Google Classroom

Needing help with Google Classroom? Alice Keeler has you covered. She has excellent videos on how to implement Google Classroom into your curriculum.

Donor's Choose

It's that time of year again!! For the beginning of the 2016-17 school, Donor's Choose will match any donation given to your project.

If you aren't familiar with Donor's Choose, you can create a "project" to be funded by private donors. The "project" can include numerous educational materials including technology, books, supplies, etc. Then, you share your project on social media, email, or a website, while donors can discover your projects through the Donor's choose website.

Here's my most recent project: Tools for Our Makerspace

Eduporium

Do you want technology in your classroom. Are you curious about Makerspaces and STEAM? Not sure where to start?

Eduporium is a one-stop shop to help you decide which technology is right for you, pricing on said technology, and connect to other educators for best ways to use the technology.

Welcome to the 2016-17 school year! I'm so excited to have my students creating, making, designing, and building this year.

With that being said, I thought an appropriate post for the beginning of the year would include an article/podcast on how our (and our students') brains want to learn. The ideas behind John Medina's, neuroscientist, research is we can reach students by doing these 2 things:

-Exercise -- the brain works better after it.

-Sleep -- the developing brain has to have a ton of it to function.

Something to think about as we begin this new school year!

Rigor ISTE2016

I'm in my final session of ISTE2016 before the Closing Keynote speakers. It's been an unbelievable few days of learning and growing.

Rigor, Meet Relevance by Janel McCormick and Jessica Herring

Presentation

Essential Questions:
-What happens when rigor meets relevance?
-How can you bring greater relevance to the work you're already doing in the classroom?

Using tools like iMovie, Sphero, Aurasma to show character emotion, mood, etc => shows relevance

Rigor = empowered learners, innovator designers, & creative communicators (new ISTE standards)

Skills developments = creativity, communication, collaboration, and critical thinking

Excellent rubric to measure rigor:

Inquiry Based Learning ISTE 2016

After roaming the Vendor Hall upstairs (I'll write a post about the cool thing I found up there later), it's onto my 2nd session of the day:

Using Inquiry for Deeper Understanding by Adina Sullivan

Adina's website and Adina's Inquiry presentation

Essential Questions:
-What conditions do you need to learn something that isn't your favorite subject/topic?
-How is this same or different for your students?
-How do you learn differently when you are interested vs when you are just doing as you are told/expected?

Inquiry:
-Problem-solving and critical thinking skills
-Facilitates a transfer of knowledge and concepts through creativity and reflection
-Self-directed learning skills using communication and collaboration
-Deeper levels of engagement and understanding

Inquiry Cycle = Questioning =>Research => Discussion => Creating => Reflection => back to Questioning

Science Leadership Academy -- school in Pennsylvania strictly inquiry-based

Inquiry Based learning resources

LittleBits and Design Thinking ISTE2016

It's the third and final day of ISTE2016. For my first session, I'm attending:

Creativity, Innovation, and a "LittleBit" of Design Thinking

LittleBits website

I recently received 4 sets of LittleBits from a Donor's Choose project and am excited to see how other educators are using them. They're essentially small circuits that piece together. Students can build all sorts of things with them.

Little Bits Design Challenge:
-students work collaboratively with LittleBits to create something that makes the world better

Design Thinking:
1) Exploration (empathize & define) -- where do you see problems? Can you define it?
2) Ideation (ideate) -- brainstorming
3) Prototyping (prototype) -- building their first model
4)Modification (test) -- testing and making changes to the prototype
5) Sharing -- could they share beyond the classroom? video? podcast?

Design Thinking => Constructivistm (makerspaces) => Inquiry-based learning

My thoughts:
Design Thinking can work in almost any classroom, content-area, or grade level. In literacy, students can take a stance, research their stance, write an essay explaining their stance, rewrite after constructive criticism, and share it with the world through a blog. The more time spent around the exploration and ideation process the better. Students need to become comfortable with asking questions and thinking deeply on how to answer those questions. This will, hopefully, foster life-long learning in our students and give them the confidence to be curious explorers.

Extra Resources:

NASA Partners with LittleBits Electronics on STEM Activities 

Design Thinking for Educators

New littleBits Education helps schools integrate STEM/STEAM

Design Thinking: Lessons for the Classroom

Case Study: Design Thinking STEAM School