On Friday, I was so pleased to be able to return to one of my favorite days of the year, High-Interest Day at Brookfield Elementary School. This is a day where I have been able to bring the concepts of physics to k-5 graders. You may be asking yourself, "Elementary students doing physics?" YES! Not just experimenting, but understanding the concepts behind the physics of electricity and sound. This is a very special day I have had the opportunity to be involved in since 2017. So, how are we able to bring the concepts of electricity and sound traditionally taught to high school 11th and 12th graders to the elementary level? There are a few keys 1) make it a hands-on experience 2) remove the mathematical calculations and make it practical. In the past, I had the luck of bringing a handful of my physics students with me to guide the elementary students through the concepts that they had learned over the course of the year. But in my new role as a Teaching and Learning Speciali
One of my favorite podcasts is The Google Teacher Tribe with Kasey Bell and Matt Mille r. One of their favorite EdTech tools is Google Slides, which they have dubbed “The Swiss Army Knife” of G Suite because it can do so much. As I look back on how I’ve been able to use Google Slides in my career, I’d have to call it the Wishing Well of EdTech tools. When I wish I had a better way of doing something in my classroom, Google Slides has me covered. Last year, I began using Google Slides for student lab reports. Learn more about that here. I also began using Google Slides for daily/weekly calendar for students. I update the task list every day with live links and each week we get a new slide. The links stay live so that students can go back if they were absent. The first slide in the deck is the most recent. This means that the first one they see is this week’s. In my last post, I discussed the idea of implementing playlists with lots of curated resources for practice . In th