Project Correspondence for
The
Global Grocery List Plus Project
Created by Jill
McCue
Last Updated: July 23, 2002
Project Correspondence
For
The Global
Grocery List Plus
(1st letter to project developer)
Dave, my name is Jill McCue, and I am interested in participating in the Global
Grocery List. However, I am part of master's program at the University of
Illinois in Curriculum, Technology and Educational Reform, and I've been asked
to go a step further than just join your online project. My summer
"class" consists of my 3 children and the 2 children of friends. I am
proposing that my children gather
information from a central Illinois town of 1000 where we summer and friends of
ours will gather prices from the suburb of Chicago in which we live during the
school year. I would like to submit the prices from these 2 different locations
so that future users will have the
opportunity to view different prices in different areas of the same state. My
class will hypothesize about prices in different parts of
the state and compare them both to
prices already submitted to the site. How would you like me to submit the 2
sets, especially school name? I teach at Streamwood High School in Illinois
although these will not be the "students" participating this summer.
The locations will be Neoga, IL and Bartlett, IL. Also, I wondered if input
about other price comparisons is ever added. For example, the price of a Big
Mac at the nearest McDonalds. Any information you can share with me about
submission of prices and your project would be greatly appreciated. I think it
is a great project, and I plan to have my "real" students in the fall
participate in their home communities, which are different than the 2 I'm using
now.
Thank you, Jill McCue
(Reply
to above)
Jill
Thanks for the note and for your participation. You idea of posting
prices from both urban and rural locations in Illinois is an excellent
one. If you create any strategies for how to compare and conclusions
drawn from the comparison, please post them in the lesson strategies
section. I would identify yourself by the town you are in rather than a
school.
I have not expanded the project beyond its initial range of 1987. GGL was
designed to be a very simple project for educators who are just beginning to
use the Internet.
Thanks again!
-- dave --
David F. Warlick
The Landmark Project
Raleigh, NC USA
919-571-3292
david@landmark-project.com
http://landmark-project.com or http://landmarks4schools.org
(2nd
letter to project developer)
Dave,
as you may recall I am the teacher who is using the list as a comparison
between N and S IL. I have submitted the prices and my students are
having a good time with this. We will begin our US comparisons
tomorrow. I will post any new lesson strategies on your site.
Because I am not setting up the project I was wondering if there were any set
up, maintenance, participation woes or stories you would be willing to share w/
me as I work on this project. Normally in this class at U of I we would
be asked to join a project to learn from the developer then create our own.
However in 4 weeks there's not time so we've been asked to gather as much
information as possible. What have been the good and bad of the
project? Any information you can offer would be appreciated.
Thank
you, Jill McCue
(Reply
to above)
A
very good question. As it turns out, I am away from my office doing some
workshops near you in Downers Grove. I'm having a great time (going to a
minor league ball game tomorrow). Then I'm off to Hong Kong for next
week.
Anyway, this is been a fairly smooth project. One of the real pluses is
having the project database driven. They relieve me from much of the
information maintenance that is commonly associated with running an online
project.
One of the initial struggles was finding terminology that was acceptable and
practical for both U.S. participants and participants in other countries.
Again, the database and programming aspects have helped me to overcome the
problems of using various currencies and units of measure.
Another plus for the project is that it is very simple. It was designed
that way, and I have held fairly firm to the idea that it remain simple.
I hope that this helps. Please let me know if there are other questions
that I can answer.
-- dave --
(Email to Bartlett friend requesting participation)
Hi, all's well
in Neoga. Have a favor to ask
you. I'm thinking about using the Global Grocery List for part of my
project. It's at http://www.landmark-project.com/ggl/ Here’s what I wrote my instructor. “I would have my "students", my
children who are in a central IL town of about 1000 find the prices in
Neoga. Children of friends of ours in our year round town of Bartlett, a
suburb of Chicago will collect prices for us there and email them to us.
I plan to add a component to the price list.
For items that there is more than one brand I will ask that they use
math skills to average 3 prices for that item. My students will submit
the
prices to the site. At this point my children will pick a location in the
US from the site where they would like to make a hypothesis about the price
differences. We will use the price results to check their hypothesis. Let
me know what you think about this idea and if you have any suggestions for
adding to the project. The students are 5, 9, 9, 12 and 12. I feel
that this project has educational value for all of them.”
It
looks kind of fun and couldn't hurt the math and language skills. Do you
think you'd be willing to participate with the boys? One hypothesis for
our kids that would be good for them to make is what is the difference in
Bartlett and Neoga. Let me know and I'll let you know what I hear from my
teacher if it's a go. Your boys would need to gather prices at one
store. Average the price of anything that has multiple brands, and either
they could submit it or email to us and we'd submit it.
Talk
to you later, Jill
(Reply
to above)
Jill
The kids said it sounds like fun so
count us in. Just let us know what we need to price check and all the
requirements.
