Whyville wishing well

I'm not saying I haven't made any enemies, though, but I'd like to leave that topic alone. The Top Ten list has been eye-opening, too.

I started out just watching people get the answers correct. That's the first step for everybody; learning the words. Once I got a good grip on that, I started to try.

The words that I've never seen before I just tried to unscramble. Most of the time, though, that doesn't work. I'm not the brightest crayon in the box when it comes to unscrambling words. When I made my way to tenth place, I was ecstatic. I decided that I would try even harder to make my way up the list. I reached second place! Then I started to get busy with my job, with friends, and with family, and I couldn't really juggle all that and leave hours upon hours to spend at well.

Right now as I write this, I'm in eighth place. HcWell isn't my whole life, so I'm not all too upset about that, but I have been trying to work my way back up again. One of the lowest points of the well is that you get tons of random face parts. You get tons of clams, too, and they add up eventually, especially with the new "double the clams" hour every Wednesday! I was a little mad about how slow my computer was, resulting in a slow process of giving unwanted face parts to Grandma.

There was also the issue where you couldn't give away the cloaks you earned. Then, one day, something in the satchel changed. It was a little trash can button that makes deleting parts go so much faster! It's safe to say that it brightened my day. I had no intention on making that rhyme. Overall, HcWell has surely been a memorable experience for me and everybody else that's tried, just like previous wells. I'm looking forward to the well next year, and this well hasn't even left yet!

I hope other people are just as eager as I am. Don't hesitate to give this year's well a chance. Author's Note: Remember, HcWell is only here for a limited time! Hurry on down to the Meadow to give it your best shot, and show us what you got. Again, no intention of rhyming. Sponsored by HarperCollins, the well is a great experience for everybody. Learning how to think innovatively is part of the process, as is taking appropriate risks.

Take risks yourself, be willing to fail at the games until you win, and you can better help your students learn. Use your students as a resource.

My students were always eager to assist me, and my modeling taking risks and failing publicly multiple times at the Hot Air Balloon as I learned, empowered other students to take the risks and put in the hard work it takes to complete some of the games and work toward solving some of the real-world problems. At first, many adults and teachers may not have the patience and skill to put in the hard work to complete the levels of the science games.

Your best video game players may amaze you with their skill and foresight. The construction of this identity helps students to pursue their work and communication within Whyville. Students should be expected, and invited, to ask and refine questions, propose explanations, plan and research, communicate their findings along the way via discussion, email, y-mail, or Whyville chat, and reflect on and critique their own and others learning methods.

Whyville in the classroom is a synchronous and an asynchronous online community of learners. Online, students interact by chatting in the public sphere, where their chat in Whyville is seen by all, or by whispering privately to one individual in the room. They may also y- mail other Whyvillian friends that may not be online at the moment. In this environment, the student must take greater responsibility over their increased control and self-direction, and learn to communicate successfully in oral and written forms within Whyville.

Students need to figure out how the pox is transmitted, the course of the disease, and come up with ideas to contain the spread during the next outbreak. Be sure to coordinate with City Management at Whyville the beginning of your curricular intervention. If your avatar has issues, you may visit the dietician to find out what the problem is and then begin to analyze and rectify the problem.

You may also take the challenges above to try to correct the nutritional issues by examining the menu resulting in the particular avatar and replacing foods to make a healthy menu. This simulation runs all the time, and can therefore be accessed by your classes at any time. Follow the online directions for signing up as a teacher AND for getting verified as a teacher.

Once City Management at Whyville has verified your status, you will receive a class roster in your satchel that contains all of your Whyville belongings. This satchel is found above the Groovy Bus, your navigational bar in Whyville.

Volunteer experienced Whyvillians will answer your y-mails about how to things work, how to play some of the games, or give friendly advice. If you want your students to participate in the simulation of the Whypox epidemic or the Red Tide simulation, please contact???

You should begin class immersion in Whyville about a week prior to either outbreak. The lead-time before the Whypox outbreak or the introduction of the red tide gives students time to create avatars, explore Whyville, earn clams by completing science activities, and become invested in the Whyville community. For the Whypox epidemic or the phytoplankton bloom, you may wish to schedule approximately weeks for your large unit of study, including the participatory simulation within Whyville.

If you want your students to participate in the Whyville WhyEat health nutrition, building and running their own businesses as entrepreneurs, or by purchasing Scion cars via a loan payment plan and learning about WhyCo FiCo scores, you can have students enter Whyville and begin these at any time.

