Category: My thoughts

I know Twitter has been around for almost 10 years, but in eduction, it takes a while for things to work its way into the classroom. I am finding more and more educators using Twitter to connect with students and parents. I love seeing my colleagues tweet pictures and videos of awesome things their students are doing in the classroom.

One use of Twitter that I find teachers still are not embracing is the ability to create Professional Learning Communities (PLC). I know, we don’t need one more acronym. I get some awesome ideas from those I follow on Twitter.

Another place to connect with other educators and build your PLC is in a Twitter Chat. If you haven’t participated in a Twitter Chat yet, you should try it out. Here is a great article about Twitter Chats. I suggest you try one out.

The only way to get better at using Twitter is by using it often. I try to tweet at least a few times a week. I would love to tweet every day or even multiple times a day. But sometimes I get so busy with my students, I forget.

So, look for awesome things your students are doing and tweet them out for the world to see. Suggest your students tweet what they are doing as well. Don’t forget to also connect with other teachers through Twitter Chats.

Happy Tweeting!

This week, December 7-13, is Computer Science Education Week. To celebrate, millions of schools around the world will participate in an Hour of Code. Students spend an hour or so learning a variety of programming skills. Having taught students from grades 3 through 12, I have a fairly good understanding of what works with each level.

So here are some ways to participate in an Hour of Code.

 

Elementary

Code.org (This has some fun programming tutorials geared toward younger students. Last year they had Anna and Elsa from Frozen. This year they have a Minecraft and a Star Wars themed set of tutorials. Code.org has added some texted based programming for older students this year.)

Tynker.com (This has some tutorials and activities similar to Code.org. You can also get an app for a tablet.

Scratch Jr. (This app is similar to Scratch, but designed for younger students.)

Intermediate 

Code.org (See description above.)

Scratch (I love Scratch. It can be used to create simple projects or very elaborate games. Your creativity is all that limits what you can do. Check out this earlier post.)

Junior High/High School

Scratch (See description above.)

Code with Chris (I began to go through this iOS tutorial a week ago to learn how to build iPhone apps. Although I have not finished yet, it has been fabulous so far.)

ROBOTC Virtual Worlds (You will have to download some trial software to program the virtual robots, but I use the ROBOTC in my robotics classes and love it. I use the text based programming, but graphical programming is available as well.)

And there are tons more…

 

There are so many resources to choose from, there is no excuse for not participating in an Hour of Code this year. Take pictures of your students and Tweet them out using the hashtag #HourOfCode!

HAPPY CODING!

In early October, three of my students and I were invited to speak to a variety of educators and school administrators from around Summit County at GAR Foundation’s Annual Educator Conference.

We had the opportunity to speak about the new Robotics program started at Springfield High School and Junior High last year. With funding from the GAR Foundation through a grant I wrote, Springfield Local Schools were granted $15,000 to purchase robotics materials and provide teacher training.

The students were in the Robotics 1 course last year. They used LEGO EV3 robotics kits and ROBOTC programming software to learn a variety of programming skills. Each of the students spoke about how this program has benefited him or her.

The students explained how they learned to problem solve and collaborate with others. They learned to break apart large problems into smaller more manageable tasks. Most of all, student learned to persevere. Even when they wanted to give up, they pressed on to complete the program.

These students and others will be taking a Robotics 2 course which will use LEGO NXT and TETRIX robots as they learn more advanced robotics programming.

I ended the presentation with a challenge for the administrators, “Let me encourage all of the principals and superintendents in the room to take a chance on some of the crazy ideas your teachers may have. Last year I started with around 70 robotics students. This year I am around 120. This is just getting started! Take a chance on your teachers! Support their ideas.”

In Education, there is a great deal of buzz around the idea of being innovative and creative. As a technology and robotics teacher, I hear words like maker spaces, 21st century skills and STEM. (Okay, STEM isn’t a word, but you get the idea.) Lots of people say they want to allow students to be creative and they want to integrate the STEM principles, but they don’t do it well because of the way their classroom is structured.

This is how I believe our classrooms should be structured.

Each day I am tour guide. Young people between the ages of 12 to 18 come to my school to visit the vastness we call knowledge. Most people feel that as a tour guide we must know everything, but that isn’t true. There is no way for anyone to know everything about everything. Or even as a teacher to know everything about our subject matter. It just isn’t possible. As a tour guide we should guide those who visit to learn for themselves. We need to guide them to love learning by being an enthusiastic and exciting tour guide.

