Monday - July 14th , 2003


I woke up early this morning to the sound of a lobster boat heading out for a hard days work. The seagulls were following its wake seemingly for the small chunks of bait left behind. The air smelled of salt and sand and the sound of the boat faded as it rounded the rocky granite coast.

We made it down to breakfast, met the group, ate and started morning meeting just before 8:45. Dave, Scott and Ellen outlined the morning, one step at a time. The flavor of the day already seemed busy as we were embarking on something I had never really done. I was a little nervous because the group seemed to have more technology experience than I did. Oh well, it is what it is and I was really looking forward to starting the summit ( the elob model, the group, the fieldwork, the Maine coast and learning how to integrate my subjects- math and science into  my partners subjects - english and social studies through a CD design. We would also hope to add artwork and work with the community college in our town.
Today was a great introduction to CD design in a learning expedition.  We started with the examination of Fading Footprints, the CD ROM product that Dave, Scott and Ellen created with their kids. We viewed Fading Footprints with partners and really ended up dissecting it bit by bit. We collaborate and generated maps that depicted our representations of the CD design. We shared our maps to each group and shaped an understanding of how a CD design/model/architecture can assist  and integrate standards based teaching and learning. We discussed the aspects and components of an expedition and I saw how it really can make a huge impact on the students. Authentic products seem at this point to make all the difference in the world.
We also, most importantly, started our projects for the week. We started our project in the Netscape Composer Workshop. We all had our laptops fully charged and Dave,Scott and Ellen introduced Netscape Communicator, which is made up of Navigator(searching www) and Composer(creating pages for the web). We created folders and organized our data, i.e. the files that we made in in Composer. We named our files a specific name which made allot of sense seeing that when you are doing a project with 80 kids you really need to have your files together, knowing where they are and what they are.******* This could quite possible be one of the most important things when doing a project like this.ORGANIZATION!!!!
We looked at the summit model that we will be building. The mapping activity helped ....now I see what we are going to do.  I realize that it will be really important to prep my kids with a small project- preparing them for the big project. The resources portion of the CD that they gave us was great, it will be very helpful I think when it comes time to look for species info as well as imovie stuff and will definitely help us set up our personal pages.
The Kick Off with David Sparks was great, it drives home the fact that hooking the kids in to ta theme or topic is really important. After lunch we picked our animal. I chose the peregrine falcon. We then traded and I traded for the piping plover. great trade. I have heard allot about the little birds so I am excited for our fieldwork. We had our 1st art session and it was great, we were so ready for dinner after 3 hours of art, luckily we had a snack and a drink before. Personal time today was well deserved and dinner was nice. After dinner we had a 2 hour session to research and I wrote this reflection about today. It s 9 o'clock and I am ready for bed. Closing meeting andI look forward to the morning to the sound of the lobster boats and seagulls.