Activity One
Endangered Animal Postcard Project
EdPsy490NET
Dr. Michael Waugh, Instructor
Submitted by Beth TwardowskiProposal:
My project is designed to enable students from all over the world to communicate and learn about the endangered species of the Earth. This is accomplished by participants emailing me information about an endangered animal. I forward that email to the other participants. They respond by doing research to determine the endangered animals identity The project coordinator (me) will be post the mysteries to a web site, keep track of participants, email postcard mysteries to participants, and inform participants if their guess to an animals identity is correct. At the conclusion of the project, all animal mysteries and correct responses will be posted to a web page as a resource. See a more detailed description at:
http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/etwardow/postcards/endangeredg.htmlOrganization Activities:
First, I submitted my proposal to Global Schoolhouse Network. It was accepted. I also asked friends, neighbors, CTER cohorts, and relatives to help with the project in case there were few participants. There were several teachers interested in the project for fall, including one from MA, and one from Australia. A teacher from Australia began sending me information now, but stopped when she found out I didn’t have a “real” class right now. I did not end up with many participants . I created web pages that explain the project and how to participate. I also created a web page for displaying animal mysteries and another for revealing their identities.
Endangered Animal Mystery Project Main Page
Endangered Animal Mystery Postcard Instructions and Guidelines
Endangered Animal Mysteries
Endangered Animal Mysteries Revealed
Revisions and Conclusions:
I think a class would learn a great deal by participating in this activity. In addition to learning about endangered species, you are creating a web-based resource and communicating with people from different geographical locations and cultures I can tell keeping track of the participants and keeping the website current would be a great deal of work. This should be a long-term activity. Participants can be from a range of grade levels. In the fall, I will probably pursue it and re-submit it to Global Schoolhouse with a longer time frame. A site where you can email postcards of your design to othersis available on the Internet. It looks like it would be very useful for use with this project. This site can be found at: http://www.postcards.org/postcards/
I have all several ideas for possible revisions. For example:This fall I hope to pursue this project with others across the country and/or the world. The main endangered animal mystery page has links to the others. Enjoy!
- students submit only animals that are native to their country
- Instead of emailing answers back and forth, just post them to the website periodically
- Adapt this to social studies and have famous landmark mysteries
- A bulletin board with a map showing where the endangered animals were from would not only be helpful in teaching about the animal, but about the classes and students who are submitting animal mysteries.