconds! Here are some examples.
  • Create a book trailer in iMovie.
  • Readers’ Theater -- record students performing dialogue from a favorite book to give us a sample of what it’s like!

Whatever format you choose, the video is a chance for your students to teach the world about what they love to read, and why.

A friendly reminder: Please post your original video file to Seesaw, instead of a YouTube link. Many schools block access to YouTube, so we’ve been downloading the video files and posting them directly to Seesaw instead. If you could upload to Seesaw, it would save us a step and ensure that your video was available to all schools.

...and beyond!

If you can’t contain your love for books in 90 seconds, you can always expand to the Padlets for individual reviews and recommendations! You can post additional video, text, images, or links.
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Keep in mind that you have until April 8 to post any final videos to Seesaw or content to Padlet. If you find you need additional time, please email us at ifyoulearnedhere@gmail.com. ​
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Project timeline updates

3/25/2016

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As we watch our own students working their project videos, we’ve seen incredible enthusiasm and passion -- and it’s wonderful! However, our students’ high level of engagement sometimes lengthens the video creation process.
If you’re feeling behind, please don’t worry. We realize that posting a video each week can be a bit of a struggle. We’re all busy, and many of us have school holidays at this time of year.

We’re setting April 8 as the target date for all video and Padlet content to be posted. Hopefully this longer timeline will be comfortable for posting all your content. If you are busy with video creation now, know that there will be time to view and leave comments during the Write & Publish phase, too.


Here’s how the schedule will look for the coming weeks:
  • March 21-24 - Theme 3: Our Learning
  • March 28-April 1 - Theme 4: Our Reading
  • April 4-8 - Catch-up week for videos and Padlets; begin Writing & Publishing (There will be at least 3 weeks for you to complete your book pages, view and comment on project videos and Padlet content, and catch up on reflection/discussion with your students.)
  • April 8 - Post any final videos or Padlet content

As always, please reach out if you need any assistance or additional flexibility!

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Theme 3: Our Learning

3/17/2016

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In Theme 1 and Theme 2, we’ve focused on introducing our schools and getting to know one anothers’ learning environments. We've been impressed, inspired, awed, and amused by what has been shared on Seesaw, Padlet, and our #ifyoulearnedhere hashtag thus far! Now it's time to go beyond making acquaintances and share the wonderful learning happening in our classrooms.

The Basics...

Teach the world! Demonstrate, show, or explain some important discoveries or concepts from your classroom learning. In your video, have students actually teach us some amazing facts, demonstrate a scientific principle or math strategy, discuss an event from history, explain a type of poetry, or teach us anything else they have recently learned or discovered. This could take any form you wish, but here are some possible starters:
  • “Did you know ____? We learned that _____.”
  • “Today we will teach you how to ______.”
  • “This experiment demonstrates that ______.”
  • “In our class, we’ve discovered that _______.”

This is a great opportunity to experience the power of technology to help kids teach and learn -- digital connections offer a great way for student expertise to shine! Reading has a theme all to itself in week 4, though, so save that subject for next week.

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... and beyond!

If you wish, use the Padlets below to share projects, descriptions of recent learning experiences, or photos of learning in action at your school!
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Tips for Viewing, Posting, and Commenting

3/12/2016

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To improve your project experience, here are some helpful tips for viewing, posting, and commenting on project content:

Viewing Content

The best way to access all project content is to visit ifyoulearnedhere.weebly.com. There, you and your kids will find links to the public side of our Seesaw Global Sharing Space and all project Padlets. Easy!
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Videos Loading Slowly?

