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Yes you can… get out of the way!

Screenshot 2015-05-21 18.41.35Throughout the Yes… you can series I have tried to show you that it doesn’t take a tech genius to integrate technology into your lessons. I am certainly no tech genius. What I am is willing. I am willing to try new things that I know nothing or little about. I am willing to allow students to lead the way. Being a teacher means you are guiding students toward knowledge. Sometimes that requires us to get out of the way!

I try to allow my students the freedom to be creative while completing the requirements during a project. I have two projects to share with you that demonstrate what can happen if you are willing to step aside and let the students go.

SCRATCH: This project had a list of requirements, but I didn’t give much direction on how students were to meet the requirements because I didn’t want to limit the creativity and ideas the students would have.  The students knew I had expectations that needed to be met. This students met each one with mastery.

ROBOTICS: This project required students program the robot to complete an obstacle course using sensors. When this group got finished, I asked them to make a video of their robot completing the course. What they made was incredible. Watch and see.

Yes you can… iMovie

imovieFor those of you with iPads, one great tool that I feel anyone can use is iMovie. The iPad version is much simpler to use than the Mac version. Despite it being more simple, it can make a high quality movie.

Currently the seventh graders at my school are using iMovie for the iPad to reenact scenes from the novel they have read in class. Students will write scripts in a group of four. Then students will videotape using the iPad’s camera. In iMovie, students will add the clips, split the clips to remove the mistakes, add titles, add still photos, add special effects and sounds and more. It will take some time, but the final product will be great!

Don’t be afraid to try iMovie. Take an hour with your iPad and try making a simple movie. Don’t be afraid to give your students some guidelines and let them give it a try. You can do it!

Yes you can… YouTube

Do you remember the 8mm reel to reel films or the film strip with the cassette player? Back in the day, showing a video required a great deal of planning. You had to reserve the projector and film strip. Some teachers were lucky enough to have a film strip projector and their own films. We then moved on to VHS tapes and DVDs. Once again, unless you owned the videos, you had to borrow, which required advanced planning.

The showing of educational videos has only become easier with the internet. We have short video clips at our disposal 24/7. I have found some great clips all over the internet. My favorite place find videos is on YouTube.

The blocking or unblocking of YouTube is a hot topic. I understand both sides of this debate. No matter what side you are on, you must admit there are some great clips to be found.

If your district has unblocked YouTube, as my district has, I suggest setting up a playlist to have all the clips saved and available. To save videos to a playlist, you will have to create an account. If you have a Gmail account or if your district has Google accounts for you and the students, you already have an account. After you have a playlist created, you can share it with your students through a link or by embedding it into you website. A playlist would be a great way to help flip your classroom and let students watch content at home. All of these ideas have tutorials available on… you guessed it, YouTube. It only takes a few minutes of searching to find many options.

One problem with showing YouTube videos right from the internet is the ads. Depending on the age of your students, ads can be a real problem. If ads are a concern for you, keep reading.

If your district blocks YouTube, or you don’t want to see the ads, you can download YouTube videos to play in your classroom. This will require you have the web address of the video you want to play and to convert in a location where YouTube is not blocked. Go to www.clipconverter.cc. All you have to do is copy the web address of the YouTube video and paste it into the converter. If you are using a Mac, you can download using .mov. If you are using a Windows pc try converting as .avi. If you plan to show using an iPad, try converting as .mp4. This will allow you to use these great clips even if YouTube is blocked in your district.

YouTube has a wealth of great educational content. Yes you can use YouTube in your classroom.

Yes you can… Minecraft

If you are looking to make relevant and real connections while being creative, try using Minecraft. Minecraft can be an incredible addition to the classroom.

Depending on the technology you have access to, how you might set up Minecraft differs. In many classrooms, Minecraft may be a once a week activity when visiting the computer lab. In other situations, Minecraft may be completed as a center on a classroom computer. Only you can decide how it will fit into your classroom.

Before you dismiss putting in the time and effort to use Minecraft in your classroom, remember you don’t have to be the Minecraft expert. You won’t be. I’m certainly not. Let you students be the experts. If the students are teaching you different elements of the game they are using higher level thinking skills. We all know that if you can teach something you really understand the content. Remember, you are the learning expert. You know what information your students are required to learn. So don’t worry if the students know more than you about Minecraft.

As the learning expert, your job is to decide how you use Minecraft in your classroom. By using maps, you can send students to places you are learning about in social studies. You can let students build the setting from a piece of literature. The integration ideas are only limited by your imagination.

