Skip to main content

Generate Instant Pear Decks

By
  I’ll keep this short as the video explains most of you. Any new educational technology can be complicated to dig into from scratch as you attempt to align it to learning outcomes.  Well, a new feature that Pear Deck has introduced has taken a giant leap forward to help educators do just that.  Before we jump into the new features, if you are unfamiliar with Pear Deck and why my students and I consider it the #1 EdTech tool that helps their learning, check out the video in the previous blog post.   But if you are more concerned with why you should even dive into Pear Deck or learn about this new AI generation of Pear Deck sessions to a learning target, check out the video below. Like I said, I’m keeping it short so you have time to watch the video. If you have questions, please contact me at mohammam@elmbrookschools.org or the Pear Deck Learning team at support@deck.peardeck.com . Also, check out the amazing Stacey Roshan's video on this update. 
Post a Comment

Back to the Future

By

I love the idea of time travel.

In the fantastic motion picture Looper, a young man has to confront his older self. In the film the older wiser man, must convince his younger brash self to not - well I don't want to spoil this great sci-fi thriller.




We never get the opportunity in life to teach our younger self a lesson. To find our younger self and impart some wisdom into that naive inexperienced being.  If we could tell that younger self what is important and what no to stress over, well how could we resist.  But, by doing so, would we deprive ourselves of those experiences.  I love time paradoxes - I am a physics teacher.

As a culture there have been great movements of adults reaching out to the younger generations to provide that support.  I can't help but point to the It Gets Better Project.





How can we as teachers not see ourselves as time travelers talking to our younger selves.  Yes, we can load them up with content, but why not try to instill them with a little bit more.  Earlier this year I was able to get in touch with Jessica Ebert, a fellow teacher in my district.  She had posted some great products her students had created while studying sound.

I knew that my AP students were going to be soon studying sound. So I brought up the idea of possibly doing some kind of join instruction.  Now that was during 1st Quarter.  Who knew that we were actually going to follow through on this comment I posted on Google+.  Well, we did today!

My AP students became time travels today.  They visited their 4th grade selves.  Well, not literally.  They visited with the 4th Graders from Swanson Elementary School.  During this time they taught the content they learned only a matter of months ago to the 4th graders.  It was done via rotating stations in which groups of my students were allowed to choose a topic related to sound that they found most fascinating.  Through engaging demonstrations and interactives my students attempted to sell the next generation on basically how cool science is.

What is a sound wave and string instruments.




How Speakers Work




Sound Uncovered Application on iPads




Wind Instruments



Makey Makey




The Speed of Sound




I don't like to put out the gender card to much, but isn't it great to see women teaching each other the joys of science, especially physical sciences?!



I can't express how amazed and proud I was of my students. Their ability to be great teachers and role models was amazing. It was probably my proudest day as an educator.


It's my hope that this will become a yearly tradition. In about 6 years, I hope to have some of those 4th graders in my AP class ready to travel back to Swanson one last time.  Who knows, maybe this was they day they knew they'd be taking physics in high school.

Comments

  1. AnonymousJune 4, 2015 at 10:04 AM

    So excited for next year, Mike! It's going to be a great collaboration!
    Team Togetherness

    ReplyDelete

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Twitter Cards for Blogger

By
So, I’ve been seeing people with beautiful Twitter Cards in my Twitter Stream. They make it clear that there is a web page to visit and give a quick preview of what would be found. Something like the one below: I’ve been wondering how to get one of the cards to appear when I tweet out a link to my latest blog post.  Since I use Blogger, there is not a simple button to click to turn this on.  I had to find a way to paste new code into the HTML code of my blog.  It took some searching from multiple sites to get a completely functional.   This site though was quite helpful.  But, I’d like to walk you through my process and hopefully it helps a few out. There are a few types of Twitter Cards.  Two that at most frequently see are the basic summary card and the summary card with large image.  Below you can see the layout of each, but realize that they both have the same content pieces. This is going to look like a lot ...
14 comments
Read more

Personalized Learning Tasks and Roles

By
Yesterday, I read a great post by Jim Rickabaugh dealing with the roles of learner and teacher in a personalized learning environment by looking at tasks . The roles were set up on a continuum. This article timed perfectly with a reflection on part of Students at the Center by Allison Zmuda and Bena Kallick on idea generation and task development I had in mind. These two works are the focus of my reflection here. I think a key misunderstand teachers have when it comes to digging into personalizing learning is that for planning purposes, we no longer begin with standards but with student desires.  I believe like all good instruction, we need to start with the standards.  Think about it, standards are what we want all learners to know and be able to do as a result of passing through our educational system. That is why it is essential that we make sure that standards are representative of what we believe is important for learners to be informed and productive in th...
1 comment
Read more

Pear Deck 101 + Q&A

By
  Last week, I presented as a part of Pear Deck’s Pear Fair 2020. My presentation was Pear Deck 101 for Google Slides. During the presentation, there was a live chat. Many people said it went too fast for a 101 Session. Luckily, it was recorded so it can be rewatched.  Also, many said that they wanted to know how to build a Pear Deck first. I structured the presentation to show what Pear Deck was before showing how to make one. Perhaps that wasn’t the best structure. But, I’m going to stick with my philosophy of showing what something is before showing how to make it. The presentation, which can be watched below, was structured in several different sections What is Pear Deck? Providing an overview of the experience from the Teacher and Student perspectives. How do you build a Pear Deck in Google Slides? How do you start a Pear Deck presentation? How do you end a Pear Deck presentation? Here is the Slideshow I shared during the session bit.ly/pearfair101 Time really flew in...
2 comments
Read more