teaching is love

Destination Imagination is an educational program where student teams solve open-ended Challenges and present their solutions at tournaments. In working to solve our Challenges, our teams learn important life skills like time management, collaboration, conflict resolution, and creative and critical thinking.

Past Challenges have been based on topics such as nanotechnology, climate, quality of life for the handicapped population, and transportation. By designing our Challenges around such topics, participants are exposed to potential career paths within a chosen Challenge topic, in addition to solidifying the STEM principles that naturally come from participating in a robotics program. Team members also learn valuable life and employment skills which will benefit them no matter which career path they choose.

Using Padlet as a KWL chart: Padlet can be used to create a KWL chart that students can contribute to anonymously (or not anonymously if you want them to sign-in). Create a wall, make it public, and ask students to share what they know and what they want to know about a topic. If you allow anonymous posting you might get contributions from shy students who might not otherwise speak-up in class. Of course, if you allow anonymous commenting you should have a conversation with your students about what an appropriate comment looks like. (You could also turn on moderation and approve all notes before they appear). Padlet works well when projected on an interactive whiteboard. Using Padlet for group research: A couple of years ago I showed my special education students a short (18 minutes) video about cultural changes that took place in the US during the 1920's. After the video we discussed what they saw. Then I had students search online for other examples of cultural change in the 1920's. When they found examples they put them onto a Wallwisher wall that I projected onto a wall in my classroom. The wall started with just text being added to the wall and quickly progressed to YouTube videos being added to the wall. Once every student had added a video to the wall we stopped, watched the videos, and discussed them. Using Padlet as a showcase of your students’ work: If your students are creating digital portfolios, creating slideshows, or producing videos you could use Padlet to display all of your students’ best work on one page. Create the wall, call it something like “my best work this year,” and have your students post links to their works.

Use Socrative to gather anonymous questions and answers: The single response activities in Socrative allow students to reply to your prompt or question without entering their names. In a single response activity you verbally pose a question or prompt to your students and they respond with a word, sentence, or multiple choice selection. The anonymous reply format is useful for surveying students when you’re asking them to submit responses to questions or prompts that they might be reluctant to share in an open format. Use Socrative to administer short quizzes: The quiz-based activities in Socrative allow you to give your students short quizzes that include multiple choice, true/ false, and short answer responses. The new option to include pictures in your questions allows you ask questions about diagrams, charts, and any other item that you have an image of. You can set the quiz to give students immediate feedback on the multiple choice and true/ false questions. You can see the results of the quizzes in real-time and download a report of all students’ answers when all of your students have completed the quiz. Use Socrative to host a “space race” in your classroom: A fun way to use Socrative is to host a team "space race." A space race is a competitive format for quizzes. Space race can be played as a team or individual activity. Each correct answer moves a rocket ship across the screen. The first person or team to get their rocket across the screen wins. Your space race questions can be pulled from a quiz that you have stored in your Socrative account.

Which principal would you want? What kind of teacher would you be if you threw an iPad into your classroom and basically used it mostly by yourself? That’s the crux of the discussion by the folks over at Teachbytes who came up with the fabulous visualization below. It details 12 ways to properly integrate technology into the classroom. It details what the difference is between ‘using’ technology versus ‘integrating’ and I simply love it. Hope you do too.

This publication features the bridges between Science, Technology, Engineering Mathematics (STEM) and the Arts. In this context, the journal acts as a forum for open dialogue of STEAM as well as expanding the body of transdisciplinary knowledge. The STEAM Journal is a hub for scholars and practitioners of many disciplines who wish to provide commentary, exchange ideas and inform policy and practice of STEAM.

Great resources shared by Mary Carole Struther during her session at the Discovery Education Spring Virtual Conference. #virtconlive

If you’ve so much as glanced at the Common Core State Standards, you know how much emphasis is placed on literacy. Reading isn’t relegated to a single class period each day anymore. Teachers are expected to incorporate literacy instruction throughout the curriculum, and students are expected to read (and understand) as much informational text as they do fiction.

By focusing on the big ideas instead of the small details and facts, students develop a deeper understanding of the content and the analytical skills necessary to analyze historical and current events for themselves.

1. Open and Edit Word Files in Google Drive. If you're just beginning to transition to Google Apps from Microsoft Word, the chances are good you will have old files that you want to bring into and work on in Google Drive. Click here for the detailed directions on how to do this. 2. Create PDFs in Google Drive.  Sometimes you don't want a document to be easy to alter. Or you plan on printing it and want it as a PDF. Click here to learn how to create a PDF in Google Drive in three easy steps. 3. Use Google Documents Offline. For those times when you don't have an Internet connection and you want to work on a document, having offline access enabled is the only way to go. Click here for directions on how to enable offline access to your Google Documents.  4. Give Yourself More Room to Work in Google Documents. If you're using a laptop that has a screen of 13" or less there will probably be times when you want more white-space to work in. This little trick will give you about another inch of viewable document. 5. Create and Organize Folders. Do you want to have more organization in your Google Drive account? Then you need to know how to create folders and move files into them. The steps for creating folders and dragging files into them are outlined below. (Click the images to view them full size).