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How do you have a publishing party with a class in another country?

To celebrate the  joint publication of   ‘The adventures of monkey and cat’ on iTunes and on our blog KinderPris invited us to a publishing party. How would we achieve this?

Here is a sample from our Google doc to let you know our intentions and joint agreements for the collaboration..

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So we started to think about the party the children sat in groups and shared their ideas with the class.

Kyle: Well it’s fairly obvious it will have to be on Skype. It is the only way we can see them.

General agreement and nodding of heads.

Hwaji: Yeh but sometime not good. It cut.

Max: Yeh it cuts off.

Morris: You have to think because if weather rain it won’t work.

Zoe: Oh like the satellite TV, that happens at my house.

Ryan: Yes and me.

Zoe I am not sure. Any ideas?

Kyle: Well I can work it out but I need time. I need to ask my dad. He works for Ricoh and does computers and stuff.

Jessica: Well you need to think about it. What will we do?

We are waiting to hear from Kyle’s dad on this issue.

The children have started to think about the structure of the event. Their exchanges on Skype this year have made them reflective on the uses and limitations of Skype. The key finding,  have a plan of what will happen if it is going to be a larger group exchange.

The publishing party has been set for

Wednesday 30th May at 2.30pm (Tokyo time) in our room. KinderPris have invited their parents and KP want to invite their parents. So KP parents are you ready to join us as the Skype publishing party?

 

 

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Published in iTunes ‘The adventures of monkey and cat’.

The book we have written with Kinder Pris in Borneo has been published as an eBook by Ben Sheridan. thank you Ben. The children wanted the book to be free so anyone could share it… well anyone with a computer, as Morris pointed out!

Link to the iTunes book to download the book for free.

Problem: It is not possible to get the book from the Japan iTunes store, you need an account in another country. So sorry I am in touch with Apple about this!

One solution

I have saved it onto Google doc so press here to see it.

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Collaborative story telling across 2 countries building shared understanding.

We are writing our story with Kinder Pris in Borneo. The children have decided to use the following tools to help them, Skype, the class blog, Twitter, video, photographs and a Google doc.We have decided to set the story in a grave yard. Both classes have access to a grave yard. We have both been on field trips.

Kinder Pris field trip to the grave yard.

Kyoka made a photopeach of our field trip.

The children were inspired by the filed trip. Here are their ideas.

Words about grave yards and what we saw.
Graves, black staring cats, banana tree, rocks, dead people under the ground, money, umbrella, blue small bag, broken statue, cars, pyramid, white money, flowers, QR codes, sticks.

Inspirational ideas
Books made of stone
Flowers make things beautiful.
Black staring fears cat
Words on the cross
Stones that are magical
Magical talking trees
Magical sticks that talk
Statues that walk and fly
Drains turn into warriors and there are smells from them
There is a Dutch pyramid that looks like a castle
Broken old grave stone from an earthquake
Umbrella that someone lost or dropped the mischievous monkey makes a prank
Money and chocolate for the monkey
Magic coins and buttons that flew off and gives you wishes.
Pyramid hill for mice.
Banana tree can be be a jewel.

Here is our video for Kinder Pris.

 

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Five year olds problem solve how to write a story between 2 countries.

We were approached by a class in Borneo Kinder Pris to write a story together. This integrates with our Language Arts focus on narrative fiction and our Unit of Inquiry,  different ways to communicate ideas and feelings. We knew a little about the class as they are one of our tweet buddies. We have seen their blog and made gifts for them.

So if they are Borneo and we are in Yokohama how can we write a story together?

KP problem solvers ideas

  • We could make a book and write. Leave pages at the end for them and send it to them.

This will take too long. The cards from Kingfisher class took a long time.

  • Do they speak English? Maybe they can write in their language and we can write in English. Like our book we made [The children made a class book and Ms. Yuri translated it, just like the bilingual books we had read].

We could Skype them and check their blog. Their blog is in English. We want to Skype them. we love Skype.  We Skyped them, they can speak English.

  • We could tweet them, tweety , tweet, tweet. We can write the story and they can write the story.

