From Classroom to Virtual Museum: Life of a Colonial Child

See how our 3^rd grade works with three local museums to preserve and present the Colonial experience, extending the classroom by developing a virtual museum.

Objectives:

• Attendees will learn how web site publication can teach students how to organize, interpret and present information by creating a virtual museum.
• Attendees will learn strategies for integrating technology into existing traditional activities and utilize them on their web sites.
• Attendees will learn to maximize the use of digital cameras (picture prompts, organizing device for web site, artifact).
• Attendees will learn some simple techniques for streaming the online web building process.

I. Demonstrate the parallel elements involved in constructing successful classroom museums and web sites:

• Sustained research to insure accuracy
• Cooperative group work / shared responsibility
• Organization
• Imagination
• Close faculty guidance

Venn Diagrams:   Making Meaning
Knowledge Building  | 3^rd Grade Colonial Study
link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/workshop/makingmeaning.htm

"Serving as classroom curators for a class-devised museum permits children to develop their intuitive understandings through concrete experiences with historical, cultural and social artifacts."
Eric Strickland.  "Classroom Curators"  Social Studies Mar-April 1985 p. 81

"Because students are actually building meaning as they add to the museum collection, this is, in many respects, a wonderful workshop for constructivist learning."
Jamie McKenzie - Building a Virtual Museum Community  FNO 1997

Research shows that young children learn best when they become immersed in their learning. To that end the third grade team has planned a unit of study in which students investigate what life would have been like for a child in colonial America. Each child learns about various aspects of colonial life such as: school, home, work, clothing, food, medicine, music, and recreation. The study involves field trips, literature, both fiction and non-fiction, technology, art, cooking, and crafts. Traditionally, this unit ends with "Colonial Day," a culminating activity where students and faculty dress in costume, act in character, and welcome members of the GA community to experience their staging of a colonial schoolhouse, market and tavern. The students spend two months researching, visiting various museums, discussing, observing, writing and building in order to produce Colonial Day. (Constructing the Colonial Experience).

link Colonial Day:
http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/ColonialDay/index.htm

link Constructing the Colonial Experience: 
http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/ColonialDay/preparations/index01.htm

Our challenge was to build a web site centered on The Life of a Colonial Child. We believed that constructing this web site would give the third grade an opportunity to both preserve and present their experiences. The process of building a web site is very similar to a staging a culminating activity like Colonial Day where students synthesize and creatively use the materials they have been studying. Both constructivist processes stress greater understanding because the students actually build their knowledge. Virtual and classroom museums seek to share experience and communicate knowledge. Both combine performance and presentation skills. Both engage and motivate, and both are tangible representations of student learning. The difference is that the web site offers a unique ongoing opportunity to extend beyond the confines of the classroom and the ability to build and share an ongoing and growing body of knowledge.

II. Show how creating our web site gives us a welcome opportunity to integrate technology seamlessly into the existing curriculum:

• Web Pages:  Rather than produce a handwritten report, our students use Micromedia Dreamweaver to create their own web pages. We set up a simple template for them to facilitate the process, and to achieve the kind of visual uniformity most often experienced in online museum displays. (Pennsbury student web pages)
  link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Pennsbury/gallery.htm
    
• Fast Facts: The standard technique "what I learned today" is transformed when students are asked to e-mail a fact about the Pennsbury visit to school's web master. These facts will be published for everyone to see so students think very carefully about what they consider interesting, informative and original.
  Pennsbury Fast Facts:
  link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Pennsbury/Facts.htm
   
• A-Z Guide:  Students create their own colonial alphabet to give an A-Z tour of the colonial plantation, Ridley Park. Students review the digital photos, brainstorm their best use and write the captions as part of a group exercise. In the past, students would have created posters or bulletin boards for their alphabet. This is done as a whole class exercise.
  link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/Ridley/RidleyMV/AZguide.htm
    
• Colonial Dictionary:  Based upon student enthusiasm for the A-Z guide, we decided to expand the project to encompass the entire colonial study. Subject specific vocabulary is stressed throughout the year. Students researched the meanings of vocabulary words and matched them with images we've collected during our field trips. This dictionary is planned as an ongoing project with growth potential built in.
  link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/ColonialDictionary/index.htm
    
• Online Reports:  At the Rittenhouse Homestead students spend the day cooking in an 18^th century kitchen and making paper. This time, they word-process their impressions rather than writing a report. We incorporate their work into the main Rittenhouse template.
  link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/Rittenhouse/Index.htm
     
• Our field trips are interspersed throughout a two-month period during which the students are reading historical fiction and doing in-depth research on the life of colonial children. Each class creates a web page featuring one aspect of the curriculum:
  
  • Venn diagrams compare and contrast the lives of colonial and contemporary children.  In the future we will be doing this with Inspiration.
    link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/venn.htm
    
  • Colonial storybook details aspects of colonial life such as food, work, education and clothing
    link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/capture.htm
    
  • Tutorials on colonial crafts such as candlemaking, blacksmithing, and tinsmithing provide directions and materials needed.
    link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/crafts.htm

• Colonial Craft Guides:  Colonial craft day was originally a photo essay of activities. We expanded the online presentation to include detailed student how-tos of the activities that accompanied the descriptive photographs.
  link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/CraftDay/Index.htm
      
• Crossword Puzzle:   Rather than fill out commercial worksheets or crossword puzzles, students create their own class puzzle using free online software.
  link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/puzzles/crossword/WPenn1.htm
    

Students work with digital photographs, scan original drawings, use free online clip art, e-mail, word-process and use an html editor. None of these applications are "add-ons." Instead, the project extends the work students are already doing, and in many cases clarifies their growing progress in the Colonial Day project.

III. Demonstrate why the introduction of digital cameras is a welcome addition to the learning process.

• Using digital photos of their trip as writing prompts, students write commentary describing their perceptions of colonial life.  Our students love reviewing the images in the shared directory, selecting photos that "tell a story" or best illustrate a point, and then writing a descriptive piece.
• Using original photos means that you do not confront the same copyright issues when using published work.
• You do not have to pay for film or processing.  The  photos are available instantly.

IV. Technical Advice
      link:   http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/workshop/techtips.htm

V.  Student and Parent Feedback
      link:  http://www.germantownacademy.org/academics/ls/3/Colonial/workshop/evaluations.htm

 

Germantown Academy
P.O. Box 287
Ft. Washington, PA 19034

Andrea Owens, home page coordinator & Micki Vieille, 3rd grade technology coordinator 
© 1999-2004

Last updated  05/03/2004

Colonial Study  |  3rd Grade  |  GAnet