Videos in Seesaw seem to load slowly, especially when there are many on a page. Here’s a tip: filter the videos by school or by folder. Just click the name of a specific school or folder on the right sidebar, and you’ll be viewing videos in no time. This is also a great way to focus your students’ attention on one cohort or school.
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Posting Videos

Please post your original video file to Seesaw, instead of a YouTube link. Many schools block access to YouTube, so we’ve been downloading the video files and posting them directly to Seesaw instead. If you could upload to Seesaw, it would save us a step and ensure that your video was available to all schools.
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Comments

There are wonderful and supportive comments on many videos! When commenting, please include the name of your school and the country where you live, to encourage stronger connections among our schools and students. If you comment while already logged in to the Seesaw Global Sharing Space, your school will be identified automatically. Also, we ask that you comment as a class or a school, rather than allowing individual students to comment.
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Padlets

Schools are posting new content almost every day on the project Padlets, so remember to take a look! Scroll down on the home page to find links to all Padlets. If you wish, you can add photos, extra videos, or text to them at any time. The Padlets are optional, but they are a great way to see our schools at a glance – and to allow more students to create and share.
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Theme 2: Our Day at School

3/8/2016

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We hope the extension of Week 1 (which we’ll now call Theme 1) has helped you get this project off to a great start with your kids. It’s been such a joy to see the videos that have been submitted so far, and we can’t wait to see the rest! You don’t need any special editing software to create a great IYLH video. The important elements are the faces and voices of students and scenes from around your learning communities. The production style is completely up to you.

Some of you have reached out about getting started with Theme 2: Our Day at School. We’ll be looking for your contributions by Friday, March 18. If you ever need schedule flexibility or some extra support, don’t hesitate to email us at ifyoulearnedhere@gmail.com! 
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The Basics...

 Your school will post one 90 second video to our Seesaw Global Sharing Space. In this video, please walk us through a day at your school. Include how kids get to school, each part of the day, where and when students eat and play, after-school activities or programs, and anything else!
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Please remember to put your video in your Cohort’s Theme 2 folder. The code for the Seesaw Global Sharing Space is in your email. Use the Seesaw Class iPad app or go to app.seesaw.com on a computer to scan the code and post.

...and beyond!

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Reflecting on a project launch: the good, the bad, and...

3/7/2016

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When Mary and I started this project in 2015, we knew we wanted a very structured, well organized collaboration. We felt this would make the project manageable for all the busy participating schools, and by all indications, Year 1 was a success.
 
During Year 1, I was pretty hands off with the IYLH students at my school. My wonderful fifth grade colleague took the lead implementing the project with her kids while Mary and I juggled project management behind the scenes. With one project year under our belts, I was eager to spend more time in Year 2 working with the kiddos and experiencing the project from the student perspective.
 
​This year, I am implementing the project with two third grade technology classes. Both groups come to me once a week for an hour: one on Wednesday, and one on Friday. I decided I’d have the classes alternate weeks: one class would focus on creating content, and the other on viewing, discussing, and commenting. And of course, I assumed it would all go perfectly! This is my project after all… right?
 
Well. As all of you know, the first task is making your students aware of the project, building excitement, and contextualizing the scope and awesomeness of what the kids are about to experience. I’ve been teaching for a long time, but I suddenly felt a little lost. Which pieces of the website, the book, and last year’s project would help 8 and 9 year olds understand this global collaboration best? What would give them that feeling of wonder and thrill about virtual visits to schools around the world? I wanted them to walk out of the room with a sense of awe and curiosity. And -- thank goodness! -- my Friday group truly got that magical feeling. But my Wednesday group left in some confusion.
 
Here’s what I did with each group. I share this with you, not just as teacher therapy, but also in hopes that my experiences will benefit you -- and that you might have comments and suggestions that will help us all!
 
