For our last project in 5th grade Design + Code + Make this year we did an integrated unit with Science. The students learned about the wetlands biome (our school is located near the Ballona Wetlands). Each student was assigned an animal that is found in the wetlands. They researched […]
EdTech
39 posts
Thank you to everyone who attended my session on Saturday! Here is my presentation: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1D33EL5hdIzMDW1m14uZo_RTTsIGlwb1NamM0ZDxJ0Ug/edit?usp=sharing
We’re doing a Scratch unit with 5th grade right now so I created this game to remind myself how everything works. It’s been a while since I did anything in Scratch. https://scratch.mit.edu/projects/500320374/
We haven’t had kids on campus to get their school photos taken this year. So, I decided to have parents take yearbook portrait photos themselves and upload them via a Google Form. The problem: the spreadsheet created by the Google form has a link to the uploaded file but doesn’t […]
I attend a lot of conferences, meetings, and workshops aimed at educational technology professionals. Something I see too often is a conflation of these two concepts: educational technology and technology education. I think it’s vital to make the distinction. Remembering that these are two separate things helps clarify our goals […]
I’m preparing a 5th grade project where the students will design and laser cut rubber band powered airplanes. This is my first prototype. I definitely need to angle the wings to create more lift and use a lighter material.
As a quarantine project, my son and I created this text based adventure game. He designed it and I helped him program. He’s 7 so expect weirdness. He got into this via Zork which we played to help with his reading. GO TO THE GAME
I’m teaching a robotics challenge elective this spring over Zoom. I meet with the students once/week and give them a new challenge. The challenge this week is to make a robot that can ‘floss’. This is my attempt:
One of our 5th Grade teachers is going out on maternity leave. The other 5th grade faculty wanted to have the students make a present for her in my DCM class and asked for my suggestion. I remembered an amazing mobile my son had when he was a baby and […]
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 […]
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 […]
Back in 2015 I wrote about the Economist magazine’s ‘skills of the future’ supplement. Just this morning I got an email from Google about their new ‘future of the classroom’ global report. It seems like little has changed in the past four years. The skills needed to prepare students for […]