Tag: Zoom

3-12, Games, Teaching Tools, Websites

ZoomJam

Terri Eichholz

In April of 2020, as much of the world had fallen under the pall of the pandemic, more and more people were resorting to Zoom video as a replacement for socializing in person.  A few organizations (not affiliated with Zoom) decided to organize a “#ZoomJam,” with the challenge to create innovative games that could be played in this new context.  You can read more about the organizers of #ZoomJam and its origins here.

The competition has ended (though you can still submit games), and you can see the top winners on the #ZoomJam home page.  For a full list of games, you can visit here.

Looking at the games with the lens of an educator, I can see many that could be adapted for teachers to use either as class bonding activities or for academics.  Some of the notable ideas that I could see using with students are: Aardvark, Dance-Off, Hot-Seat, Mute-iny, Night at the Museum, Split Decision, and Zoom Spot.  Of course, you may see many more opportunities on the list that I missed!

Put on a parent lens, friend or family member lens, and you may discover some other #ZoomJam games that you want to attempt – or maybe submit one of your own!

Video Conference
Image by Alexandra_Koch from Pixabay
Education, K-12, Math, Websites

Powers of Ten Day

Terri Eichholz

So, I didn’t even know this was a thing.  I overheard a few of my fabulous co-workers discussing it at a meeting yesterday, and completely interrupted them because it sounded like such a cool idea!

Powers of Ten Day is celebrated on, of course, 10/10.  (It probably would have been really cool if I did this four years ago on 10/10/10, but I think my students won’t hold it against me that I didn’t know it existed – particularly since none of them knew me back then.)

image from: billwhittle.com
image from: billwhittle.com

You can do all sorts of things to celebrate Powers of Ten Day.  It would probably be appropriate to show the famous Powers of Ten video, which does an amazing job of zooming out and in on a picnic scene by powers of ten.  This document by Jerry Becker gives some other ideas for activities for various grade levels.  Or, you can check out the “Zoom Inside Stuff” link on Strange Matter.  The Scale of the Universe or The Universe Within are both fun, too.  Here is a Pinterest Board full of Power of 10 activities for younger students.

If you aren’t necessarily interested in Powers of Ten, but just the concepts of scale and zooming in and out, check out my post on a cool site called, “Here is Today.”

Do any of you celebrate this day?  I would love to hear what you do!

 

3-12, Depth and Complexity, Education, Math, Philosophy, Science, Teaching Tools, Videos, Websites

Here is Today

Terri Eichholz

Screen Shot 2013-05-14 at 8.44.07 PM

Please don’t ask me the name of this website if you ever meet me in person because I think I’ve found almost as many ways to garble the title as there are years in an epoch.  I don’t know why I can’t remember it as it is quite simple and makes perfect sense, but for some reason my inner Jeff Foxworthy keeps coming out and trying to re-name it, “This Here Day”.

As I said, this site is quite simple, and it is a great visualization of our place in time and in the universe.  I happened to be about to do a Systems Thinking unit based on the book, Zoom, by Istvan Banyai, when I came across “Here is Today“, and it really added to our discussion about perspectives, big picture thinking, and connectedness.  I was afraid the concept of “Here is Today” might escape my third graders, but the comparisons included on this website seemed to make quite an impact on them.  They made great observations about the “Big Idea”, and how this related to practically everything we have learned this year, including our recent field trip to the Toyota Factory.  This was also a great lead-in to our Old Faithful, the Powers of Ten video.

Remember, Here is Today.  Better yet, just click on the link!