At the beginning of December my coaching partner and I were busy planning Hour of Code activities. During our planning I had the opportunity to dig deeper into Python and really enjoyed my learning journey. This journey got me thinking about how I could teach an elective on Python during the next session, so I started researching ideas, projects and resources geared toward middle school student. And what did I find? Well, the holy grail of programming electives…Adventures in Minecraft! I came across this book thinking that it could have some fun ideas for my after school MinecraftEdu class. You know, build ideas, challenges, other fun things to keep the kiddos focused. Turns out its WAY MORE that fun things to build in MCEdu, it’s about how to use Python to program Minecraft! Whoa…wait…what…? You can do that? You can actually program things in Python and have something happen IN Minecraft! I was hooked. I bought the book then and there, tossed aside the work I should have been doing and began learning how one programs Python! As I began reading the book and downloading files from the companion website I had a sudden realization that all this may be […]
The first week of December was Computer Science Week. An excellent opportunity to recognize how programming and programmers have changed our lives. Part of CSW was Hour of Code, created to expose students to coding and computer science concepts. Last year a few classrooms in our building participated in Hour of Code. This year my co-worker and I worked to schedule Hour of Code sessions with every student in SK through 7th grade. It was a busy couple of weeks for us, but we were excited to plan out such a range of activities. Due to the number of actual classes and the various division-wide activities, we had to split it over two weeks. So, what did we do? Below are descriptions of what we did with each grade level, followed by a link to resources we shared with families. If you haven’t participated in Hour of Code these ideas are a great way to get started! SK (Senior Kindergarten…think Kindergarten): SK students participated in two different activities that revolved around BeeBots. BeeBots are small, simple robots that young children can program. SK students learned about the BeeBots through the BeeBot app and followed that up with using the actual BeeBots […]
In early April I met with my 3rd grade team and they mentioned doing a green screen project in Science. Well, well, well! Little did they know I had just ordered a green screen! I’m a mind reader, in case you didn’t know. 🙂 So, they give me the rundown on the project. The kiddos were studying weather and climate and the teachers decided to have students take their research, data and graphs and turn it into a weather forecast. Love it! Let’s get started! So I said. But, if you know anything about technology things don’t always go as planned. It started with the arrival of the green screen kit. It is a great kit with two lights, light boxes, stands, a green backdrop, and backdrop stand. Awesome! I was SO excited to open the box and break out the setup. I unzipped the case and gave it a once over…whoo hoo! We’re ready to go. A day later I’m showing my colleague the setup and…screech of breaks…THERE’S NO GREEN SCREEN! AND NO STAND! Clearly I wasn’t paying attention when I opened the box! So, I email the company and wait. I hear back from them a day and […]
Bottom line…without mistakes, risks, or errors we wouldn’t be where we are today. Why, then, does the educational system discourage this in our students? I wrote that back in 2009 (!) after reading this blog post, by Liz B. Davis: Putting Gladwell’s Compensatory Model into Practice or NECC 09 Keynote Part 2. In my post A Compensatory Model of Education I wrote about my frustration with education’s focus on students getting the right answers rather than learning from the process and continually improving. Here it is, 2014. For the last couple of years the theories behind game design and design thinking have been filtering into educational thought, but not having a direct impact in the mainstream classroom. The Maker movement is popular again causing innovative schools to rethink their space in order to create tinkering labs or innovation spaces. I think this is great. My school is currently considering its own innovation lab. The problem? These movements do not address what Gladwell, Liz Davis and I wrote about years ago: failure; specifically embracing a culture of failure throughout education. Yes, these ideas encourage and even require failure, but the ideas seem to be relegated to special “labs” or a particular unit […]
