The following pics are of creations that students made using our new Makerbot 3D printer. Mrs. Lackey, our librarian, guided a small “pilot” group of 5th graders through the City X curriculum. In this curriculum, a story is weaved about a fictional city on another planet that has problems that need to be solved. The … Read more
“You mean they didn’t really go there?” a student asked me. She was pointing to a bulletin board of Photo Mapo projects by my 1st graders. Each student had chosen a Google Street View image of a landmark in the country they were studying. Using the Green Screen app by DoInk, the students inserted pictures … Read more
During the weekend, I happened to hear two radio interviews with different orchestra conductors that reminded me of the reasons I started to offer Genius Hour in my classroom. NPR’s Scott Simon spoke with the conductor of the Boston Pops, Keith Lockhart, about a feature called By Popular by Demand, which allows the audience to use mobile technology to program … Read more
On Monday, March 23, 2015, the White House hosted it’s fifth annual Science Fair. You can see some of the participants in the video on this site. I haven’t been able to watch the whole video, but I enjoyed the segment that starts about 57 minutes in (I just chose a random place to start) … Read more
When I realized that last week was National Engineering Week, the week was practically already over. I tried to salvage things by doing some engineering with my 5th grade last Thursday – Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day. Ironically, there are only 5 girls in my 5th grade class of 18. But that’s still a … Read more
Just to be clear from the outset, this post is not about the game that prepares you for a career in Cirque de Soleil – or, in my case, a long stay in the hospital. Twister, basically a fake Tweet generator, is one of the many fun tools available from ClassTools.net. (Check out this post from Richard Byrne about Connect … Read more