It’s time to sign up for MysteryQuest World Geography. I have less openings this year, so hurry!
If you want to see examples of past MysteryQuest presentations, browse through the MysteryQuest category on my blog.
Hope you can join us this year!
Tag Archives: MysteryQuests
Jazz Day Three: MysteryQuest Beaches & GNG
Another day of Jazz, and great learning happening. It’s so neat to see the progress of the participants and their new found comfort with videoconferencing and collaborative web tools. Today’s hit was definitely Flickr, with participants naming pictures and writing captions beneath them. My group in particular sure had a lot of fun with this today.
We also had a lot of fun with MysteryQuest Beaches, the professional development version of the various MysteryQuests: World Geography, MQ USA, Where in Michigan, Texas History Mystery, Fairy Tale Challenge, and LiteratureQuest. Our group chose Cleopatra’s Beach, and just before time was up to start presenting, we realized we had conflicting information on where it really was! We gave some vague clues based on our confusion, but Region 12 still got it!
Our guest speaker in the afternoon today was David MacQuart from Global Nomads Group. After explaining what GNG does, David led us in a discussion on The Future of America, in a simulated Pulse program. Participants quickly realized the incredible value of these types of discussions within the U.S. and across countries. David’s facilitation skills were a great lesson on videoconferencing as well. In the words of one participant from ESC 12:
I was impressed with David’s ability to mediate and facilitate our very diverse and passionate groups.
Finally, groups finished up the last details on their collaborative projects. Today they spent most of their group time collaboratively working in GoogleDocs. They were amazed at the reality that all 4-6 participants in two or three sites (per group) could actually edit different parts of the same document at the same time.
Tomorrow we finish up with Math Marvels, projects from NOECA, OH and CSD, MO, final group presentations, and a surprise gift from Shane, ESC 12’s talented bridge guy. As soon as we finish, I’m off to the TWICE board retreat, so this is probably it for posts this week. It’s been fun sharing Jazz with you!
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A Day in the Life of a Distance Learning Coordinator
Inspired by Arnie, Roxanne and Sandy, I thought I would write about a day of videoconferencing. So I picked a pretty busy day to record. If you are blogging too, pick a day yet this school year and tell us what it’s really like!
7:30 a.m. River Valley participates in the first ever Literature Quest. I came in early and sat by my phone waiting for a call in case they had trouble. No phone call so they did great on their own!
8:00 a.m. Patrick Hamilton connects to the Buffalo Museum of Science. This connection didn’t go well and after a few minutes of struggling, I had the school dial directly to Buffalo and then I didn’t hear from them so they were fine!
8:30 a.m. River Valley’s second Literature Quest starts. Again they were doing it on their own. At about 8:40 I called the media specialist to see how it was going. Very well. We’ll probably modify the materials to include three presentations from each school. At the high school level it seems, based on this pilot, that a full MysteryQuest with six presentations can be done between two schools in an hour long class period. Good to know and we’ll continue to use this model to develop more programs.
9:00 a.m. Pat Ham finishes with the Buffalo Museum and Washington Elementary connects to them. With Washington El it worked fine on the bridge. I scramble to set up the distance learning room for an ASK program. Presets, tables, logo. Welcome panel participants.
9:30 a.m. Sam Adams and Marcellus Middle School participate in ASK: Monkey Island with our panel of experts. We rescheduled to today so that Marcellus could participate. So now I’m facilitating and making sure the Buffalo Museum program is still going at the same time!
10:00 a.m. Washington El finishes with Buffalo Museum and Patrick Hamilton is back for another session with a different class. While facilitating the ASK program, I keep checking my bridge to see when Washington is done. Then I disconnect so Pat Ham can dial directly. Note: Later today I received an email from Washington Elementary with this feedback on their program with the Buffalo Museum of Science: “The vc went wonderfully. The kids really enjoyed it, and I liked that the kids were making good observations and deductions. It’s definitely one that I’ll recommend to our teachers.”
10:30 a.m. ASK Monkey Island finishes and I thank our panel members and walk them out of the building.
11:00 a.m. Brandywine and St. Joseph High Schools connect to Global Nomads Group for their Pulse program on Muslim-Western relations. St. Joe’s camera was acting up so we had to reboot. Brandywine was connecting at 128K and we tried to resolved that but finally gave up. This program is led by David MacGuirt and is a facilitated dialogue with David posing questions and the students responding to the question, and then commenting on each others’ responses.
12:00 noon. Whew. Time for lunch.
12:30 p.m. River Valley’s last LiteratureQuest starts. On their own again. They did fine!
1:00 p.m. Catching up on email and phone calls. Arranging two more videoconferences. Helping a teacher in my online class. Answering a district tech coordinator’s questions about a grant.
2:30 p.m. Ottawa Elementary goes to the Bronx Zoo. For some reason in today’s connection I couldn’t call the Bronx Zoo, so I had to have them call me. But that was quickly resolved and we had a great program on Animal Colors.
3:40 p.m. Quick test call for Where in Michigan tomorrow.
4:00 p.m. Final videoconference reflection for the Kid2Kid Videoconference Class. We talked about what went well with their projects this year, talked about challenges – mostly related to technology and communication and talked about what other VC projects we have going on. It was a great debrief!
