Our culture has been tech driven since someone used the term “Space Age” to prematurely describe the 1960s. Just as William Gibson said, the Future is already here, it’s just not evenly distributed. So it is with technology in education, technology moves in the blink of an eye and education struggles to stay relevant. This category looks at what might work, what needs work and all the widely hails “solutions looking for problems.”
Year3-Week5 & 6: There’s No Place Like Home I came up with this idea that I wanted to work with Kindergarten & first grade using the theme of “my community,” building on what it’s like to live in North Las Vegas and a child’s almost infinite capacity to create based on the tiniest bits of lived experiences. Week 4 we used Google Earth to virtually … Continue reading Year3-Week5 & 6: There’s No Place Like Home
Year3-Week3 – Welcoming Our Robot Overlords I’ve been wrestling with this problem since coming here in 2016: how to get robots into the hands of all of my students in the best way possible… And I was so excited that I didn’t take any photos/videos of the first class that began working on their LEGO WeDo robots (you know that’s excited!). Last year’s EV3 experiment … Continue reading Year3-Week3 – Welcoming Our Robot Overlords
Year Three Week Two – The Plan’s First Trial “No plan survives contact with the enemy,” Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, German Field Marshal I think I scared myself last week when posited the difficulty of teaching a single subject across six grade levels much less five subject areas across said six grade levels. Oops. I feel like Year One had been somewhat torpedoed because … Continue reading Year Three Week Two – The Plan’s First Trial
Learning LEGO EV3 Robots & Kids The first time you deploy anything in the classroom, much less something involving lots of small moving parts, I can guarantee that things won’t go as planned but if you planned well you’ll be able to see all the areas you need to fix/change the next time you do the lesson/unit. I’ve been waiting over a year to give … Continue reading Learning LEGO EV3 Robots & Kids
As I’ve said before, nothing tests the reliability and toughness of equipment (and people) like being subjected to the daily use by 4- to 11-year-olds. It gives new (literal) meaning to the words “wear and tear.” Thus, my hearty group of learners have vanquished with almost no effort over a dozen styluses that were designed to be used by the military. More recently they have … Continue reading Dealing with Broken Tech-Ed Stuff (Again)
Adios AIM: Tool to Create Constructive Virtual Presence AIM (AOL Instant Messenger) silently ceased to exist on December 15th, and most of the tech pundits I heard appeared to either be happy to see it go or spoke of the service with low regard. I mark this passing from a different set of experiences. When I got my Master’s degree online in 2002 and later … Continue reading Adios AIM: Tool to Create Constructive Virtual Presence
Adventures in Education 