Love That Technology!

My fifth graders are currently in the midst of a fairly large unit on explorers. They each have been assigned an explorer to research, and have a variety of activities to complete. The last activity they had to do was to create a "Help Wanted" poster that their explorer might have put up to get men to go on his expedition. It was to be a persuasive poster.

The other day I decided it was time to explain about the poster. I talked about the purpose of this poster, and together we brainstormed information that should go on the poster. I then told the students that they were to complete a rough draft sketch of their poster on notebook paper before doing the real poster on the nicer, larger paper I had available.

The kids got right to work. About five minutes later I had some kids showing me their poorly-designed rough sketch. They obviously didn't know what a "Help Wanted" poster should look like, I thought. They need to see some examples, I thought further. So I stopped the class.

"I think you all need to see some examples of help wanted posters," I told them. I turned on the document camera so that I could show some examples up large on the Smart Board for all to see. Then I went to Google and typed in "Help Wanted Posters." A list of links came up.

I clicked on the first link, which was for an all-posters websight. It brought me to a page with thumbnail examples of a variety of posters. I was focused; looking for the words "Help Wanted" at the top of thumbnails. Suddenly, I heard a commotion in the room, and some whispering.

I focused in, then, on one of the thumbnail posters. I had noticed it, and thought it was a poster showing stick figures in wrestling moves. But it wasn't wrestling moves. It was sex positions. It was like the Kama Sutra for stick figures.

Now, in our district, we have a filter system. I cannot even show Utube videos. And many times when I've been searchiing for websites, I get a screen that forbids me from opening a particular site. But it didn't catch this one. And unfortunately, a few of the kids did catch it. And knew what it was about (my sweet little kids?).

I closed out the windows as fast as I could, and then just sat there stunned. It was time to excuse them for music, and not knowing what else to do, I excused them. I know that not everyone saw-most kids did not, like me, focus in on it. But a few did. I saw Leo go over to some other boys, whispering, "Did you see that?"

But I did go to both our Curriculum Coach and to our Principal to let them know what had happened, just in case. The verdict was: we have a good filter system but it doesn't catch everything. My principal said if the kids came back from music still talking about it, that I should just explain what happened. Luckily, it seemed like they weren't talking about it anymore.

The next day I was talking with one of the teachers, and told him what had happened. He showed me how I can push a button on my remote that will freeze whatever is on the screen, and can then continue to search for posters (or whatever) without it showing on the screen until I want it to.

But it would have been just my luck to have "frozen" the screen right when the Kama Sutra stick figures were there.