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2010-Student Voices

Creating an Educational Follow Me Project

Presenter: Sarah Beeghle
Location: Carlisle, Pennsylvania, USA
Link to presenter’s K12Online Ning Profile page

Presentation Title: Creating an Educational Follow Me Project

Presentation Description: This student session will describe the Follow Me Project, show some examples of projects and then teach how you can create your own Follow Me Project. The award-winning Civil War Sallie project will also be discussed.

DotSub Video Presentation Link

Blip m4v direct link (video file)
Blip mp3 direct link (audio file)

Link to presentation’s supporting documents:
http://followme.wikispaces.com

Additional Information:
www.civilwarsallie.com
www.patriotpete.com
Twitter: @civilwarsallie

comments

  1. Janice Stearns

    Thanks for sharing this project and an easy way for students and teachers to get involved. I’m definitely going to share this with educators. I hope they join your project.
    How wonderful that you have initiated such a successful global project as a student. You are a great model for students everywhere!
    Thanks.

  2. Danielle Robb

    Wow! This sounds like such a neat idea! I teach 2nd grade and this week we are actually beginning our Flat Stanley Project. What I like about the Follow Me Project is how technology is integrated. I am trying to think of a way to share our Flat Stanley Project with everyone involved. I love that the Follow Me Project uses technology so that EVERYONE gets to see where the animal/creature has been. I also like the idea of the bag to hold artifacts that are collected along the way! What I am wondering is how to keep up with all of the different types of technology? Does everyone need a twitter, wikispace, blogger, etc… account to be involved? That seems like a ton of work. I think that the Civil War Sallie project was AMAZING, especially for such a young person! It is crazy what technology can do and how it can bring people from so far away so close together!

    This video has inspired me to integrate technology into my classes’ Flat Stanley Project.

    I also went to http://www.followme.wikispaces.com and was able to get a lot of helpful information. Thank you for sharing that with us!

  3. Katie

    Wow! This young lady is going big places! She accomplished in 7th grade what some people will never be able to wrap their heads around. I admire her motivation and drive, her articulation, and her commitment to self-education and acquisition of knowledge. Thank you for sharing this wonderful idea. My class loved the Flat Stanley books, and introducing them to something like this would be a wonderful idea.

  4. Julie

    I really liked the Follow Me Project idea. My students would thoroughly enjoy participating in this project. I also liked the fact that this idea can be modified to best fit the age of the students. Students can learn a great deal about the world around them and beyond depending on where the creature travels. Students can also feel a greater connection to the project by looking through the bag of things that travel with the creature. The Follow Me Project would also help develop students’ writing skills. By writing a blog about where the creature has gone and what the creature did, students can add new words to their vocabulary they might not have had the chance to learn otherwise. Also, there are so many ways to incorporate technology in the Follow Me Project such as blogging, Skyping, voice recording, and importing images. The Follow Me Project truly lends itself to new and amazing learning opportunities

  5. Jamie

    Wow! As I’m looking at this I’m plotting in my mind ways to integrate this into science. If we kept it within Arizona, the students could come to learn more about the wildlife than they do right now. It’s hard because we live in a city and don’t really see a lot of the rest of the state. It might also be cool to integrate the ideas from “Lets Chat” to get kids from the country and the city talking about animals, their adaptations, and so forth.

    I wish I loved a little closer to Tucson so I could invite Sally to our own Civil War site!

  6. Claudia R

    This is a great idea! I like that it shows you exactly how to set it up but this project has the flexibility to be tailored for anything specific a teacher desires for her class. I would love to create a scientist penguin that travels around observing different experiments around the United States. I think this is a great way for students to really take ownership of their project based learning.

  7. Diana Maloney

    The Follow Me project is an exciting way to bring resources from far away areas to inside the classroom. The Civil War Sallie project was amazing enough, much more so, considering how young the creator was. The amount of technology that goes into this type of project seems a bit overwhelming but I think there are elements that I would like to explore with kindergarten. I know that my young students would love to see and learn about things with the help of a stuffed animal/explorer. Also, I think even young students would like to reply or post a blog (as a class) on what they viewed. Very engaging.

