Skip to main content

Thank You for 20 Years.

By
After 20 years of teaching at Brookfield Central, I am saying goodbye. Although I spent the majority of that time in the physics classroom alongside my learners. That changed for my last 18 weeks. I ended up in a place similar to where I started, teaching chemistry and biology. So, rather than dealing with juniors and seniors at the end of their high school careers, I was in classrooms with freshmen and sophomores still trying to find their place. At the same time, I was learning and teaching a set curriculum I hadn't taught in over a decade. So, we were learning. But, of course, I already knew the content.  The point of this post is to take a step back, take in, and share the gratitude from the last students I had in my 20 years at Brookfield Central High School through the cards and notes they made for me on my last day with them.  I don't take many yay me moments. But after 20 years, I think I'll soak this one in.
Post a Comment

Maker space Baby Steps: Putting It All Out There

Image
By



We all have an idea where we want to take our classroom.  We all have a vision.  It cannot be accomplished overnight.  For some innovations, we need to take baby steps.





I've been intrigued by the idea of Maker Spaces for a long time. Why? I love the idea of a space where students can experiment with the design process and have a large variety of tools and materials at their disposal.  The idea of truly giving students voice and choice is made physical.  That is why I am so intrigued about making my classroom into this type of physical space.

One of the first activities I have my physics students do is build a vehicle that will accelerate powered by a mousetrap of rubber band. Over the years, I've been collecting tools and scraps required for the construction.  When we started construction this week, it felt very different.





Last term, my department head purchased an open storage system for many of my classroom supplies.  So these building supplies that used to be in closed drawers and closets are now on display for all students.

Old Storage System



New Storage System



It was interesting to see students actually gravitate to the supply area without any prompting from me.  They were like scavengers on the planet Jakku hunting for the best scraps for their vehicles.



Students are putting together designs using material that were completely unexpected. It seemed like the simplest thing I did to transform my classroom into a maker space was putting my traditional supplies in an area where students could actually access and use them. In the past when students had an idea they would have to build up the courage to ask me.  Then, I would go digging through the closet to see what I had.  In this new model, the choice of supplies are all laid out. The idea stage is not limited by what supplies the teacher might have.  It seems like now that the students are finding ways to make their ideas work without me being a gatekeeper of innovation.  It's the fact that students weren't limited to what I said they could use that made the difference in how they went about the process.


Looking at these supplies, they are nothing out of the ordinary that wouldn't be in most teacher closets they were just made more accessible.



Next Steps 


In the end, I hope to provide more supplies beyond what might be in a teacher's desk.

I want to build up a supply of LittleBits kits to allow for more advanced construction projects that tie mechanics to electronics.

Also, I don't want to ignore the audio/visual production of MakerSpaces.  Having a class set of iPads has gone a long way to help students explore those avenues.  We have lots of great media creation apps and that is one of the things I love about iPads over Chromebooks. I'm continuing to look at more apps for media creation using student voice.  I'm hoping to start looking into green screen apps and maybe set up a green screen space in the classroom for video or image creation.

We have 3D printers at our school, but I am such a novice that will be a ways out for me.  It might be up to some innovative students to build that need.

I'll keep making baby steps an incorporating new pieces into my space.  Maybe I'll buy some Legos.

Resources

I'm always looking for great resources for what a maker space can look like, especially in a classroom.

The great team at makerspace.com have put together a wonderful free publication for anyone to get started thinking about designing a maker space in their school/classroom. Here is the link to the PDF file.

Edutopia has a great strand on Maker Education.




Labels:

Comments

  1. AnonymousFebruary 4, 2016 at 9:13 AM

    Can't wait to see what they come up with! Our kids started building theirs today!!
    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