The fourth grade Leadership Summit was on Friday, December 5th and it was a success.... mostly.We had about 65 fourth graders answer the following questions via blog, Twitter and WizIq:
1. What qualities do good leaders have?
2. What problems exist that require good leadership?
3. What obstacles stand in my way that prevent me from becoming a leader?
I was pleased that all four fourth grade classes participated, but logistically it was tough to have that many people in one room. They were in groups of about 10 and it was a little tough to have all students feel like they could just "act natural" and just interact in the WizIq session. Last year I did this in groups of 7 and it was much easier. I talked too much during the session, I would much rather have them lead the conversation. Is this too much to expect from fourth graders? We are going to try another "Summit" - type of activity in the spring around a different IB unit. That will be a good opportunity to tweak some things. Students were unaware that there were any technical problems and were generally excited to share their knowledge with the world.
4. What goals do I have to set to become a leader? Our Central Idea was: Individuals impact society through their roles as leaders.
We had 12 participants on the 90-minute WiziQ session, many from in district at the ESS building, a few classrooms and teachers in district and one fourth grade classroom in Beaufort, SC. We ended the day with about 220 comments on our blog. We had 2, count 'em 2 replies on Twitter.
There were some technical issues on WizIq. Nobody could use the whiteboard feature, participants who tried to connect with a mic and/or webcam ran into
problems. I wrote to the WizIq help desk to ask about connection problems and the annotation feature and their reply was:
"Regarding the connection, we generally recommend a connection with minimum bandwidth 512kbps for a good experience in a 2-way video session and around 256kbps for a 2-way audio session.. Each individual sees screens/ videos based on their bandwidth and only if they are active [speaking/ broadcasting/ writing] are others affected.
The Annotation feature works if you transfer audio control [even in free version] to the participants."
I didn't have the audio control transfered, but it seemed to work fine on a couple of practice sessions we had before Friday.
I was passing the mic around to students, but it turned out that the audio was being picked up by the webcam, not the other external mic. This is why people who joined us could hear me fine but not the students, I was standing right by the webcam, moving it from student to student.
Twitter was a bust! I'm a big fan of twitter but we updated around 98 times in 90 minutes and only got 2 replies! I don't expect people to drop everything to reply and I know that mid morning isn't exactly high traffic time but 2?? I think I am trying to fit twitter in to a format where it doesn't fit. I am wondering if I could set up a "chat room" type of space where kids sign on and discuss leadership in more of a live session. As I looked at the tweets and even some of the blog comments, that is what kids were trying to do. Any ideas of how I could do this? Chatterous? G Talk? Skype?
I was pleased that all four fourth grade classes participated, but logistically it was tough to have that many people in one room. They were in groups of about 10 and it was a little tough to have all students feel like they could just "act natural" and just interact in the WizIq session. Last year I did this in groups of 7 and it was much easier. I talked too much during the session, I would much rather have them lead the conversation. Is this too much to expect from fourth graders? We are going to try another "Summit" - type of activity in the spring around a different IB unit. That will be a good opportunity to tweak some things. Students were unaware that there were any technical problems and were generally excited to share their knowledge with the world.
The conversation continues... My students are doing leadership actions such as helping students in other classes, reshelving books in the media center, a couple of students are planning on planting plants in our courtyard in the spring. They are earning red "I am a Leader" bracelets for their efforts. If you or your students would still like to comment on our blog, please do so. I am also uploading pictures of the session on the sidebar of that blog.
(Thanks so much to those who attended: Joe, Kelly, Liz, Kate. Thanks Dave for all your help in the days leading up to and during the Summit.)