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Wednesday: A Bumpy Start


The kids sat on the rug when they entered technology class. With a hushed (and, I thought, wonder-filled) voice, I told them we were about to start an exciting project in which we would talk to kids around the world and write a book with them. They seemed happy, but puzzled. I then read a few pages of If You Lived Here aloud to the students and asked how this book helped them know more about people around the world, and I told them we would be writing a book about schools around the world. Again, more looks of, “huh?” And I knew I was off on the wrong foot. I had done too much telling, and not enough wondering together -- a teaching style I thought I had outgrown years ago! By the time I previewed last year’s book, videos, and Padlets, plus this year’s map, the kids were kind of overwhelmed. But I sent them off to explore those resources, hoping they’d feel the magic as they poked around the map, read last year’s lovely book, and saw last year’s videos. Our closing conversation was kind of unfocused, as kids talked about the audio quality and trivial details of past content, rather than the big picture of our coming adventures. It didn’t help that I was pulling pairs of kids and trying to film them on the side while the rest of the class stumbled about the website.
 
Maybe it wasn’t as bad as I remember. But we all know when lessons are a little flat, and this one definitely qualified. I was crestfallen -- I am so passionate about this project, and so enthusiastic about learning with all of this year’s schools. What had gone wrong?
 
 
Friday: Whew!
 
I started like this:
 
“Friends, today I’d like to share with you a very special book. We’ll start by taking a picture walk through it together.”
 
I paged through If You Lived Here and asked students, “What do you see on the pages of this book?”
 
Student answers: Houses. Different houses. Some are big and some are small. Cool houses. They all look different, but they’re still houses. They are in different places. It’s houses around the world.
 
Me: “Why would the author write this book? What is the author’s purpose?” I asked the students to turn and talk to a partner to think together before responding. After a couple of minutes, they shared these answers:
 
To show different houses. To help people know about different houses. To help people see houses all around the world. To help people who want to buy a house to pick the kind of house they want. To help people understand how people are different around the world.
 
Ah ha! “Great thinking, third graders. The book shows houses around the world. And a book can be a great way to learn about other people and other places around the world. I’m going to read you a page from this book.”
 
I chose the page about cave dwellings to read aloud. Together, we were amazed! We had no idea people still lived in caves. We had thought only prehistoric humans did that. And one sentence really struck the kids: “Many children growing up in villages with cave dwellings believe everyone lives in caves -- and are surprised to discover that most people live in houses with a roof and four walls!”
 
They said, “Wait, we didn’t know anyone lived in caves. But are you telling us that some kids don’t know people live in houses??”
 
They were beginning to think about perspective, and about how what seems normal and everyday to them might not be that way to everyone.
 
I repeated: “A book can be a great way to learn about other people and other places around the world. Here is another question for you: how could we use technology to learn about other people and places around the world?”
 
As the students turned and talked in pairs, the room was starting to hum with excitement. This was technology class, and here was Ms. Skibba talking about other places around the world. What might she be planning?
 
Student answers: You can go on Google Earth. You can go on Brittanica and read an article. You can watch a video about that place. You can do research.
 
Me: “Could you talk to them?”
 
Students’ faces lit up in realization. They talked about email, blogs, Skype, and FaceTime. Together we discussed how technology can help us learn, not just about other people around the world, but also from and with other people around the world.
 
This was it! The moment I had been waiting for. The kids were curious, wanting to know more. They could see the path of this project beginning to open before them. I showed the project map on the projector and said that we would be learning with all of you, and with all of your schools. By the time they went to the computers to explore the If You Learned Here site, they were filled with wonder, energy, curiosity, and joy. They traveled around the project map, spontaneously brainstorming questions and ideas about each school. They read last year’s book and shared their discoveries with amazement. Most importantly, they are now ready to learn, share, and engage in this collaborative adventure with you and your students.
 
 
Here are my take-aways from this experience:
  1. Kids aren’t necessarily going to “get it” right away.. and that’s okay! Regardless of a student’s age, if he or she hasn’t traveled extensively, the wider world remains a bit of an abstraction. Engaging in some sort of project launch with your students is key, and those conversations will be revisited throughout the project (and hopefully beyond)!
  2. Showing and exploring is always better than telling. We already knew that, right? But I had to re-learn it the hard way. Start with the If You Lived Here book, last year’s If You Learned Here eBook, or this year’s map. Look, notice, infer, question, discover…  and then you’re off!
  3. Connecting to known ways of learning (books, research tools) allows students to feel the promise and potential of new ways of learning. This paves the way for students to learn a key lesson from this project:  that digital connections are a new and powerful source of information, and that technology can bring the world closer together.
 
