Flat+Stanley

We will participate in a Flat Stanley collaborative project. Who is Flat Stanley? In the 1964 book, Flat Stanley Adventure, by James Brown, Stanley is "made flat" when a heavy bulletin board falls on him. He is able to visit friends because he can be folded and placed in an envelope to be mailed. The Official Flat Stanley Website is located at [].
 * Description of Project **

In our variation of this collaborative project, each individual in the class will act as a "class that is participating in the project." Flat Stanley will visit with you (and your classroom if you so choose) so Flat Stanley will be able to "see the sights" in the mid-Atlantic area. The collaboration will be the sharing of Flat Stanley's individual visits through a Website.

You will receive an electronic Flat Stanley that you can 'groom' and 'dress' and take to fun and interesting places. Two variations are available (see attached files), one to print and color with crayons. The other to electronically color in PhotoShop Elements (or any photo manipulation software) and print. Be sure to take pictures because Flat Stanley would like to have a record of his visit, and the class will create a wiki to document all the places Flat Stanley went.

You will need at least three (3) digital pictures of Flat Stanley to use on your wiki page. Take Flat Stanley out and have him pose while he is doing fun and exciting things! Make sure you get in some of the pictures, too. We will collaboratively create the Flat Stanley wiki (next week) with each person responsible for one page of the wiki!

The collaborative project is a descriptive writing assignment, but in our case, it is also used to teach how to work with a wiki, manipulate photographic images, insert images in a wiki, insert audio (and possibly video) in a wiki, and miraculously, create a fairly sophisticated Website using a wiki!

**http://wuflatstanley.wikispaces.com/Laura+Glessner  http://wuflatstanley.wikispaces.com/
 * Link to Flat Stanley Wiki Page
 * Link to Flat Stanley Wiki Home Page**

While completing the Flat Stanley project I learned how to record music and sound by making a podcast. I have now done several of them and think that this is a skill that I will use often in my classroom, most often for listening centers. I also learned how to crop photos and make them web efficient, which will help when placing pictures on a class website that I hope to be able to set up next year. I learned how to create the layout for my Flat Stanley wiki page using a table to make the page look balanced. The skills I have learned while working on this project are useful skills I will continue to use. 
 * Skills Learned or Expanded On **

The Flat Stanley project has been an interesting, fun, and helpful assignment. I have never used Flat Stanley in the classroom because I thought it was mainly for older students. However, I now understand that Flat Stanley could be extremely valuable in helping students learn about many different topics we learn about in kindergarten. Having the students help prepare Flat Stanley for his journey's and the anticipation of his return will be great motivators for anything we are learning about. From the teacher standpoint, learning to manipulate and crop photos using Picnic was extremely easy. It will be a site I use again for school and personal use. Creating the Flat Stanley wiki page was a little frustrating at times but for the most part fairly simple. The only frustrating part was saving the page when I finished. The computer seemed to change around small details on the page. Aside from that, this was a fun and surprising simple project that I hope to use again in the future.
 * Reflection**