I may not know everything, but I know how to steer students to the knowledge. This plays out each and everyday in my classroom. When a student is working on a project, there is a good chance I don’t know the answer, but I know where to look for it. I can guide him or her to this knowledge.

Do I stand in front and teach the whole group? Yes, from time to time I do. Just as a tour guide has some opening remarks before you start the tour. From time to time I stop the class to give some information about the knowledge we are visiting. Yes, just as a tour guide does when you stop at one of the designations along your route. At the end of the class I close with remarks. Yes, just as the tour guide does when the last destination has been reached.

Many days the knowledge we are visiting is a little different than the day before. Some days we visit it over and over. Teaching isn’t about students consuming the information that I possess. If it were, my students would be terribly disappointed and would leave empty. It is about guiding each of them to the information they need to learn something new.

When I structure my class this way, each student has the freedom to be innovative and creative. Some will take off and run, soaking up more knowledge than anyone could imagine. Others will need me to hold their hand and walk slowly explaining everything along the way. This is how I believe the classroom should be structured and how education needs to look.

 

Throughout the Yes… you can series I have tried to show you that it doesn’t take a tech genius to integrate technology into your lessons. I am certainly no tech genius. What I am is willing. I am willing to try new things that I know nothing or little about. I am willing to allow students to lead the way. Being a teacher means you are guiding students toward knowledge. Sometimes that requires us to get out of the way!

I try to allow my students the freedom to be creative while completing the requirements during a project. I have two projects to share with you that demonstrate what can happen if you are willing to step aside and let the students go.

SCRATCH: This project had a list of requirements, but I didn’t give much direction on how students were to meet the requirements because I didn’t want to limit the creativity and ideas the students would have.  The students knew I had expectations that needed to be met. This students met each one with mastery.

ROBOTICS: This project required students program the robot to complete an obstacle course using sensors. When this group got finished, I asked them to make a video of their robot completing the course. What they made was incredible. Watch and see.

For those of you with iPads, one great tool that I feel anyone can use is iMovie. The iPad version is much simpler to use than the Mac version. Despite it being more simple, it can make a high quality movie.

Currently the seventh graders at my school are using iMovie for the iPad to reenact scenes from the novel they have read in class. Students will write scripts in a group of four. Then students will videotape using the iPad’s camera. In iMovie, students will add the clips, split the clips to remove the mistakes, add titles, add still photos, add special effects and sounds and more. It will take some time, but the final product will be great!

Don’t be afraid to try iMovie. Take an hour with your iPad and try making a simple movie. Don’t be afraid to give your students some guidelines and let them give it a try. You can do it!

Do you remember the 8mm reel to reel films or the film strip with the cassette player? Back in the day, showing a video required a great deal of planning. You had to reserve the projector and film strip. Some teachers were lucky enough to have a film strip projector and their own films. We then moved on to VHS tapes and DVDs. Once again, unless you owned the videos, you had to borrow, which required advanced planning.

The showing of educational videos has only become easier with the internet. We have short video clips at our disposal 24/7. I have found some great clips all over the internet. My favorite place find videos is on YouTube.

The blocking or unblocking of YouTube is a hot topic. I understand both sides of this debate. No matter what side you are on, you must admit there are some great clips to be found.

If your district has unblocked YouTube, as my district has, I suggest setting up a playlist to have all the clips saved and available. To save videos to a playlist, you will have to create an account. If you have a Gmail account or if your district has Google accounts for you and the students, you already have an account. After you have a playlist created, you can share it with your students through a link or by embedding it into you website. A playlist would be a great way to help flip your classroom and let students watch content at home. All of these ideas have tutorials available on… you guessed it, YouTube. It only takes a few minutes of searching to find many options.

One problem with showing YouTube videos right from the internet is the ads. Depending on the age of your students, ads can be a real problem. If ads are a concern for you, keep reading.

If your district blocks YouTube, or you don’t want to see the ads, you can download YouTube videos to play in your classroom. This will require you have the web address of the video you want to play and to convert in a location where YouTube is not blocked. Go to www.clipconverter.cc. All you have to do is copy the web address of the YouTube video and paste it into the converter. If you are using a Mac, you can download using .mov. If you are using a Windows pc try converting as .avi. If you plan to show using an iPad, try converting as .mp4. This will allow you to use these great clips even if YouTube is blocked in your district.

YouTube has a wealth of great educational content. Yes you can use YouTube in your classroom.

If you are looking to make relevant and real connections while being creative, try using Minecraft. Minecraft can be an incredible addition to the classroom.