In between VCs today I worked on automating my final report for this year. It’s almost done!
So tell us about one of your days!
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Great Ideas Spreading…
It’s cool to see how great ideas spread from one region to another! Just this week Arnie Comer wrote about how he’s running MysteryQuest Regions in his area and Roxanne just posted about the Texas History Mystery she and Angela Conrad are running. It’s neat also how much we all keep contributing and growing the ideas. I learned from Roxanne’s blog that Arnie made this cool script for running a MysteryQuest. This is Roxanne’s version of it. Great detail for those starting to run their own MysteryQuest type activities. A great idea gets better as we all contribute and grow in our use of a strategy.
Another example is the ASK program. Jim Wenzloff and Arnie Comer from Macomb ISD mentored me and other TWICE board members in the ASK program, then Polycom is using an ASK Deluxe format (Jim’s idea!) with The Ultimate Gift videoconferences, and now Roxanne is working towards ASK for Texas too.
What great ideas do you have that you could be sharing and growing??!!
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Last MysteryQuest USA of 2007
Today we had some fun clues. Classroom A, Pennfield Central Elementary, Pennfield, MI, integrated their poetry unit into their MysteryQuest USA presentation.
All of our clues are going to rhyme
And we’re all going to have a great, great time.Goods are not just imported by train,
They are also imported by semi and plane.The population is more than eleven.
But a whole lot less than one thousand seven.
In addition, they shared their guesses in rhyme, and the correct answer too! Great examples this year of how to integrate other content (poetry and math) into MysteryQuest USA sessions. Hopefully you can join us in April next year!
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Great Clues from Alaska
How do you give a clue about the time zone of your state when it includes the name of your state? By giving a math problem!
EST -4; CST – 3, etc.
Notice the great background this school created for their clues! Snowshoes and airplanes give clues about the state.
Climate clue: Land + midnight + sun. Get it?
The presentation included rich visuals in many of the clues, especially the clues about the local Native American culture.
These clues are samples from Hunter Elementary, Fairbanks, Alaska, in today’s session of MysteryQuest USA. We’re always thrilled to have Alaska in our MysteryQuest USA sessions! We ended the session with a Q&A time, and then a snowball fight initiated by our Alaskan virtual friends. What a blast! Kids won’t forget this anytime soon!
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More Math Clues
Another MysteryQuest USA session today. We had some rough technology problems at the beginning, but they smoothed out and the kids settled into taking notes.
One school presented a news show! I love those. They also included visual clues at the end to make sure everyone got the notes. That’s always important with news shows because often the name of a tourist attraction gets buried in the news story.
We also had a jeopardy game that worked very well.
But my favorite clues today came from St. Thomas Aquinas School in Wisconsin. These are great examples of a very clear document camera clue. The exact notes that need to be written down are on the page. A large visual plus large text. The clue is given in a sentence with more information around it, but the important part to record is very obvious.
They also included a couple of math clues. Seems to be a new trend this year! I really like the incorporation of math with the geography clues!
All of the classes did a great job today!
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Math Problem Clues for MysteryQuest USA
Imagine solving math problems to find out a clue you need to solve a geography puzzle! In today’s MysteryQuest USA, students from Mark Twain Elementary, Fraser, Michigan, gave some of their clues in the form of math problems.
Add the numbers at the top to get the population of the city.
Complete this division problem to find the area of the state.
Find the solution to 3 squared to find the number of states surrounding the mystery state.
Students enjoyed these and other creative clues in today’s MysteryQuest USA.
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Cool Clues from MysteryQuest USA
Another MysteryQuest USA session today.
Check out this visual for this clue. “A park in our state is is the Long Key State Park.” This creative clue was by Brown Elementary, St. Joseph, Michcigan. See the “long key”!!
Sylvester Elementary, Berrien Springs, Michigan, presented their clues in the form of a Deal or No Deal show.
The clues were inside the cases, very carefully written out.
Classroom E, Mark Twain Elementary, Fraser, Michigan had some nicely designed posters. Each one had a bold header, a sentence with the clue, and a large drawing to represent the clue. Zooming the camera in on the poster made it easier to take notes. Their clues were so clear that none of the classes needed a clue repeated after they finished their presentation!
Yet another great MysteryQuest USA session!
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Presenting Clear Clues
Today’s MysteryQuest USA lessons were about clear posters. Posters continue to be one of the hardest things to do well in a videoconference. Classroom D, Farrell-Emmett Elementary, in Yale, Michigan, had some great posters today.
Notice especially the first poster. There are five C’s to write down. The part that the students would need to write down is big and bold. It’s short and easy to write down. Everything is bold and large. These are great examples of good posters.
Here’s another excellent poster from one of the other classes. It emphasizes the clue that the other classes need to write down.
Today’s group was fastest and most efficient set of classes to do the Q&A section. Even with really creative questions such as, “Is your city’s newspaper called The Register?” and “Does your town have a Candlelight Ghost Tour?” We whizzed through the clarifying questions, coming back to the classes that were still looking up the answer to a creative question.
Three MysteryQuest USA sessions down, six more to go!
