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Showing posts from May, 2019

EdCamp Still Rules

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  Looking Back at 10 years of EdCamps Oh how the time flies, EdCamp Madison is turning 10 this year!  It will be held Saturday, February 3rd at Sun Prairie West High School. Which can be found at 2850 Ironwood Drive in Sun Prairie Wisconsin from 8:30 am - 3:00 pm.  Get more information and register here: https://sites.google.com/sunprairieschools.org/edcampmadwi/home   I will always remember sitting in my first EdCamp opening session at the very first EdCamp Madison and having no clue what I was in for. So, I’d like to take this space to go over some of the basic rules of EdCamp. No One Will Pitch It for You EdCamps are unconferences. By this I mean that they have a blank slate of sessions for the day. There may be a few predetermined sessions, but ultimately the session topics are determined by attendees during the pitch & plan session that opens the day. If an idea gets pitched there will be a session on it. If a topic doesn’t get pitched, there won’t be a session on it. So, it i
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Suite Science Practices: Models

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Over the past year, I have been gradually working to implement the Next Generation Science Standards (NGSS) into my classroom. Our new Wisconsin State Science Standards were designed with the NGSS in mind. They align very well, so please forgive me if my language focuses on the NGSS in this post. As I design lessons aligned the standards, I am considering to the skills students will be implementing that carry across multiple units. This relates to the Science and Engineering Practices contained in the standards . I am looking at the technology tools that can be used to leverage these practices. While there are 8 different practices and I hope to delve into each one and the technology tools that can help learners in each, this post will only focus on one practice. That practice is Developing and Using Models . As the name indicates, there are two major components to this practice 1) developing models 2) using models. Before looking closer at each one, we need to look at how a model is
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Sphero Challenge Accepted!

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As a teacher, I am always looking for highly engaging activities. It takes time, though, to craft ones that can be seen to hit the standards of a course. Or, maybe it takes a little time to realize that the skills students are being asked to employ are in the standards. It is just a matter of finding ways to make this learning visible. This week, we had the finals of the Sphero Chariot Challenge. Students designed and built Chariots for Spheros. They then programmed them to travel a short course with a couple of turns. While this culminating activity was a great driver for many of the students, the results of this race did not determine any grade. The content and skills were addressed along the journey to the end. At the end of last year, my co-teacher Andelee Espinosa and I did a maker project in our Fabrication Lab involving Sphero Chariots.   Read here post on the activity here.   I was excited to have the opportunity to complete this project again the last month. I mad
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