  8. debora

    This was a fun Follow Me Project to watch. The whole time I was watching this video I was thinking of ways to integrate a Follow Me Project in my preschool class. Having a young class I think an in-class project would be fun to add. Following the adventures and themes we discover during the year while adding voice thread of each student making a comment on our adventures and themes would be fun and a kick for them to hear their voice. This young lady really got me thinking of ways to create a Follow Me Project in my class. Thanks for sharing!

  9. Lisa B

    The follow me project is a great idea. I teach younger children and having the children use a bear as a way of getting the students involving in a project and including the bear in palces you might visit will intrest the children. I am not sure how I can create a website but given the different websites I can use to create one might be helpful.

  10. Crystal

    I really like this because you can adapt this to any grade. I am getting ideas for next year. I use this in all subject area. I like how you keep a “scrapbook” wiki of the travels of the animal. I think that some of this video is a little to high for my kids. I love the idea, thanks! Great Job!

  11. Sara

    I really like this idea. I have classroom stuffed animals that my students can take home. With this idea in mind, I can have them write about their adventures in order of what happened. This is a great way to inspire writing and creative projects.

  12. Katie Gullette

    We do something similar. Our class is presented with 8 different stuffed animals to be taken home as requested in writing (by student). Waiting a turn is learned in sharing our animal friends. when the studetn takes an animal home a writing tablet is also taken too. This way they have to write events of their evening with their little friend. Writing skills are improved, as writing in sequence about their evening AND then reading it back to us as a class. Kids enjoy this!

  13. Jessica Boland

    I was amazed with how articulate this young lady was. It definitely reminded me of the Flat Stanley projects that I have been a part of. I liked how this Follow Me project (Civil War Sallie) resulted in learning more about the Civil War Battles. Although I don’t think this project would suite me, it definitely got me thinking in how I could extend my students’ knowledge of the Civil War by conducting a battle project. I have begun researching the battles and will be having my students create a brochure or movie teaching others about the ins and outs of each particular battle we research.

  14. Alicia

    Kudos to the young lady who did this presentation! I would love to do this with my preschool class. Our state standards require us to teach geography; using the “Follow Me Project” would be an awesome way to teach my students about different terrains. I think any age group would benefit from this project!!

  15. Ashley B

    What a cool idea! I am already thinking about how I could do a Follow Me Project next year. I like the idea that the student mentioned at the end of the presentation about having each student take a stuffed animal home and write about what they did and take pictures. This could easily be turned into a Follow Me Project and would be a good way to engage the students. I also think this is the perfect way to introduce the kids to Web 2.0 tools. I have a lot to think about this summer as I start planning for next year!

  16. KB

    Sounds like a great project, I teach preschool and I think if I were to try this I might start small like just on our campus (other grades) or maybe our district and see how well it goes love it for the older kids.

  17. M.Gonzalez

    Very amazing that a seven grader can do this type of work and use the technology in such way! For years we teachers have used teddy bears that travel to every student’s home for the weekend asking families to write their experiences in the class journal. This takes it to next level! Interesting idea to try.

  18. Thia Lutich

    Next year I will be teaching 2nd grade and one of the Social Studies projects will be Flat Stanely. I dont know much about it but I do know that the main focus is friendly letter writing via pen and paper. I like how this student took a similar project and made is accessible to everyone. It seems that this would work really well for older students but not sure how it would work in a primary classroom.

  19. Candace Garcia

    This is such a wonderful project! What a powerful way to teach about the civil war.The fact that you can start within your own school is inspiring. It would be great to work your way up to a global project. There is so much technology being integrated into this project. It seems like it would be difficult to teach all the different rescources in a first grade classroom.

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