Tag Archives: MysteryQuests

Great Backgrounds & Posters

Another MysteryQuest day. One of the best presentations today came from Wessendorf Middle School, Texas. I loved their use of backgrounds in their news show. Look at the artwork on the left and the wonderful wall map on the right. These add visual interest to the presentation.
 

This class also had posters that worked! It’s usually pretty hard to make posters clear enough. Here’s an example that worked really well. Note the huge letters and small amount of information on one poster. This made note taking much easier.

Troy Intermediate, Avon Lake, Ohio, also had a news show. My favorite part was a little advertisement from the Fruity Fruit Store, sharing a clue about local products and services.

On a side note, the Polycom mics are really good! During one news show, the announcers were whispering to each other and calling up the next students. We heard it. 🙂 And we almost always hear the whispers of “louder, louder” to the person who is presenting the clue. Just some of the fun quirks of MysteryQuest sessions!

Creative Clues

Another day of MysteryQuest. 5 classes today from Michigan, Missouri and Ohio. I’m really enjoying the news shows with creative interruptions of “live news”. These classes really make the presentation fun to listen to and take notes on. A follow-up PowerPoint to a creative presentation really helps students take notes on the presentation.

Another thing I really enjoy is when classes have Spanish speaking students and some of the clues are given in Spanish and then translated. Usually classes do this for the Western Hemisphere countries.

We had some very clear PowerPoints in the session today. While I like to see creative presentations, clear large font PowerPoints are definitely the easiest to take notes on.

I saw a new skit idea today! Holmes Middle School, Flint, Michigan shared their clues in the form of a classroom skit. The student who was selected to play the role of teacher played the role with finesse and poise.

We had a few IP connection issues with one of the schools – maxed out bandwidth and poor video/audio quality, but we managed to work around it. The clear PowerPoints helped that school get their clues.

Another great day in MysteryQuest-land!

First MysteryQuest of This School Year!

Today we’re starting a series of 8 days of MysteryQuest: World Geography. Today’s session features Africa. We have 5 classes connecting from Michigan, Missouri, New Jersey and New York.

We had three presentations that featured mainly posters, a news show featuring a kidnapping, and a PowerPoint presentation.

Good VC etiquette that I noticed today:

  • Having a sign in the school and/or a document camera sign that identifies the school.
  • Muting in between sections of a presentation as the students moved around in the room.

Some things that were a challenge:

  • Posters continue to be a difficult visual to master. Traditional classroom posters are very difficult to read over a videoconference. One suggestion I give teachers is to hold up the poster across the room and see if you can still read it. I wonder if that works though. Maybe we need even more specific directions on this. On the other hand, I don’t want to stress teachers who are new to MysteryQuest sessions as it’s pretty involved.
  • We always have some audio issues in MysteryQuest sessions from somewhere. We had some crackling quality issues and also some noise near mics that made it hard to hear clues. I think the students handled it pretty well today. Having a clear PowerPoint for schools with audio issues really helped get the clues written down.

I’m amazed again at the fast switch to IP connections. Last year we had one or two IP connections for each session; and this year only one or two ISDN connections for each session. ISDN seems to be on a fast demise.

Today’s session went well. One down; seven to go. If you’re a regional distance learning coordinator with a bridge and lots of districts you service, you should be running this program for your students. Here’s a page on running your own MysteryQuest. I turned so many people away this year! Feel free to copy and adapt. There’s no way I can run enough events for the demand out there and I have no troubles filling the sessions I run for my own schools. If you make a website, let me know so I can send people your way who didn’t get into mine. (Now that’s collaboboration in the VC community right?!)

Middle School Geography Videoconferences

There are a number of excellent opportunities for middle school geography classes. This list is for Michigan 6th grade classes studying Western Hemisphere and 7th grade classes studying Eastern Hemisphere. However, the ideas apply to other grade levels if your school studies geography in a different grade level.

