Ellen Rempala

L595 – Final Project

December 8, 2006

GARDENING ACROSS THE UNITED STATES

Overview

My project is a wiki on school gardens. It can be found at http://schoolgardens.wikispaces.com/. As the name implies, School Gardens is a place where schools/classes can share information about and pictures of their school gardens. School gardens can provide for a variety of learning opportunities. A gardening website I discovered last spring (http://www.kidsgardening.com/) first got me thinking about gardening as part of the curriculum. Various resource links for teachers, tips on school gardens, and a school garden registry are all part of the site.

And when I interviewed for my media specialist position, I remembered the corporation manager pointing out Westville’s school garden as we walked past the courtyard. So I thought this would be a good opportunity to check out our garden and reflect on ways a school garden could be used in a high tech learning project.

Audience

For the purposes of this project, I have chosen 3rd graders as the specific audience. In reality it would be feasible for any grade level – K through 12 – to contribute to a school garden and add to the wiki I have created. Third grade standards in science and social studies, though, match up particularly well with gardening activities. The standards focusing on scientific inquiry, weather patterns, growth and change in organisms, and communities are all pertinent.

Need

The following Indiana Academic Standards will be covered through the gardening learning activities:

In Science:

3.1.2: Participate in different types of guided scientific investigations, such as

observing objects and events and collecting specimens for analysis.

3.1.3: Keep and report records of investigations and observations using tools,

such as journals, charts, graphs, and computers.

3.1.4: Discuss the results of investigations and consider the explanations of

others.

3.2.3: Keep a notebook that describes observations and is understandable weeks

or months later.

3.3.5: Give examples of how change, such as weather patterns, is a continual

process occurring on Earth.

3.6.4: Take, record, and display counts and simple measurements of things over

time, such as plant or student growth.

3.6.5: Observe that and describe how some changes are very slow and some are

very fast and that some of these changes may be hard to see and/or record.

In Social Studies:

3.3.5: Explain how climate affects the vegetation and animal life of a region, and

describe the physical characteristics that relate to form an ecosystem.

By the end of the gardening project, students will be able to do the following:

o  Using a PowerPoint starter, make educated guesses about the climate, growing season, plant life and animal life in their community.

o  Using a PowerPoint starter, make educated guesses about the climate, growing season, plant life and animal life in another region of the United States (Alaska).

o  Collaborate within a group to take care of a species of plant.

o  Observe and record the growth of plant life over a period of time.

o  Communicate and share observations and findings. This will be done through posting pictures and writing explanations on the class wiki.

o  Compare/Contrast the climate, growing seasons, plant life, and animal life of Indiana and Alaska.

Procedures/Outline

This project should coincide or follow a unit on climate and its effects on various living organisms.

1.  Put students in groups of four.

2.  Each group will look at the PowerPoint starter “Gardening in Indiana: What Do You Think” and fill in their answers.

3.  Explain the garden project to the students. (Basically, each group will be responsible for growing and taking care of a different type of plant or flower.)

4.  Also explain that students will be learning about the climate, growing season and plant and animal life in another region of the United States, namely Alaska. (Prior to this project, set up a collaborative partnership with a school in Alaska. The Kids Gardening website, http://www.kidsgardening.com/, lists schools that may be willing participants.)

5.  At some point, each group should also fill in the PowerPoint starter “Gardening in Alaska: What Do You Think”

6.  Once students have planted their section of the garden, use whatever increments of time work best to have them observe, take digital photographs, and record the weather and the changes they see. Observations and findings should be recorded in a journal (*I didn’t originally include this, but a blog would work well for this part. The PowerPoint starter, too, could be built with extra notebook pages for students to write in observations.).

7.  At the end of the project, each group will look at their original “What Do You Think” answers and compare them to the collected data. “Correct” answers should be noted.

8.  Observations, conclusions and digital photos should all be posted to the School Gardens wiki. Each group will add their own pages.