Depending on the technology you have access to, how you might set up Minecraft differs. In many classrooms, Minecraft may be a once a week activity when visiting the computer lab. In other situations, Minecraft may be completed as a center on a classroom computer. Only you can decide how it will fit into your classroom.

Before you dismiss putting in the time and effort to use Minecraft in your classroom, remember you don’t have to be the Minecraft expert. You won’t be. I’m certainly not. Let you students be the experts. If the students are teaching you different elements of the game they are using higher level thinking skills. We all know that if you can teach something you really understand the content. Remember, you are the learning expert. You know what information your students are required to learn. So don’t worry if the students know more than you about Minecraft.

As the learning expert, your job is to decide how you use Minecraft in your classroom. By using maps, you can send students to places you are learning about in social studies. You can let students build the setting from a piece of literature. The integration ideas are only limited by your imagination.

If you want more ideas on how you can integrate Minecraft in the classroom, or if you want some research on gaming in education, try reading Teachercraft: How Teachers Learn to Use Minecraft in their Classrooms by Seann Dikkers. (Chapter 10 has lots of resources and ideas.)

Here is a description of the book.

Teacher Craft is about how teachers learn to use new digital media. Teacher learning is central to reform and change across subject areas and age levels, but how much do we really know about how teachers learn to try new lessons in classrooms? Minecraft is currently the game of choice for millions of youth and also for these seventeen teachers who claim it has transformed their classrooms. Its rapid adoption also provides a unique window of opportunity to look inside the recent memory of innovative teachers and unpack how they learned. Why did they pick Minecraft? More importantly, how did they pick Minecraft? Where did they hear about it? Who do they trust for ideas? How do they test new ideas? Can we begin to identify the trajectories of truly innovative teachers? It turns out, we can – and it may not be what you’d expect.

Seann Dikkers presented on his ideas on a Gaming in Education YouTube video.

Give it a try. You can do it!

 

If there is one thing that I feel every student needs to learn to be prepared for life, it is problem solving skills. It doesn’t matter what subject area or class being taken, there is a level of problem solving that takes place. When you get out of school, the need for problem solving doesn’t go away.

What I see from my JH students is a serious lack of these skills. Maybe not so much a lack of skills as a lack of initiative to utilize any problem solving skills he or she might have. Many students are just lazy. A quick side note before I get calls from parents and the administration comes to yell at me. In JH I was the poster child for laziness. Just ask my parents and former teachers. But somewhere I picked up these skills that came in mighty handy on Friday. Here is what happened.

I was on spring break. I had gotten up early, at 5 am, to play some pick up basketball. (Yes I am crazy.) So to say I was sweaty and stinky is an understatement. I came home and helped with getting my girls ready for school and got them on the bus. My wife and I had plans to run a few errands and grab lunch. She took the dog for a short walk and I jumped in the shower. A much needed shower due to the excessive stinkiness. Shortly after starting my shower the water pressure dropped significantly. So much I wasn’t sure I would get to wash all of the shampoo out of my hair.

After drying off and getting dressed, I headed downstairs to investigate. The well pump wasn’t turning on. (For those of you with public water supplies, you should be thankful.) I started to panic. The last time the well had a well issue, it was very expensive to repair. $$$$$ Here is where the problem solving came in very handy.

I knew that there is a pressure switch that tells the pump to turn on and off depending on the pressure in the tank. I Googled how to test the switch. I got a suggestion to take a volt meter (Thanks to my father-in-law for the hand-me-down OTC volt meter.) and see if it the voltage drops when the pump kicks on. I couldn’t get the pump to come on so I deduced that it wasn’t getting power. A quick look in the breaker box showed that the breaker was tripped. I reset the breaker and tested the electrical line at the switch. Still no power. I got into the breaker box and tested the line at the breaker. No power. Final conclusion, the breaker was bad.

So to test my hypothesis I noticed that I had an identical breaker that powered an air compressor. I unwired the compressor from the breaker and used it on the well. An guess what? It worked.

I did have to purchase a $10 breaker from Lowe’s to replace the malfunctioning breaker.

So the problem solving let me to think about the problem at hand. The water pressure dropped. Why? The well pump wasn’t coming on. Why? It wasn’t getting power. Why? The switch wasn’t getting power. Why? The breaker wasn’t sending power. Why? The breaker was bad.

I am not suggesting that an inexperienced home owner test and replace breakers unless they are very careful. But without problem solving I would have called the well company to come fix my problem. My guess is that it would have cost me over $100 and cost me the day. Instead I spent $10, 45 minutes and got to have lunch with my wife.

Why should problem solving be taught in schools? Because it is a part of real life.