Yes, but there isn’t enough words for a story. It was good when we got people to give us words [the children tweeted for advice on other words for fast]

  • We can write on the computer and send it.

How does it work? How does it get there?

Ms Zoe’s suggestion, teachers at school  use a  Google docs and people can write on it at the same time. Do you think this is a tool that would help you?

Yes we would like to try this. We want to type.

 

We Skyped Kinderpris. We wanted to share the story ideas we have on our wall.

  • Kinder Pris said get the paper and put it to the camera.

We came up with more ideas after talking to them.

  • We could take a picture and add it to the blog.

Maybe it is too big, if you move back and take a photo you maybe can’t see it.

 

 

 

 

 

 

We could video it and put it on the blog.

Yes, we will try this.

 

  • We will tweet it like for the good words that tell you so you can see it in your mind [descriptive words].

Yes, we want to try this.

 

 

 

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Google Earth and 5 year olds.

The children want to know where their Twitter buddies live. They know it is in other countries but they are not sure where the countries are. We looked on maps and globes. This was an authentic reason to use Google Earth. This video shows the children’s first exploration of the app.

Watch closely for the:

    • children stating findings.
    • sharing their new knowledge.
    • children posing questions.
    • Monitoring the correct use of this session.

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KP- Favourite You Tube Videos of the moment. ‘Ms Zoe please put it on the blog’.

These are KP’s favourite You Tube video’s of the moment (adults, they are worth watching).

One they call ‘moving Lego’. The other they call ‘it’s real but it’s not’.

Conversation about the Lego video

Wow I can’t believe it. Look Lego with electric, woooo so cool. We could make it. Look it is going upstairs. It is all attached. It is like a factory.

Conversation about ‘real but not real’.

Noooo, yes, it is real. No it’s not real, but  it looks real. If it is on a video it doesn’t mean it is real. Like you know talking animals are on video or aliens.

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Why would you let children pursue their interests. What about teaching them the facts they need?

FACT ONE

We can teach just facts…

Think they are the foundation on which all knowledge is built… something that never changes?

A lesson in facts… Good bye Pluto!

The first idea the children had was to have the title of their animation about Pluto. We found images of Pluto and discovered it is no longer considered a planet.

The background to this inquiry.

The children started their own inquiry into space in August. They created a dramatic play area, created a whole class scenario where flight manifests were created. They built space ships and all manner of devises to stop alien invasion of their space ship.There was an incredible amount of writing, reasoning and problem solving. They were using high order thinking skills to solve issues. There has also been a great deal of social interaction and development of social skills. I had NOTHING to do with any of this.

In our current unit How We Express Ourselves Elif Raskin (elementary IT support) offered to help the children make a stop animation film, which she would edit. The children were excited to see an example of this. They decided to take one of their favourite books “There’s nothing to do on Mars” Chris Gall and retell the story in new way.

Back to space we go!

There is just so much to share with you. The blog would explode! I will put a little bit on each day. It is incredible. The research and thinking is amazing.

To begin…

I am supporting this inquiry by facilitating the use of technology, finding apps and other research tools. I am making sure the children have access to as many art supplies as they need. Most importantly when the children plan their own day we make sure there is them plenty of time to inquire and design.

Talking and sharing ideas.

I have given lots of time to talking about their ideas. We spent some time discussing the title of the animation and this generated a huge amount of discussion. You can see from the video showing their preexisting ideas. They wanted to see Pluto and then discovered it was no longer considered a planet. A big discussion followed.

We want to our Mars to look real. Art from research. on PhotoPeach

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Education Beyond The Classroom.

The children learned about this important celebration in Japanese culture class. Thank you to all those who could come and share this with us.

Shichi-Go-San is a Japanese celebration for 7,5,3 year old children to celebrate good health.
The children said about the field trip:
“It’s a cuboid and we see a circle. We threw the leaves and our mummy’s took some pictures as well.  We threw the 10 yen in the special cuboid and made a wish. The leaves were red, yellow and orange.”

Motomachi shrine, education beyond the classroom. on PhotoPeach