At some point during the school year, the school in Alaska will follow the same procedures and post to the School Gardens wiki. After both schools have posted, each can take out the PowerPoint starters on each other and compare the starters to what actually happened. Furthermore, critical thinking skills can be developed as students compare and contrast the gardening experience in Indiana to the gardening experience in Alaska (e.g. One interesting fact I learned while reading about vegetable gardens in Alaska is that moose like to eat food from them. Certainly not a problem in Indiana!).

This is just the outline for a gardening project experience. More details, more mini-lessons throughout, and other variations can always be added.

Technology Effectiveness and Issues

My three technology components are the PowerPoint starter, wiki, and digital photographs. The PowerPoint starter is used as a pre-inquiry activity. I like the fact that I could add pictures and that the format is on the computer and standardized for everyone. The questions guide the students in their thinking. A computer assignment will appeal more to these digital natives. Also, should a class decide to add the starters to the wiki, it is ready to be shared (Much easier than a worksheet, that would then need to be typed into the computer. . .).

The digital photographs are a great way to share observations of plants and flowers. Weather, animals, and processes can all be photographed, too. An emerging amount of literature over the past few years has supported digital photography in learning. An article by Riddle states, “Digital photography would address the styles of visual and kinesthetic learners” (1). She also alludes to the visual literacy skills I wanted students to develop through the garden project by explaining, “Learning communities form. . .as children worked together to solve problems, collaborate on ideas, and lend their own interpretation to visual ideas” (3). Furthermore, “Indications that students’ desire to participate and feelings of ownership were enhanced” (Rivet, 7) are present when digital photography is used. The latter, in particular, really supports a wonderful learning outcome – Students taking greater pride in their projects and the school garden. One issue with digital photography is that a teacher should get parents’ permission before posting a picture of a student on the Internet. Otherwise, with digital photography posted to a wiki, students from Indiana can very easily see what is going on in Alaska and vice versa.

Finally, the wiki. . .I really like the wiki concept because there are no distance or time constraints. Internet access, which virtually all schools now have, is all that is needed. Since Indiana and Alaska run on very different climates, growing seasons may be slightly different. Additions to the wiki can be made at any time, and it is fairly simple. Collaboration across the county is made easy.

One concern of teachers (or media specialists) who are not familiar with wikis (or not tech-savvy) is that a wiki will be very complicated for them and their kids to add to. This is not necessarily true. As Clyde states in the article “Wikis,” “Wikis support collaborative activity by providing a format for the submission of contributions. . .Users do not need to possess sophisticated web skills to take part in developing a wiki” (1). In other words, much of the “sophisticated look” of the wiki is already set up for the user.

Furthermore, wikis certainly assist with information inquiry. Besides “sharing information with other community members,” wikis can be used to “summarize and synthesize the information from a lesson, for collaborating of notes, [and] for introducing concepts and exploring projects” (“Wikis,” Digital Pencil, p. 1). All of these fit with the school garden project. This would also be an excellent project for the media specialist and classroom teacher to collaborate on!

Links

o  School Gardens Wiki: http://schoolgardens.wikispaces.com/

o  PowerPoint Starter (Indiana): https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/erempala/Filemanager_Private_Files/Indiana.ppt

o  PowerPoint Starter (Alaska):

https://oncourse.iu.edu/access/content/user/erempala/Filemanager_Private_Files/Alaska.ppt

Works Cited

Clyde, Laurel A. “Wikis.” Teacher Librarian. 32:4 (2005): 1-4 [on html printout].

Riddle, Johanna. “Sharing the Vision with Digital Photography.” MultiMedia & Internet

Schools. 11:3 (2004): 23-6. [p. 1-4 on html printout]

Rivet, Ann, and Rebecca Schneider. “Exploring the Role of Digital Photography to Enhance

Student Inquiry in a Local Ecosystem.” Journal of Computers in Mathematics and

Science Teaching. 23:1 (2004): 47-65. [p. 1-11 on html printout]

“Wikis.” Digital Pencil. (2006). http://www.digitalpencil.org/Wikis.aspx

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