If you want more ideas on how you can integrate Minecraft in the classroom, or if you want some research on gaming in education, try reading Teachercraft: How Teachers Learn to Use Minecraft in their Classrooms by Seann Dikkers. (Chapter 10 has lots of resources and ideas.)

Here is a description of the book.

Teacher Craft is about how teachers learn to use new digital media. Teacher learning is central to reform and change across subject areas and age levels, but how much do we really know about how teachers learn to try new lessons in classrooms? Minecraft is currently the game of choice for millions of youth and also for these seventeen teachers who claim it has transformed their classrooms. Its rapid adoption also provides a unique window of opportunity to look inside the recent memory of innovative teachers and unpack how they learned. Why did they pick Minecraft? More importantly, how did they pick Minecraft? Where did they hear about it? Who do they trust for ideas? How do they test new ideas? Can we begin to identify the trajectories of truly innovative teachers? It turns out, we can – and it may not be what you’d expect.

Seann Dikkers presented on his ideas on a Gaming in Education YouTube video.

Give it a try. You can do it!

 

Problem solving

If there is one thing that I feel every student needs to learn to be prepared for life, it is problem solving skills. It doesn’t matter what subject area or class being taken, there is a level of problem solving that takes place. When you get out of school, the need for problem solving doesn’t go away.

What I see from my JH students is a serious lack of these skills. Maybe not so much a lack of skills as a lack of initiative to utilize any problem solving skills he or she might have. Many students are just lazy. A quick side note before I get calls from parents and the administration comes to yell at me. In JH I was the poster child for laziness. Just ask my parents and former teachers. But somewhere I picked up these skills that came in mighty handy on Friday. Here is what happened.

I was on spring break. I had gotten up early, at 5 am, to play some pick up basketball. (Yes I am crazy.) So to say I was sweaty and stinky is an understatement. I came home and helped with getting my girls ready for school and got them on the bus. My wife and I had plans to run a few errands and grab lunch. She took the dog for a short walk and I jumped in the shower. A much needed shower due to the excessive stinkiness. Shortly after starting my shower the water pressure dropped significantly. So much I wasn’t sure I would get to wash all of the shampoo out of my hair.

After drying off and getting dressed, I headed downstairs to investigate. The well pump wasn’t turning on. (For those of you with public water supplies, you should be thankful.) I started to panic. The last time the well had a well issue, it was very expensive to repair. $$$$$ Here is where the problem solving came in very handy.

I knew that there is a pressure switch that tells the pump to turn on and off depending on the pressure in the tank. I Googled how to test the switch. I got a suggestion to take a volt meter (Thanks to my father-in-law for the hand-me-down OTC volt meter.) and see if it the voltage drops when the pump kicks on. I couldn’t get the pump to come on so I deduced that it wasn’t getting power. A quick look in the breaker box showed that the breaker was tripped. I reset the breaker and tested the electrical line at the switch. Still no power. I got into the breaker box and tested the line at the breaker. No power. Final conclusion, the breaker was bad.

So to test my hypothesis I noticed that I had an identical breaker that powered an air compressor. I unwired the compressor from the breaker and used it on the well. An guess what? It worked.

I did have to purchase a $10 breaker from Lowe’s to replace the malfunctioning breaker.

So the problem solving let me to think about the problem at hand. The water pressure dropped. Why? The well pump wasn’t coming on. Why? It wasn’t getting power. Why? The switch wasn’t getting power. Why? The breaker wasn’t sending power. Why? The breaker was bad.

I am not suggesting that an inexperienced home owner test and replace breakers unless they are very careful. But without problem solving I would have called the well company to come fix my problem. My guess is that it would have cost me over $100 and cost me the day. Instead I spent $10, 45 minutes and got to have lunch with my wife.

Why should problem solving be taught in schools? Because it is a part of real life.

Yes you can… Robotics

dash-dotThis week’s post comes from a first grade teacher in my district. Mrs. Murphy gives an honest and real look at how a little courage can go a long way to integrating some really cool technology into any classroom.

I’ll let Mrs. Murphy explain.

 

I  had never even heard of robotics for elementary school aged children until September of this school year.  I thought that was something for the “smart high school teachers.”  That all changed when one of my colleagues told me that she found a really neat project for elementary school kiddos using robots.  At first I was like “oh good luck finding people to help with that.”  At that point the interest level was not that high.  I figured if she was willing to attempt something new I could give it a try, too.  The rest is history!!  I am currently using a lego We-Do set and Dot and Dash in my classroom.  The interest level of my kiddos is out of this world.  They love using the robots.

