The document describes Mansfield Public Schools' Summer Skills Online program, which provided voluntary online educational activities and assignments over the summer break to help prevent learning loss, including using programs like Study Island, Discovery Education, YouTube, and wikis for subjects like math, reading, science, and social studies. The program had moderate participation but some technical issues, and the presenters discuss lessons learned and potential improvements for the future.

1. Mansfield Public Schools
Summer Skills Online
Steve Sokoloski
PK-4 Technology Coordinator
steve.sokoloski@mansfieldct.org
Twitter: stevesoko
Google + and Facebook: Steve Sokoloski
Nancy Hovorka
PK-4 Technology Instructional Assistant
nancy.hovorka@mansfieldct.org
Pre-CECA Day of Discovery
Lincoln Middle School
Meridan, CT
October 22, 2011

2. Steve & Nancy

3. Housekeeping
• This presentation can be found at Slide Share:
http://tinyurl.com/dodctsummerskills
• Summer Skills Online: http://tinyurl.com/summerskills
• Lets use: dodctsummerskills, #dodctsummerskills
for tagging about this presentation
• I welcome back channel twitter conversations during
the presentation.

4. Sometimes you just need to
understand when you are being
told the right answer……

5. Summer Skills Online
• Summer Skills online is a six week program
using online content to keep kids connected to
schoolwork over the summer, in an effort to
avoid any lag time in September.
• It is not a remedial, or credit recovery or
special education oriented summer school.
• Participation was voluntary and free to anyone
wanted to sign up.

6. Summer Skills Online Used…
• Discovery Education • YouTube
Assignment Builder • Google Forms
• Discover Education • Google Docs
Quiz Builder • Flip Video Cameras
• Wikispaces • Camtasia
• Study Island • Format Factory
• Spelling City • Flickr
• Imagechef.com • Shelfari
• Google Maps • Wikipedia
• Blogspot • Tryscience.org

7. Pleasure Reading
We asked students to participate in one of the
many summer reading programs sponsored by
the School and Public Libraries.

8. Math and Reading
• Weekly assignments from Study Island.
• Study Island is a commercial, online program
that gives direct support to CMT objectives.
• We use the program during the school year in
Grades 3 & 4 so all students are very familiar
with the program.
• Program was set up to email weekly reports
on student progress to parents.

9. Spanish
• We created word clouds using:
Imagechef.com – Word Mosaics
• It reviewed vocabulary taught in Grade 3 & 4.

10. Spelling
• We used Spelling City, a commercial online
line program to review spelling.
• Some of our teachers use this site during the
year.
• We created special word lists for the summer.
• We used the limited free version.

11. Science
• Discovery Education Assignment Builder was
used to create weekly assignments.
• Assignments were generally a set of videos
and a topical lab.
• Discovery Education Quiz Builder was used to
create a quiz for each assignment.
• The Assignment and Quiz were set up under
and open URL and we got an email when the
assignments were complete.

12. Social Studies
• We created videos – Where in Mansfield is Mr.
Sokoloski? (3rd grade) and Where in CT is Mr.
Sokoloski? (4th grade).
• Videos were posted on the wiki (Flip video,
converted to Flash by Format Factory).
• Answers were revealed the following week
and a “push-pin” marker was added to a
Google Map embedded on the wiki.

13. Get Outta’ Here!
• We presented ideas for fun outside.
• Hiking, foxtail games, frisbee, jump rope, were
some of the activities.
• We used a variety of links to YouTube as
extensions to the activities.

14. Stuck Inside
• What happens if it rains? A series of indoor
activities for bad weather.
• How to play Flick Football, Yahtzee, Cup
Stacking, Bocce with Socks and more.
• Again, additional links and YouTube videos
supplemented the activities.

15. Family Fun
• Just cool links we found.
• A potpourri of links and videos in Art, Music,
and Science such as tryscience.org and
arkive.org
• Simple projects, museum sponsored
explorations.
• Site that supported some of the other
activities of the week.

16. Other Stuff
• We did get paid, at the rates used for the brick
and mortar summer school staff.
• We found the picture of the chairs on Flickr,
contacted the owner and got permission to use it
as a logo with attribution.
• The blog was done on Google Blogspot, and we
used free Shelfari account to create a widget to
display books.
• We did find recommend two kid safe search
engines – Ask Kids and Kidrex.org for Internet
searching.

17. Statistics
• We had 65 out of a possible 320 eligible
students sign up.
• We had a solid core of about 25 regulars who
did every lesson every week.
• We had about 20 who signed up and we had
little or no evidence that they participated.
• Everybody got a prize!

18. What Went Well?
• The overall design was appealing to kids and
we had fun creating the material.
• We really tried to stay on top of any parent or
technical issues around using the activities.
• Having everything online (sign-ups, extra
handouts, tips, tutorials) made it easy to
direct parents.
• The kids that were into it were really into it.

19. What Didn’t Go So Well?
• Perhaps it was “too busy”.
• Some minor echnical issues around Study
Island and Discovery. Now we know, we can
avoid in the future.
• Wiki based web pages were unfamiliar to
parents and caused some confusion.
• Students and parents didn’t respond to the
blog as much as we expected.

20. What Is Next?
• District decides if it has funding for next
summer.
• We use the spring to do a better job of
demonstrating blogs, and wikis to kids.
• Use Google Forms as a weekly check off rather
than use a paper sheet.
• Use the paid version of Spelling City