The Power of being a Connected Class- Celebrating International Dot Day

Room 1 Celebrates International Dot Day

From Meg Feller, Year 3, Elmwood School

Imagine the power and potential of a million people all around the world connecting, collaborating, creating and celebrating all that creativity inspires and invites. My classroom joined this growing global community of creativity for the first time this year.  I am an experienced primary teacher and I.C.T P.D facilitator, and passionate about using eLearning tools the classroom.  I am always on the lookout for authentic and engaging learning experiences to bring to my classroom. 

A colleague shared the annual ‘International Dot Day’ (http://www.thedotclub.org/dotday/) with me earlier this year.  Immediately I knew it would bring an opportunity to my children that would facilitate creativity, collaboration and global connections. International Dot Day was inspired by the book 'The Dot' by Peter Reynolds and is a global celebration of creativity, courage and collaboration.  The book shares the story of a girl who begins a journey of self-discovery after a caring teacher challenges her to “make her mark.”

For art during Term 3 we focused on 'Making Your Mark' with painting as our medium.  We are lucky to have a very talented artist as a parent in our classroom, Lisa Bowden.  She came in each week and shared her passion and expertise with the children.  Peter Reynolds books ‘Sky Colour’, ‘Ish’ and ‘Dot Day’ inspired our painting throughout the term.

On Monday 15th September we marked 'International Dot Day' with a day celebrating our creativity, courage and collaboration!  I had the support of the parents, which made it possible to have a range of engaging and creative activities all based around ‘Marking Your Mark’. Lisa created the art for a tea towel with the children with a ‘Love my ish’ focus, Carrie made an amazing ‘Dot Day’ cake, Emma helped the children make fossils and all of the parents sent dotty inspired food for our shared lunch.  The children were also involved in writing, sharing their thoughts in a collaborative Google Doc, making bubbles, Morse Code, using the iPad Colar app, chalk dots outside and art. 

I have recently discovered ‘Mystery Skype’ (https://education.skype.com/mysteryskype).  This is a critical thinking challenge that your class takes part in while Skyping with another class somewhere else in the world. The goal is to guess the other school's location (country, state, city, school name) before they guess yours.  I had connected with a teacher in Dallas, Texas through the website ‘Mystery Skype’ but we very quickly figured out we were never at school at the same time.  Solution, create a video during ‘Dot Day’ and send it to one another with our ‘Dot Day’ learning and clues about where we are in the world. The fact that NZ was the first have ‘Dot Day’ and our mystery class had their ‘Dot Day’ when we were asleep was a great learning opportunity for the children.  On the 16^th Sept there was a video waiting for us in the morning.  The class loved watching the children, the similarities they had in their ‘Dot Day’, the school environment and the connected learning we shared. The future learning opportunities we could have with our new friends was immediately evident. 

As a passionate educator I want to ‘mark my mark’ on every child in my care and provide them with a class they will remember.  Providing engaging learning experiences, using the expertise of parents, integrating eLearning tools and making connections with learners in a global setting, through days like ‘Dot Day’, are what memories are made of in Rm 1.

Dot Day - Rm 1 ENS - 2014 from MegJF on Vimeo.