After talking to our curriculum director about this grant we wrote, she told us that she would be willing to pay for us to attend a robotics workshop to gain more knowledge.  I went and learned a ton!  I will admit it was a little overwhelming at first.  This robotics language was way above a first grade teachers head.  But I stuck with it!!

After deciding that I would like to try out some robotics I got in touch with two companies and they graciously allowed me to pilot their products in my classroom!  My awesome curriculum director found funds to purchase 2 iPads for use in my classroom.

My kids helped me with this process.  I laugh because they had the robots programmed and going down the hallway in the school before I could remember my app store password.  To say they were excited would be a huge understatement!

This love of learning has spread to every child in my classroom as well as the other kids in the hallway.  They ask constantly to use Dot and Dash in the hall.  It is amazing to see first graders coding to make the robots do certain activities!  It is definitely higher level thinking skills.  I can see how this will help them in the future.

I am so glad that my colleague asked me in September if I would be interested in having a robot in my classroom.  I am also glad that I went way outside of my comfort zone and said I would give it a try.  I am really hoping that we receive our grant so that our entire school can use the robotics programs next year!!

As you can see, if you are willing to step out of your comfort zone great things can happen. I am so excited to see students who are excited about learning. (The Dash and Dot are from Wonder Workshop.)

Yes you can… Scratch

scratchAs it is written on the Scratch website, Scratch programming is…

With Scratch, you can program your own interactive stories, games, and animations — and share your creations with others in the online community.

Scratch helps young people learn to think creatively, reason systematically, and work collaboratively — essential skills for life in the 21st century.

Scratch is a project of the Lifelong Kindergarten Group at the MIT Media Lab. It is provided free of charge.

Basically that means that students can program whatever they wish. You can make cartoons move around the screen with or without interactivity. You can create your own video game. You can do whatever you want, period.

Programming in Scratch is very easy. It is a graphical interface, so all you have to do is drag blocks into the work space and connect the blocks together. It is that easy. Here is a video to prove my point.

I found a great resource to help teach students programming with Scratch. You can find at http://scratched.gse.harvard.edu/guide/index.html. Currently my students are creating games. They have learned how to make things move around the screen and how to make things interact with each other and now. (Of course they have learned many little things along the way, like problem solving and troubleshooting.)

On page 62 of the learner guide, the students made a maze game. It is a basic game and took my students two 40 minute periods to make. I allowed students to take creative liberties as long as the main goal was still to guide an object through a maze to and end point. Also you will see from page 63 of the learner guide a pong game. Again, students were creative and surpassed my expectations. Below is some videos of my students’ projects. You will be blown away with the creativity if you give students time and permission.




If you are saying this still looks too hard that is because you haven’t tried Scratch. On the website linked above, there is a teacher guide to help you learn how to program in Scratch. The only thing holding you back is fear. Start small. Have students work through a few pages of the guide. Let them teach you. The impact on you students is great.

Yes you can…

ComputerFrustrationWhen it comes to integrating technology, one thing I hear from teachers on a regular basis is “I could never _________ ” (fill in the blank). They could never have students create a multimedia presentation. They could never have students program animations. They could never make an instructional video. They could never utilize Google applications. Never, never, never.

I would like to say with complete sincerity and confidence that YES YOU CAN! Integrating technology isn’t just for those of use who are tech savvy or the young teacher who grew up with technology. Integrating is something we call can do and something we all should do. The students

I will be posting as series on integration ideas that everyone can accomplish with a little planning and courage. So, while you wait with great anticipation for the first post next week, think of the cool projects you want to do, but are too afraid to try. Send those ideas to me and I will post some thoughts on how to make the project a reality.

 

 

 

Happy π Day!

pi-symbolHappy Pi Day! To celebrate π today, I am going to share how pi was used this past week in my robotics classes.

I was teaching students to use motor encoders with the LEGO EV3 robots. Previously we had been using the wait1Msec command to keep the motors running (pause and wait before moving on in the program) for a specific duration. This works, but requires a great deal of trial and error to complete tasks. Using the motor encoders allows the programmer to tell the motors how many rotations to make.

