Maker Week 2016

MakerprojectsMaker Week was a huge success. Students across all grades, K-4, were engaged in student centered making. As a part of the week, teachers and students worked to build a Boat Launch with an emphasis on using recycled materials. Samford University, pre-service teachers worked along side the STEAM facilitator and other faculty to gather materials for over 350 students to make boats to launch. Milk containers along with many donated recyclables made the experience creative and innovative for students.  Thank you @Scrapkins for the idea! Students rotated during PE to build and make with the new Imagination Playground and launch their boats. Data collection was part of the experience along with many discussions on boat redesign.  Second through fourth grade students recorded data on how fast their boat traveled down the launcher and kindergarten recorded data on a Venn diagram (did your boat float, did your boat make it the other side of the pool and both).

Dr. Seuss was also a theme within the week that allowed students to make related to literature.

Classroom teachers were active in the MakerStudio facilitating student making. Grades K-4 used the space to facilitate learning in the classroom as well as free design. Free design included student made mazes for robots to be coded through, canoodles, pixelation with pinblocks, drone challenges,a crane with rigamajigs and 3d printing with tynkercad designs and structures with sticklets.

Makerfest rounded out the week with over 65 students attending a Friday night event with making for all ages. Younger students built and made with various materials. The new IO blocks were a hit with K-1 students while drone challenges and rigamajig contraptions were leaders with the older students.

My Top Picks for Flipping a Classroom, Presentations, and Multi-Media Quizzes

Zaption –  Turn online videos into interactive learning experiences that engage students and deepen understanding.

Canva – Great templates for blogs, Facebook, ppts, and fonts.  Easily create stunning presentations.  

Powerpoint (add-on)

EduCannon – Great video and quizzes to engage students in a 1:1 environment.

Google Forms – Create a Google account and use forms for quizzes, surveys, and reading journals.

Edpuzzle – Great video and quizzes to engage students in a 1:1 environment (videos, quizzes, voices etc.)

Moovly – Create animated videos and other multi-media content.

Annotate.net – Create engaging quizzes that will allow students to show their screen from their seats.

 

Trajectory

Change direction

TRAJECTORY  is , “a chosen or taken course”, and I think about the people in my life that have often inspired me to change my trajectory for the positive.  There are times, that my trajectory has changed for a positive in spite of people, and sometimes it has changed for a negative.  I am sure that I have impacted people in a negative way in the past, and I am trying to focus on helping others reach something that they didn’t think that they could possibly attain before.  Like most teachers/leaders, I want to make a difference.  Every action, interaction, and reaction you have with someone is an opportunity to change their path; I want them to move up because of me, not in spite of our interaction.  There will always be many choices in front of us.  Which path is for me at this point, I am not sure.

“The Purpose of Education is to Turn Mirrors into Windows.”

The purpose of education . . . .  

Is to see the light of opportunity through the window of your education, turning what once may have been uncertainty into a certainty.  Education helps us to become better and more efficient with the things we do.     Instead of only seeing yourself in life – mirrors – you are educated and shown that there is a whole world out there full of other people – windows.   A window is an open opportunity, a mirror is just an image.  Education opens many opportunities.   If you make the mirror into a window you can look and see the world and open your mind to all the vast knowledge that is out there.

Leave a Legacy…

Leave a legacy…

 I think it’s human nature to wonder what people think about us. In fact, I would say at times we spend way too much time wondering what people will think as a result of something we said or did. Consequently, our actions are led not only by our personal beliefs and philosophies, but also by the perceived responses others might have…

As educators, I believe acknowledging what others think is a vital part of the self-reflective journey to always improve and get better. I think it’s also important to note that what others think should not be the driving force behind what we say and do; it’s merely a piece of the whole puzzle.

Wouldn’t it be nice to leave a positive legacy that will not only be remembered, but will serve as an inspiration and motivation for others for years to come?

What will your legacy be? For what will you be remembered?

Will your legacy be a legacy of treating others respectfully, fairly and individually?

Will your legacy be a legacy of trust and tolerance to the needs of others?

Will your legacy be a legacy of shared, collective and collaborative approaches toward improvement?

Will your legacy be a legacy of sincerity, selflessness and reliability?

Will your legacy be a legacy of humility and acceptance of failure as a means toward growth?

Will your legacy be a legacy of flexibility, enthusiasm and energy?

Will your legacy be a legacy of courage, strength and vision toward shared aspirations?

Will your legacy be a legacy of helping and serving others so they can achieve their goals?


Regardless of your profession or position in education, you have the luxury of developing and refining your legacy on a daily basis. Your legacy is in your hands and whether you realize it or not, people all around you are taking notice of what you are doing, or not doing…

What kind of legacy are you leaving…?

This was found via Twitter…can’t remember the resource.

 

Teaching on the Edge of Your Seat…

Teaching on the Edge of Your Seat…

Things we must remember:

Student thinking lies at the heart of our teaching.  We must plan with students in mind (not just content).  Our plans must be explicit to WHOM we are teaching.  We must think about whether or not our students need more background knowledge, small or whole group lessons, and how much time needed to build/connect/understand concepts.  Their thinking is the essential resource.  It powers all the work in our classroom.  Differentiation is/becomes NATURAL if you are aware and know your students’ needs.  It is not about what is NEXT – it is about what is in front of you.  How often do we really sit down and ask ourselves/consider how and why students struggle?  It is important to value these moments when students don’t know the answers.  Deeper not wider – What good is teaching every detail of unit of study if students don’t understand it. 

