I’m teaching 5th Grade Design + Code + Make for the first time this year. Previously, 5th Grade was rolled into our lower school for technology classes and the curriculum was not integrated with our middle school arc. In middle school, we focus on design thinking, entrepreneurship, making, and solving real world problems. Classes happen…
Category: EdTech
Choosing successful educational technologies
I have been working as a technologist and teacher in independent schools for twelve years. I respected teachers before I started working in education but I really respect them now. I teach a maximum of about 3.5 hours per day. Most days are less than that. Teachers who are in the classroom for seven or…
Programming a Robot Arm with Python
I’m teaching an intro to Python elective this trimester. The students are learning the basics via the Codecademy intro course and then they get to try programming a robot arm. I used an ArmUno 2.0 kit from Microbot Labs, a Hummingbird Bit from Birdbrain Tech, and the bitPython library. This is their first challenge.
Rethinking Books
I ran across a fascinating article by Andy Matuschak about how hard it is to learn much of anything from a non-fiction book. The basic premise is that the cognitive model of the non-fiction book is busted. People don’t learn well by simply reading words. They have to actively engage in metacognition to retain information…
LED Circuits with 1st Graders
I recently did an LED circuit project with a group of first graders. It was challenging to figure out a way to make it easy enough for their limited fine motor skills and attention spans but also engaging and fun. I experimented with my own first grader and came up with a good compromise. Materials…
Virtual Reality, Education, Net States, and Behavior Modification
“…life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced.” This quote is often attributed to Kierkegaard but was actually written by Sarvepalli Radhakrishnan. The full quotation is: “Spiritual life is not a problem to be solved but a reality to be experienced. It is new birth into enlightenment.” Radhakrishnan was talking…
Teaching Technology the Steve Wozniak Way
I love this essay by Syambra Moitozo about what it was like to have Steve Wozniak teach her computer class in 1995. Some great quotes from Woz: “It was less important to me what you teach, and more important to motivate people by making things as fun as you can,” “Why not let young students…
Matching Bias and Education
This is an interesting article. If Daniel Kahneman’s ‘dual-process’ theory is correct, it could be a useful way to think about technology education (and maybe even education in general). Maybe what teachers should be consciously focusing on is helping students develop their ability to access and use ‘system 2’ vs. the much easier and instinctual…
hundrED Project: Testing Educational Innovation
This is a cool idea. They have selected 100 innovative year-long projects in Finnish schools and an additional 100 projects in schools around the world. From the website: “All insights and best practices will be documented, packaged and shared with the world for free. In Fall 2017 we will launch our digital service HundrED Share,…
Good Editorial on Teaching Computer Science in K-12 Schools
I agree pretty strongly with the viewpoint of this article. When I contrast the computer science education I received in public High School (writing programs in BASIC and FORTRAN to solve real problems) vs. what I see a lot of now (drag and drop block programming environments like Scratch, Mindstorms, iOS apps, etc.) I wonder…