One of the interesting new resources I discovered at SXSWedu this year is the Smithsonian Learning Lab. This ambitious project spearheaded by The Smithsonian Center for Learning and Digital Access aims to give unprecedented access to the massive collections that have been digitized at the Smithsonian’s network of museums and research centers. You can learn more about the Learning Lab’s intended mission here.
The Learning Lab offers images, recordings, and texts that you can, as a free registered member, curate into your own collections. You can then annotate and make notes in your collection. Adding your own files to the collection is another noteworthy feature. Collections can be shared, and teachers can assign collections to students in their rosters (similar to Google Classroom). Here is a link to how teachers can use the Learning Lab.
Students under 13 need special permission to create collections of their own. However, an elementary teacher could certainly benefit from using the images and other resources to supplement lessons. In a way, this Learning Lab is another type of virtual field trip, allowing students to see high resolution images of objects that might not even be on display at the museum any longer.
Here is a picture I found to place in my “Inventions” collection. Any guesses as to the purpose of this object?
Image from Smithsonian Learning Lab: National Museum of American History, Kenneth E. Behring Center
My daughter turned 13 last month. To surprise her, I invited a group of her friends to a place in San Antonio called, “The Panic Room.” The hostess set the scene of the “Museum Heist” up by telling about a museum robbery gone wrong. The 10 girls were given the mission of finding the most valuable item in the room to save their families from the robber who had taken them hostage. They had one hour.
The parents were able to watch the group as they worked their way through the clues, all contained in the room. There were mysterious codes, locked boxes, and secret hiding places.
Did I mention that these were eight 13-year-olds and two 20-something-year-olds? Oh, and they couldn’t bring their phones in with them.
For the entire hour, these 10 girls ransacked the room, collaborated over clues, celebrated when they cracked codes, and laughed.
In other words, they were engaged in the task the entire time.
“I have got to find a way to use this in my classroom,” I thought. And then I added it to my mental list of a bazillion engaging ideas that I keep in my Index of Innovation.
Lo and behold, I clicked on a Twitter link yesterday, and found that someone else had the same idea – and they followed it through with resources for educators.
Breakout Edu is open beta right now, which means that the project is still in development, but open to the public to test it out. The site currently provides six games that are free (with several more to come, it looks like), but you will need to register as a beta tester to receive the password that gives you access to the games along with the clues and answers. You will need to invest in a Breakout Edu Kit, which includes the basic equipment for any of the challenges. To do this, you have the option of buying a kit for $99, scraping up your own materials, or individually ordering the pieces you need through the provided Amazon links.
The games that are currently on the site inform you of the target age groups and the ideal group sizes. Some of the topics are: “The Candy Caper” (3rd-5th grades, ideal groups of 4-6 people), “Decoding the War” (14-adult with groups of 6-12 people), and “The Mad Engineer” (for ages 10-14 with groups of 5-10 people). There is also information for creating your own Breakout EDU game.
Follow this link for information about a Breakout EDU Game Jam that will be happening this week!
I don’t know about you, but I can’t wait to try this with my students! Fortunately, I have rather small class sizes. For teachers with a regular, or larger, class load, you may need to get creative on how to give everyone the opportunity to try to “break out.” Knowing the audience who reads this blog, I don’t think that will be a problem 😉
My 1st graders are learning a little geography at the moment as they program their Dash robot to hunt for treasure amongst the continents. As I was looking for some supplemental resources, I ran across this brain-twisting quiz from Mental Floss. It’s deceptively difficult. The concept is simple: select all of the states from the list without making a mistake. I was doing good until I accidentally tapped “North York.”
If you want your students to play this in class, you might want to use the Page Eraser Chrome extension to take care of the distracting ads. If you play it at home all on your own, I would keep the ads so you can blame them every time you mess up 🙂
Population.io is a site that shows some interesting statistics about the world’s population in relation to the user. According to the site authors, “Our hope is that people from all walks of life, in all ages and across all countries will explore a new perspective of their own life and find their own place in the world of today and tomorrow.”
Once you input your birth date, country, and gender, you can learn what percentage of the world is younger than you (far too many, in my case), milestones in your life (such as that I was the 5 billionth person to be alive on April 5, 2012), the number of people who share your birthday, and various other facts that can make you feel very old and very small.
This seems like it could be a useful site to make your students more aware of how many humans actually share this not-so-large planet. It’s interesting to see how your life expectancy might change depending on where you live (so far, it looks like I probably should make a move to Spain in the near future), and could bring up deep conversations about the reasons for dramatic differences.
I have to admit that I was a bit disturbed by this offer at the bottom of the page:
I’m not really sure I want my iPhone (or its future equivalent) ringing an alarm to alert me of my imminent doom. But maybe it would be nice to be somewhat prepared…
“This American Life” is one of my absolute favorite radio programs. Hosted by Ira Flatow, each show is based on a theme. The productions are amazing, top quality collections of real-life stories that will make you laugh, gasp, and cry.
I just found out “This American Life” has a page of Educator Resources. You can look up shows by theme or school level. Educators from all over have contributed ways that they have connected different episodes to their curriculum, and there is a direct link to the episodes to which they refer.
If you’ve never listened to this show, I highly recommend you reward yourself with the “Squirrel Cop” episode on a day when you really need a laugh. You can see what Greg Carsten, a middle school teacher, has to say about a great way to use “Squirrel Cop” in class.
How have I not heard of this before?!!! Problem-based, standards-based, project-based…. All familiar to me. Zombie-based? Not so much.
image from Pixabay.com
The only reason I know about it now is because of another of Edutopia’s fabulous 5-Minute Film Festivals. This one, posted on 7/17/15, is about inspirational teachers. I scanned the list and, well, the word, “zombie” kind of jumps out at you.
David Hunter invented Zombie-based learning as a way to engage students as they learn about geography. It’s aimed at 4th-8th graders, and he created his own graphic novel to supplement the lessons. Curriculum standards are covered; you just happen to be evading zombies as you learn them.
I don’t know about you, but geography was such a yawn subject when I was in school back in the day. With Zombie-based learning, I might have actually been interested in the location of Siberia and whether or not its climate was conducive to zombies.
I have not tried the curriculum, You can check it out over here, and look at examples. To use the curriculum you will need to fork over some cash. You might find it worth it. After all, you’re really getting two things for the price of one – an engaging curriculum for your students and a survival guide for the Zombie Apocalypse.
Let’s face it. It’s coming. It’s only a matter of time…
