Building a catapult that can hit a target at one, three and five meters is a core project of Ben Smith’s engineering class. When the project is assigned, groups get to work inventing a mechanism that will meet the objectives, often coming up with ingenious ideas. But when Smith noticed his students were increasingly asking…
This is part 11 of 13 things to do before the first day of school. Holidays have a tendency to sneak up on us. I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve missed out on doing something in my classroom because I didn’t know it was a holiday. What I’ve started to do…
In a world where so much knowledge is a two-second search away, many schools are losing interest in models that promote static learning to know. They’re looking to embrace dynamic models that promote learning to do and learning to be. Project-Based Learning (PBL) allows learners to develop skills by solving meaningful, real-world challenges , i.e. organizing…
When Jacqui Young studied pre-calculus as a high school junior, she found the experience unexpectedly fulfilling. She didn’t consider herself a “math person,” but pre-calc came more easily to her than it did to most of her peers, and she spent a lot of time helping fellow students grasp the concepts. “It felt good to…
This is part 10 of 13 things to do before the first day of school. Social media is not only a great way to showcase your student’s work, but also a good way to build a support network or personal learning network (PLN). I would recommend you create at least two accounts, a professional account and…
Providing opportunities for students to make and create is essential in 21st-century classrooms. Children of all ages should experience the joy of seeing their work shared and celebrated. Classrooms with access to a variety of different tools have plenty of tech tool options. Source: 6 Must-Have Creation Tools for the BYOD Classroom Don’t look at…
About a month ago, someone placed a pair of hipsterish glasses on a museum floor as a prank. Within minutes, a crowd gathered to take pictures of the new “work of art.” You could read this as a throwback to the Dada movement or you could view it as yet another ironic, cynical, postmodern statement…
This is part 9 of 13 things to do before the first day of school. I don’t store things in a lot of folders, I try to use search as much as possible. But, I do like storing the files and folders for the current year in a named folder. So, at the start of…
As you probably know, Google Drive is far more than a place to store files online. It also includes a suite of versatile creation tools, many of which perform the same functions as the ones we use in other spaces. These include Google Docs, a word processing program that behaves similarly to Microsoft Word, Google Slides, a presentation program similar…
While some outdated educators are hung up on making students sit, stare, and copy down their every word (by hand!), innovative educators know there is a better way. At this year’s #NYCSchoolsTech Summit teachers came together to learn about innovative ways to support teaching and learning but they weren’t focused on taking notes. Source: Lisa Nielsen: The…