Keep the body of the lesson focused on open-ended topics.  Probe students’ thinking and listen to them.  Students should be doing most of the talking in the classroom.  Talking allows a teacher to discover what his/her students know and where they are struggling.  It gives students a chance to express different ideas and interpretations.  It serves as a window into students’ thinking processes.  It gives students a chance to connect with one another and it supports the growth of more ideas.

Create a space for students to reflect after the lesson on their academic work and social interactions.  Classrooms should be full of VISIBLE THINKING from students. 

Build a sense of community – Teaching students the skills they need to interact with one another allows us to facilitate lessons in much more meaningful ways.  

Purpose/Powerful Lessons – Lessons should be engaged in meaningful thinking and interaction.  Purpose involves rigorous thinking, creativity, and risk-taking.  Use the “TEACHABLE MOMENTS.”   Powerful teaching is the result of intentional planning and deep reflection. 

“We don’t learn from experience, we learn from reflecting on experience.”   John Dewey

Monitor student thinking – data is intentional (journals, writing, conversations, brainstorming, tweets, edmodo, reading, sharing mental images, and formative/summative assessments).  Allow for reflection, both academic and social debriefing.

Asking questions (after you listen) – What are you thinking about?  What are you wondering about?  Foster investigation, inquiry, wonder, and imagination.

Risk-Taking is essential for growth.  It thrives in a safe and supportive classroom community where students feel known and accepted.  Classrooms should be designed so that collaboration, imagination, and community are at the center of classroom life.  Students need to feel free to try something on their own.

You have to be self-seeking…Always searching for better ways…Always wanting better for your students…searching for growth…taking advantage of PD/learning opportunities…IT IS CONSTANT/LIFE-LONG LEARNING!  The learning that a teacher gains will both directly and indirectly affect student learning.

All I Really Need To Know…

I have played with Legos all my life.  I can remember when I was 7…my mom and I playing with Lincoln Logs and the glow-in-the-dark Legos.  I eventually moved on to Lego Robotics and Knex.   I have passed this love off to my three boys and integrated them into my classrooms (as a teacher).

All I REALLY NEED TO KNOW ABOUT TEACHING

I LEARNED FROM A LEGO

Authentic, Application

Build, Bridge, Brainstorming

Creative, Connections, Colorful, Communities, Cooperative, Constructing, Critical Thinking, Collaboration, Communication

Design, Differentiated Instruction, Deductive Reasoning/Thinking, Dimensions

Explore, Experiment, Educational, Engage, Excitement, Enrichment, Enhance

Fun, Fall/Flip/Flop/, Flexibility

Games, Geometry, Groups, Growth

Hands-On, Higher-Order Thinking, Hypothesize

Innovative, Inquiry-Centered, Interfaces, Infrastructures, Integrated, Inductive Reasoning/Thinking, Integrate

Joining, Justify

Knowledge

Life-long learning, Logic

Math, Measurement, Manipulatives, Methodology

Networking

Orginality

Play, Purpose, Proportion, Problem-Based, Project-Based, Passion-Based, Problem-Solving, Process, Prior Knowledge

Quality, Quantity

Real-World, Resources,

Science, Shape, Size, Simulation

Technology, Thinking, Transformational, Team, Teaching,

Units, United

Visual-Spatial Intelligence

Whole

X-Box

YouTube (Legos)

Zip, Zoo

ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN

(a guide for Global Leadership)

All I really need to know about how to live and what to do and how to be I learned in kindergarten. Wisdom was not at the top of the graduate school mountain, but there in the sand pile at school.

These are the things I learned:

  • Share everything.
  • Play fair.
  • Don’t hit people.
  • Put things back where you found them.
  • Clean up your own mess.
  • Don’t take things that aren’t yours.
  • Say you’re sorry when you hurt somebody.
  • Wash your hands before you eat.
  • Flush.
  • Warm cookies and cold milk are good for you.
  • Live a balanced life – learn some and think some and draw and paint and sing and dance and play and work every day some.
  • Take a nap every afternoon.
  • When you go out in the world, watch out for traffic, hold hands and stick together.
  • Be aware of wonder. Remember the little seed in the Styrofoam cup: the roots go down and the plant goes up and nobody really knows how or why, but we are all like that.
  • Goldfish and hamsters and white mice and even the little seed in the Styrofoam cup – they all die. So do we.
  • And then remember the Dick-and-Jane books and the first word you learned – the biggest word of all – LOOK.

Everything you need to know is in there somewhere. The Golden Rule and love and basic sanitation. Ecology and politics and equality and sane living.

Take any one of those items and extrapolate it into sophisticated adult terms and apply it to your family life or your work or government or your world and it holds true and clear and firm. Think what a better world it would be if we all – the whole world – had cookies and milk at about 3 o’clock in the afternoon and then lay down with our blankies for a nap. Or if all governments had as a basic policy to always put things back where they found them and to clean up their own mess.

And it is still true, no matter how old you are, when you go out in the world, it is best to hold hands and stick together.

[Source: “ALL I REALLY NEED TO KNOW I LEARNED IN KINDERGARTEN” by Robert Fulghum.  See his web site at http://www.robertfulghum.com/  ]