At the beginning of the school year, I got an idea from an article that I was reading about changing the design of the classroom. It briefly alluded to a class “Genius Bar,” (using the term for the Help Desk in Apple Stores.) I decided to re-purpose the sad-looking classroom bookshelf into a Genius Bar. … Read more
One of my goals this year for Genius Hour is to guide the students into creating more dynamic presentations to share what they have learned. If you are a teacher, you have probably experienced the excruciatingly long Powerpoints proudly displayed by students to a mostly disinterested audience of their peers. A couple of my strategies … Read more
This is a bonus post. I just had to share some of the great projects my students have done for the Global Cardboard Challenge. Technically, the Big Event is this Saturday, October 5th, 2013 (check here for an event near you). But we started small this year, and my gifted students (2nd-5th grades) are inviting … Read more
Angela Maiers is one of my real-life heroes, with her advocacy for passion-driven education, the You Matter Manifesto, and the Choose 2 Matter campaign. (Don’t forget to check out her recent interview with Brad Waid and Drew Minock on the #2GuysShow. It is fabulous and motivational!) But long before I encountered the works of Angela … Read more
Flipboard is an app that is available at Google Play and on the iTunes Store. It is basically a curation tool, allowing you to collect feeds from the websites, blogs, tweets, etc… that interest you, and saving each as a “magazine” on your device. I have used Flipboard for awhile, and have done a couple … Read more
Remember this? It turned out like this. This is our class Genius Bar, inspired by the classroom make-over mentioned in this post. I apologize for the blurriness of parts of the picture. The lighting in my classroom is not the best – plus I’m a horrible photographer! How do I plan for the kids to utilize … Read more