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.
As Megan Peschke and I were closing out our collaboration between here kindergarten and my Physics students, I asked her what one thing she would like us to do. She said that she would love to love to have my students create books for her kids to read about physics. Immediately my mind went to Google Slides for digital book creation. It is something that I've heard advocated from many of my EdTech heroes like Kasey Bell, Matt Miller , and Eric Curts . Since we wouldn't be able to meet to read them in person, we decided to insert audio into Google Slides of the high school students reading the story. This insert audio idea is one that is not original and I for sure have heard Kasey, Matt, and Eric mention as a use of audio in slides. In this post, I'd like to walk through the creation process and share the works my students created. The goal of the project for my students was to create a short children’s book for Kindergartners applying a basic physics concept. Below, you...