Gather Resources Depending on your upcoming unit of study, begin gathering many different resources appropriate for the unit. These resources should be available for students whenever they need or want to browse or purposefully research topics.

You may have units of study with lessons and experiments that you have experience using in the classroom. You may want to check out multiple library books that sit on a table in the classroom. If you have access to a classroom website, you may want to post a set of internet resources that cover all possible areas of interest within your unit. These net sources may include various interactive animations, graphics, photographs, learning games, simulations, and articles.

Some of the sites with photos, pictures and animations may have other text that is above your students reading level, but they may garner a wealth of information from just looking at photos, pictures, and graphs, and reading captions.

Students can directly email experts with their questions. As teacher, you should also have experiments, lab resources such as microscopes, prepared and blank slides, a collection of appropriate hands-on activities, real and virtual field trips, DVDs or videos.

Any other software, posters, models, or artifacts that would be relevant to your unit should be in classroom and available as needed to students. Planning materials, a clipboard for questions, butcher paper, computers set up with internet access, the Whyville parent permission slip, and any school or district permission slip deemed necessary by your administrator, should be gathered and ready. Survey Student Access Poll students with a survey that asks about their home internet access and computer availability so that you are aware who in your class will be easily able to log in to Whyville outside of class.

Once you are aware of student access or lack thereof, it is an opportunity to build awareness and home access alternatives for students and their parents. Students without access should be individually and privately supported by other means. Contact your school and local librarian and arrange that your students have access to computers before and after school. Talking to students and parents without net access about the educational advantages the net provides sometimes results in parents signing up for inexpensive ISP services to support their child.

If there a local computer clubhouse in your school neighborhood, contact them, and find out how to get your students involved. The scavenger hunt is a good way to get students to get to many places in Whyville and start them working collaboratively on solving the science games. What to do during Whyville Intervention Register Students Send home and collect the Whyville parent permission slip from all of your students. Send a letter home to parents explaining your use of Whyville in the classroom.

You should also refer them to the website and encourage them to sign in as a guest. Remind them in your letter that students will learn internet safety in a supportive environment, and they will not be able to use chat until they have been online 3 days and passed the chat license test.

A few parents may not agree to the use of chat at all in the beginning. Work with them, and keep in contact within the first and second weeks, reporting to them how their child is doing. They may then reconsider. Be sure to send your student permission slips to Numedeon, Inc. Raymond Ave. Each student will then receive clams. Give them online time to explore, perhaps in groups. Caution them, however, to not use their real names online.

Your students will become familiar with the class names quickly, and may only use this sheet in the introductory phase. Get online with your students. Say hello to them and ask them questions. They will soon be able to help you around the community and give you tips.

Work on building an open discourse with your students about their activities within Whyville. Give them plenty of time to explore, build their avatars, and complete science activities. Different students will be interested in different parts of Whyville, and avatar building may be a major concern for many. This is normal and helps them build their virtual identities for the community.

Begin Content Study You may want to begin classroom activities based on the unit of study during the week before or during the Whyville introduction and exploration. Begin your study by building interest and curiosity. Ask students to think about what they know about the topic, and what questions they have. If they are reluctant to begin, you can start with one or two questions of your own.

Write them up on the board as part of a web. As soon as students begin jumping in, let them ask and you simply call on them and write the questions.

Take a whole period to flush out as many questions as you can. When the same question is asked again, check it on the board, and ask for more.

When, and only when, the questions have been exhausted I try to get to , stop. You can have a parent, aide, student, or you type up the list and have students keep this as part of their epidemiology notebook. Be ready with your experiments, lessons, online simulations or animations to reinforce learning within the MUVE and to answer questions in depth when students ask. Some students may research deep questions they are interested in, and meet with you, the teacher, briefly to discuss their findings.

Using the Whypox Epidemic as an Immersive Simulation in Epidemiology Epidemiology Study You may begin investigating and researching disease, communicable disease, and the spread of disease, while simultaneously participating actively in Whyville science activities. Concurrent classroom activities may include students creating and updating epidemiology concept maps with Inspiration software, observing bacteria under microscopes, experimenting with yeast, writing researched articles for the Whyville Times on bacteria, viruses, and communicable disease.

By this time, students will be ready to go to the Whyville CDC to find out about Whypox history, use the infection simulator and the epidemic simulator to learn about the spread of disease. In class, groups can explore disease parameters and reinforce perhaps previously visited concepts of epidemic and exponential.

Using the epidemic simulator students can visualize the large area, fast spread of disease.