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Technology Application #2 - A Conversation with Koko

Art Goes to School (AGTS) is an art enrichment and appreciation program sponsored by the Charles Street School PTA. At AGTS meetings we brainstorm ways to present art to each class in a fun and interesting format. This year we have decided on introducing students to Project Koko.

Project Koko has become one of the longest running interspecies communication studies in history, the only one involving gorillas. It has taught Koko and the late male (silverback) gorilla, Michael, to use sign language, fostered both gorillas’ artistic abilities, and changed the world’s perception of gorillas from that of “King Kong” to “Koko’s Kitten”.

Koko is a 35 year-old lowland gorilla who learned to speak American Sign Language when she was just a baby. Her teacher, Dr. Penny Patterson, began working with Koko as a Ph.D. project at Stanford, thinking it would only be a 4-year study.

Thirty-some years later, Penny and Koko continue to work together at the Gorilla Foundation in one of the longest interspecies communication studies ever conducted, the only one with gorillas. Koko now has a vocabulary of over 1000 signs, and understands even more spoken English.

To present the program to 550 students required the creation of a video using Microsoft Movie Maker. This 15 minute video was presented along with various artwork Koko and Michael painted. The lesson plan is the Art Goes To School Program can be found here.

Journal 12

Worked on creating a powerpoint presentation that incorporates a video clip of the PBS/Nature video "A Conversation with Koko". This entailed taking a video and converting the file from a VOB format to a MPG file format using MediaCoder. Then I used Chopper XP to actually edit the video.

This powerpoint presentation will actually be part of a lesson for the Art Goes to School Program during May 7 through May 11th. The Art Goes to School Program is presented to Kindergarten to 6th grade classes for one week during their art class.

Reflection 12

In today's class I got to see what others have been working on to incorpate technology into their lesson plans. It was really interesting to see the various applications and types of technology available. The internet is really an amazing tool that lends itself to lots of available simulations that will help students learn.

Technology Application #1 - Photosynthesis Vernier Probe

Photosynthesis Unit-- Photosynthesis is concept few students being taught by traditional methods can understand or crasp let along appreciate it's vital role for almost all of life on Earth.

The goal of our unit on Photosynthesis is to have the students practice the nature of science through the process of developing a theory and model of how an alien species is obtaining its energy. Since the mechanism for the aliens is analogous to how plants obtain energy, the alien scenario is providing a hook, based on inquiry to further study the process of photosynthesis. The students will move from their alien scenarios to plants on earth and incorporate this “new” knowledge into the revision of their alien models. The major concepts are the conversion of energy, how photosynthesis occurs, and the importance of the products and waste products of photosynthesis for all life.

Students are directed to focus on the alien data concerning light, O2, and glucose as a possible input or output. Students investigate the data supporting or refuting these elements as possible sources of energy. The chart and their models should be worked on to completion.

This particular lesson has students explore what the bubbles being release from a samples of skin are. They do this by analyzing the gas using Vernier probes. This is activity 3 of Lesson 2.2 from our backbone

On Screen Questions

For my on screen question I would like to ask the following:

Koko a lowlland gorilla communicate with human's by:

1) Pounding on her chest
2) Various grunting sounds
3) American Sign Language
4) Morris Code
5) Gorilla Sign Language

Answer: Gorilla Sign Language which is a combination of the American Sign Language and a gorilla's natural sign language.

Reflection 11

Learned how to edit an htm page using pagemaker rather than editing the html file. This is a lot easier! Do not have pagemaker at home but will download enu and us