Flat Stanley Project   

DESCRIPTION: 

Assignment: Take Flat Stanley on an Adventure

As part of my EDT requirements, I had to create an adventure for Flat Stanley in my science class.  It was required that I take and modify three pictures of Flat Stanley participating in an activity.  Each picture was accompanied by a brief description.  All of this information had to be uploaded into a new page of the Wiki: Flat Stanley Collaborative Project.  The information of his adventure can be found on my portion of the wiki.

Mrs. Schell's science class is learning about Genetics and how certain traits are passed down to offspring.  Flat Stanley went on an adventure, learning about two critters, Skye and Poppy, and how they passed down the tail color trait to their offspring.

Flat Stanley is putting into practice what he learned about heredity in science class.  Using the random results of another coin toss, he helped build a replica or model of a Generation Three critter offspring.  In the picture above, he is posing with a few critter pups from the class.  This activity was more challenging because it focused on more than one trait of the critters, like tail style, number of eyes, length of nose, etc.

SKILLS LEARNED/EXPANDED:

Through this Flat Stanley activity, I learned how easy it is to manipulate photos and upload to a site.  The students enjoyed posing for pictures with Flat Stanley and it was not difficult to incorporate him into the lesson.  I have continued to learn more about posting information using Wikis such as this one, and how user-friendly the process can be.

REFLECTION: 

This process of incorporating Flat Stanley into my classroom was fairly easy. My students were more than willing to help and pose for pictures (even though it was just their hands!). Using the photo editing software was very easy and interesting! There are many special effects and photo emphasis tools that are appealing. I enjoy scrapbooking and have actually been looking for free photo editing software to manipulate and modify photographs.  

Creating the new page and uploading the pictures onto the wiki also proved to be quick and simple.  I do miss having all of the tools in Microsoft Word, so I usually type everything into a Word document and then copy and paste into the wiki.  One frustration that I had when uploading into both wikis is the “text enhance” linking that appears when pages are finalized.  I have tried to delete the link, and it still comes back.  Other than that, I am very satisfied with both pages!

Flat Stanley opens up many possible avenues for writing and school projects.  I would like to guide students in creating a wiki or blog about our science class where an icon such as Flat Stanley could be used.