  1. MysteryQuest: World Geography. We run this project every year with sessions for Western Hemisphere, Europe, Asia, and Africa. It has been in the fall, but due to state testing moving to October, we’ll be running this in late January, early February. My teachers pick the dates & times, then we open up registration for all the rest of you! There’s no way we could run enough for everyone interested, so you’ll find information on running your own there as well if you want to do that. MysteryQuest is free for my teachers and the rest of you too!
  2. For my local teachers, you could connect with a class in another country! I’ve been collecting contacts and could set you up with a class in Alberta or Ontario, Canada, or in Guatemala, Costa Rica, Mexico, Pakistan, or Taiwan. We could possibly find other partner classes too. These are free!
  3. I would really like to do an Around the World project like I’ve seen online a few places. I don’t really want to stay up all night, but we could do a morning to evening time frame. Also we could focus on just one hemisphere as well. This idea would be free and we could have lots of local classes participate. Here are links of websites who have done this: Around the World in a Day, Boston, 2002; NJEdgeNet 2003, 2004 and a press release.
  4. There are a few good content provider programs on Canada: Inuit: Survival in the Canadian Arctic, and Kigluait Adventures has some programs that mention Canada.
  5. Another good one would be the Cleveland Institute of Music’s new Musical Geography of the World. I really want to see this one, so to my teachers: write a mini-grant for this one!!
  6. For Central and South America, tying in with science and doing something on the rainforest might be good.
  7. For Eastern Hemisphere, try programs on Africa or Asia.
  8. Searching geography in the standards field also will bring up a good list. You’ll have to sort through the U.S. geography ones, though.

This should give any middle school geography teacher a good start at the possibilities!

To my local teachers, email me or visit www.remc11.k12.mi.us/dl to schedule any of these videoconferences.

MysteryQuest Beaches

So this week I’ve also been team teaching a workshop with Bennie Tschoerner, Paris ISD, and Ken Conn, Lamar Consolidated ISD in Texas.

Today we learned about the MysteryQuest project – and did the first professional development version of MysteryQuest…… MQ Beaches! Each of the three sites was assigned two areas of the world and shared two presentations with clues about a beach in that area of the world. It was a lot of fun! We had very creative presentations pulled together in just under an hour – with visuals, props such as towels, sunscreen, and flowers!

Feel free to use this same format and materials in PD you are doing at your site! The websites for the student versions of the MQ formats are: MysteryQuest: World Geography, MysteryQuest USA, and TWICE’s Where in Michigan?

The Kids Can Handle It!

Today we had the last MysteryQuest USA of this year. I am always struck by the patience and flexibility of the students in participating in this event! We had some interesting challenges this time – the class in Wales, Alaska had a power outage and were connected for a while via their generator; another class had a problem with their PowerPoint and had to finish their presentation later in the program; and we had a few connection issues with some of the sites (as usual it seems!). Try to connect 8 different sites all with different equipment and it gets interesting!

But while the adults participating in (and running) the videoconference may be stressing out about the technology – the kids are totally engaged in the task – finding out where everyone is located! They are patient with each other. Patient with the technology. They get great practice with their communication skills – speaking clearly and slowly. They are willing to do their part again without complaining when something happens so that we can’t hear them. The kids just roll with it! And what do they remember when it’s over? The fun they had… where the other classes were located… how neat it was to see the kids in Alaska…

And now the question is, who else can we connect with? The world is entering into the classroom in amazing instructional experiences!

Love Those Costumes!

Today I facilitated another MysteryQuest USA. We had a great group of kids from Michigan, Missouri, Wisconsin, New York, and Texas. We had to weather a few technical glitches, but the students did very well. Rachel Villanueva’s class from McAllen, Texas did an exceptional job with their clues and guessing the locations of the other classes.

At the end, we had a bit of extra time, so I gave the students a chance to ask each other questions and make comments on the other presentations. One of the most common comments on other presentations was, “I liked your costumes.” While students are creative in many ways to give their clues, it’s the human visuals that are always the most fun! In last Thursday’s MysteryQuest, my favorite costumes were the aliens giving clues. We had so many technical difficulties that I can’t remember now which class it was.

So here’s a few tiny screen shots from today’s videoconference:


Students from Brown Elementary, St. Joseph, Michigan, tell about the first European explorers to discover Michigan.


Students from Brown Elementary, St. Joseph, Michigan, in a canoe describing the Native Americans in Michigan.


Students from Garza Elementary, McAllen, Texas, share clues about the three major celebrations in Texas.

While it’s cool to use PowerPoint for presentations, students love to see the other students on camera – especially in costumes, singing, and being creative to share information!