Steven CaringellaSteven Caringella

Thinkquest.org is a password-protected, student-safe online learning community.

https://www.thinkquest.org/en_us

Allows students to publish, blog, share documents, communicate, and collaborate.

Free access provided to schools by the Oracle Education Foundation.

Teachers at accredited primary and secondary schools can apply.

Oracle Education Foundation requires site principal’s approval.

If you are the first at your site to use Thinkquest.org, you become the site administrator.

You can then add other teachers at your site.

Teachers who use Thinkquest.org with their students must monitor student content.

Teachers must teach students how to stay safe online.

Must have parental consent.

Thinkquest.org is ideal for use in inquiry-based, cross-curricular student projects.

Environmental Concerns in the Community

What Makes Me Unique? Intercambio Entre Russell y CMLP

Thinkquest.org can be used to help students meet California content standards.

Thinkquest.org meets ISTE National Technology Standards.

http://cnets.iste.org/students/

A learner-centered process that begins with questioning and investigating.

Children have a desire to discover and finds things out.

Exploring, asking questions, searching for new understandings.

Students investigate a real-world problem, working collaboratively.

They use technology tools, gain skills and knowledge, and end with a learning product.

Students used Thinkquest.org during research, for reflection, to communite and collaborate, and as an eportfolio.

Multi-classroom: Students from three Northern California schools collaborated using Thinkquest.org.

Cross-curricular: One school focused on science and two schools focused on language arts.

How do we become aware of environmental concerns and how can we make a difference?

Students from all three schools wrote bios about themselves, then “met” each other online.

Throughout the project, students read, reviewed, and evaluated each others’ work.

Almaden Fourth graders wrote letters and posters in response to the River Glen newsletters that they viewed and discussed.

http://ourenvironmentproject.org/almadenschool/FellowsStudentWork2.htm

Fifth and Seventh grade students included the Fourth graders’ water quality data in their research.

Zanker Fifth graders created web resource lists during research that were shared by team members for the essays and the PSAs.

Throughout the stages of the project, students reflected on their learning process by writing reflective blog entries.

Throughout the project, students uploaded finished learning products, reflected on them, and received teacher and peer review and feedback.

Multi-classroom collaborative project.

Participants included teachers and students from two middle schools and two elementary schools.

http://my-ecoach.com/project.php?id=10446

Students explored their dominant learning styles, using the Multiple Intelligences theory, and apply this knowledge to how they approach learning.

Cross-classroom partners were formed, and the project was organized in the Thinkquest.org project pages.

Students used Thinkquest.org to post learning and reflections, and respond to their project partners at each stage of the project, including group audio podcasts as a culminating activty.

Language and culture exchange between Thomas Russell Middle School students and high school students in Callao, Peru.

Thomas Russell students practiced their written Spanish skills with Peruvian partners.

They also learned about Peruvian culture.

The Peruvian students from Leoncio Prado practiced their written English skills and learned about the culture of American youth.

The student partners corrected each other’s written work using the collaborative feature of the project pages.

In the future, live video chatting could be added using Skype.