You might remember just a short 2 weeks ago we Skyped Alan Levine into our studies from Iceland. On Wednesday, just as planned, he showed up again, but this time in person … and he was bearing gifts. Coins from Iceland – one per student which we distributed around the room today. He also brought a few rocks which will show up during our geology unit a bit later in the year. As has been the case lately my students began questioning Alan about what had happened since our last meet-up and they took notes on their laptops so they could blog about their experience later. But then things changed a bit. Alan wasn’t just a resource, now he had become an audience too.

So as students heard him mention seeing the Northern Lights, the Hekla Volcano, and other Icelandic locales, they would search and then pop-up to show Alan what they had found about whatever topic he had mentioned. They especially loved showing him photos. They even shared the web site from Alex our bicycle racer friend that had just been here the day before. Alan was quite intrigued by their enthusiasm, and I’m sure he thinks I’ve done just a masterful job of teaching them web searches. I’m afraid they are mostly self taught. We have worked some on refining searches when they get tough, but mostly what Alan saw was pure excitement.
A few students began searching for Alan’s name and looked for photos of him … “Is that you? – Is this you?” they would ask. Sometimes they would revel in finding photos of people that were quite obviously not him, but had his name and they check out his reaction when they would ask him if it was him. Alan played this up for them and would laugh at their “jokes.”

Besides showing Alan their finds the students were sharing with each other and some even changed their background images to photos they found of the Northern Lights or an Icelandic volcano or horse or geyser. Too much fun!

 

 

Another great experience!

 

Learning is messy!

Tags: AlanLevine, Iceland,