What are your take-aways from my experience? What have your launch experiences been like? Feel free to post a comment below and share your thoughts!

by Carolyn Skibba

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Week 1 Extended

3/2/2016

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As you probably know, with any new technology project there are always a few wrinkles to iron out. Starting with Seesaw has been no exception!

We’re hearing of a few challenges that some of you are facing, and we want to support and include everyone. We’ve decided to extend Week 1’s theme into next week. Please post your first 90 second student video to the Seesaw Global Sharing Space by Friday, March 11. We’ve updated the project calendar accordingly and emailed you the Global Sharing Space QR code for your convenience.

We hope that this schedule change is a welcome one! This will give you additional time to launch the project with your students, explore the map, post your 90 second video in Seesaw, and post optional content to the Padlets.


​We’ll follow up soon with some additional ideas and resources for how to best facilitate this project with your students. If you’re having any trouble, don’t hesitate to email us at
ifyoulearnedhere@gmail.com.
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Theme 1: Our Schools and Communities

2/27/2016

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Here we go! It's time to get started with our students. If you didn't get a chance to watch the launch party video, we recommend you do so before we begin. And if you didn’t have time to post your Seesaw and Padlet teacher introductions in Week 0, you can still do so -- but please remember to add your pin to the project map as soon as possible!

The Seesaw Teacher Space will remain open for you to view and comment on teacher introduction videos. However, we will now start using our main Global Sharing Space in Seesaw to post our schools’ videos on our 4 weekly themes.

There is a QR code in your email to access and post to the Global Sharing Space. Although students will be active participants in creating the videos, please don’t share the QR code with students. They will be able to view all project content on the
home page on this website, ifyoulearnedhere.weebly.com. Teachers use the QR code to access the Global Sharing Space, post each weekly video, and, if desired, to post one comment per school per video. 


Here are a few tips for your weekly videos:
  • Think about audio quality. We want your students’ voices to be heard! Consider using microphones or headphones with a built-in mic. And be sure your hand doesn’t cover the microphone if you’re recording on an iPad! Listen to your video before posting to be sure the words come through clearly.
  • You can record directly in Seesaw or upload a video created in another tool. Some of our favorites are:
    • iMovie (for computer or for iPad)
    • Adobe Voice (iPad app)
    • DoInk Green Screen (iPad app)
If you need help, send us an email at ifyoulearnedhere@gmail.com. We are here to support you!

Twitter users, don’t forget our virtual launch celebration! On Sunday, February 28 or Monday, February 29, please send a tweet using the hashtag #ifyoulearnedhere!
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The Basics...

With your students, create and post one 90-second (or shorter) video in our Seesaw Global Sharing Space.
  • To post from an iPad: use the Seesaw Class App and tap “I’m a Student.”
  • To post from a computer: go to app.seesaw.me and click “I’m a Student.”
To log in, scan the QR code you received via email.
In your video, please include some or all of the following:
  • School name
  • Languages spoken
  • Number of students
  • Ages of students in the school
  • School mascot
  • Special features or programs of your school -- ask your students what they'd like to highlight!
  • School Location
  • Urban/rural/suburban?
  • Other features of your location and city/town
Post your school’s 90 second (or shorter) video on your cohort’s Seesaw folder in the Global Sharing Space by Friday, March 4, 2016. You’ll be prompted to choose a folder during posting. Don't know which cohort you are in? Click here to see the list!

... and beyond!

Are you looking for more ways to explore the theme this week? The Week 1 Padlets below are available if your school wishes to post additional content beyond the basic 90 second video. Posts to these optional Padlets are moderated, so they won't show up right away.

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