On the EV3 motors, there are 360 encoder counts for every revolution. That means there is an encoder count for every degree. This is where pi became important. Students measured the diameter of the wheel on the robot. Using the formula for finding circumference (C=D*π), students multiplied π * D to get C. This gave us the circumference of the wheel. We found the wheel to be about 2 1/8 or 2.125 inches. If you multiply 2.125 inches by π you get 6.67 inches. Students then divided the circumference by 360 to get the distance the robot would travel for every encoder count. We found this to be 0.0185 inches. So when a student wants the robot to travel a specific distance, let’s say two feet or twenty-four inches, they can mathematically calculate what encoder count to enter. All you have to do is take the desired distance and divide by 0.0185. That would give you the encoder count required to go the desired distance.

I led my students through this activity. I was pleased that I had integrated geometry in a real and relevant way. What I didn’t expect was what one group did to calculate the encoder count for a 90 degree turn. While most students used trial and error to find the encoder count that would make the 90 degree turn, one group decided to once again asked π for help. This group realized that when using a swing turn, the distance between the wheels would be the radius of a circle. So they multiplied the radius by 2 and multiplied by π to find the circumference of yet another circle. If you want to make a 90 turn, you just have to divide the circumference by 4 since 90 degrees is 1/4 of the circle. They took that distance and divided by the distance for each encoder count and you have the encoder count for a 90 turn.

This group found the distance between the wheels to be 4.75 inches. This doubled is 9.5 inches. Multiply 9.5 by π and you get 29.85 inches. Take 29.85 inches and divide by 0.0185 inches, the number found before, and you get 1613. Divide 1613 by 4 and you have the  encoder count needed to make a 90 degree turn. You end up around 403. We have found that there is some tweaking needed, but the calculations get you very close if not absolutely accurate.

We used the following code using ROBOTC.

//we used the motor sync because EV3 won’t go straight without syncing motors
//we have not started naming motors yet, so we used motorB and motorC
setMotorSyncEncoder(motorB, motorC, 50, 403, 25); //50 is the ratio for a swing turn, 403 is the encoder count and 25 is the motor power
waitUntilMotorStop(motorB);

That is true learning. These students used their knowledge of geometry to solve a real problem. This was one of those days that will remember for a very long time!

Free Learning Management Systems

Before I give my opinion and evaluation of two free learning management systems (LMS), I must explain by background with the free online LMS. For the last few years I have used a LMS called Edmodo. I have found Edmodo to be a great resource for the classroom and for online professional development. This past fall I became a certified Edmodo trainer. More recently, I have been trying Google Classroom to see if it is a better option for my district. Having experience with both LMS, I would like to review each here.

Edmodo

Edmodo has been around since 2008. Currently there are nearly 50 million people using Edmodo. I find the layout of the site to be very intuitive and easy to use.

Some of the my favorite feature are:

  • Teachers to connect with each other
  • Parents can join and connect with student account
  • Students cannot message each other directly
  • Quiz option
  • Snapshot formative assessment tool

Some features missing or that don’t work well.

  • Integration with Google Drive has been temperamental
  • Some students have difficulty attaching files

Google Classroom

Google for Education has been utilized by many school districts for years. Google Classroom was launched this past fall with some BETA testing last spring. The Google Classroom is only available to those education accounts.(In my district we use Google Docs and Presentations more than we use Microsoft Office.)

Some of the my favorite feature are:

  • There is total integration with all Google Drive files
  • Possible turn in button on the document itself
  • Ability to create a copy of a document for each student

Some features missing or that don’t work well.

  • Students can email each other directly
  • Teacher must email student instead of creating a direct post (Teachers can directly comment on an assignment, but not a general note)
  • No parent accounts

If you are wondering which one I like best you are going to have to just wonder because I like them both. Here is why.

For my technology classroom, where I utilize the Google applications, the Google Classroom is best. I can make a worksheet in a Google Doc, create an assignment, make the students a copy and all they have to do is log in and get the assignment and click done when it is completed. If they need to attach a file that was not already linked to an assignment by me, it is fairly easy to do.

But as far as professional development and classroom discussions are concerned, Edmodo is much better. I tend to have all of my classroom discussions face to face. If you are looking for a place to have an online class with discussions and Google integration isn’t your top need, Edmodo is your best choice.

In the end, both are great tools meeting different classroom needs. To be fair I should mention there are other free options available. Two others that I know of are Moodle and Chalkup. Also keep in mind there are many paid options that many schools and districts are using.