DC
(Lesson
1 email)
Hi,
here is the price list or you can get it from the site at http://www.landmark-project.com/ggl/us_list.html
For
any item that there is more than one brand, have the boys average up to 3
brands to get the price. For example peanut butter use Jif, Skippy and
Peter Pan. Add them up and divide by 3. If something is on sale
that's fine, it may be here too. For gas they can use 3 different
stations, Stearns and 59 would be good for that! Average housing and
percapita income may be obtained from the village and last census or let me
know and I'll research that for Bartlett and here. When the boys have the
prices just email them back to me and I'll submit. Have the boys make a
guess about if Bartlett or Neoga will be cheaper. Maybe they can write a
hypothesis statement like: I think ________ will be cheaper than
________because______________. After our prices are submitted I will ask
them to look at other locations that have submitted prices and make a
hypothesis about those compared to Bartlett/Neoga. Let me know if you
have any questions or problems. I emailed the project director today to
see how he wants me to submit these as one person in 2 locations.
Talk
to you soon, Jill
U.S.World
Grocery List
Below is the grocery list template for
participants who live in the United States. The best way to
report your prices is to copy the template, paste it into your e-mail
program and type in the
prices. You can also use a GGL Forms
page to input your prices and have the web take care of
posting them.
QUANTITY ITEM PRICE
-------------------------------------
1 pound.....HAMBURGER........... .
1 pound.....RICE................
1 pound.....ORANGES.............
1 pound.....SUGAR...............
1 pound.....ALL PURPOSE FLOUR...
1 gallon....WHOLE MILK..........
1 pound.....CHOCOLATE...........
1 pound.....POTATOES............
1 pound.....BUTTER..............
1 pound.....CORN................
1 pound.....PEANUT BUTTER.......
1 pound.....COFFEE..............
1 pound.....WHOLE CHICKEN.......
1 Egg.......EGGS................
1 gallon....PREMIUM UNLEADED GAS
AVERAGE MONTHLY COST FOR HOUSING
AVERAGE PERCAPITA INCOME
LONGITUDE AND LATITUDE
(Reply
to lesson 1)
Hey There!
Here are our answers and
pictures. Choose whichever one you want. We went to the
Village to find the longitude and latitude but they had no clue and neither did
the website so we went on Ask Jeeves and found it. Amazing what this
technology will do.
1 pound.....HAMBURGER...........$3.32
1 pound.....RICE................ $.89
1 pound.....ORANGES............. $.71
1 pound.....SUGAR............... $.45
1 pound.....ALL PURPOSE FLOUR... $.35
1 gallon....WHOLE MILK.......... $2.69
1 pound.....CHOCOLATE........... $5.31
1 pound.....POTATOES............ $.52
1 pound.....BUTTER.............. $3.39
1 pound.....CORN................ $1.46
1 pound.....PEANUT BUTTER....... $1.90
1 pound.....COFFEE.............. $3.84
1 pound.....WHOLE CHICKEN....... $1.54
1 Egg.......EGGS................ $.18
1 gallon....PREMIUM UNLEADED GAS $1.71
AVERAGE MONTHLY COST FOR HOUSING
$660 Rent as of 1997/ $184,921
Average value of homes in 1997
AVERAGE PERCAPITA INCOME
$77,539 as of 1989
LONGITUDE -88.19208
LATITUDE 41.97804
Alex's hypothesis is that Neoga will be
cheaper than Bartlett because Bartlett is a bigger town.
Bret's hypothesis is that Bartlett will
be cheaper than Neoga because it is bigger and will be able to purchase more
stuff and sell it easier because of all the people.
We went to the Village and the
information is as current as they have even though they did a census in
2000. They didn't do any of this information just how many people.
Hope this is what you wanted.
I'll send the pictures separately.
DC
(Email to share Illinois findings)
Hi,
Have the boys go to http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/jmccue/illinoishyp.htm
to see all the kids’ hypotheses. Then
they can go to the Global Grocery List site to view the prices we
submitted. The findings for Illinois
are at http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/jmccue/illinoisfind.htm. They can see how they did.
Jill
(Email
lesson for part 2 of project)
Hello,
I've
looked at the site and for 2002 there are few communities to compare with, but
I think I have 5 that will do. Rather than have the kids choose as I had
previously thought I’d do, I decided I’d better pick the places that seemed to
have the most accurate submissions to compare with.
Alex
has New Orleans, LA dated 5/6/02
Bret
has Central Point, OR dated 5/27/02
Matt
has Gillet, PA dated 6/5/02
Sam
has Yorba Linda, CA dated 5/16/02
Madi
and I will do Medford, OR dated 5/25/02
Lesson:
Do not look at the prices submitted yet!
Do
some Internet research about your town. Find out the population,
location, and any facts about the town. Make a "fact
sheet"/report about your town. Now make a hypothesis about your out
of IL town and your town in IL. So Bret and Alex will hypothesize about
their new town to Bartlett based on what they find out about their town.
Any questions email or call me. We have some time to do this.
I'd like the fact sheet/report and hypothesis w/ findings in 1 week 6/26.
If we're a little off, it shouldn't be a problem.
Thanks
and have fun, Jill
(Email
to share findings and web pages)
I
got the boys’ work. I've been working on the site all morning. Give it a
look and let the boys see how their hypotheses came out. They can view any
prices they’d like now. Actually, the
kids’ price lists were able to help a classmate of mine doing a similar
project. I submitted for Neoga and
Bartlett. URL is http://lrs.ed.uiuc.edu/students/jmccue/activity1.html
so the boys can see their “published” work.
I
took out last names for kids' safety. It's something we've talked about
in class and really no need for them. Your feedback would be greatly
appreciated! Jill
(Reply
to above)
Hey!
The
boys think your site is really cool
DC
