Snazzy Scientist

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Here is my final project example for an activity about saving energy.

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Here is my door scene project. To introduce my project a short cultural clarification. In the DR there is a problem with burglary so I thought it would be better if someone was trying to get out than in. Normally we only lock the two middle locks but when we go to sleep there are actually 6 which makes it quite the process. I hope you enjoy :)

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I decided to make a PSA for my students. The humidity has been so high lately and it seems to be so much hotter than usual. Side note, I do not have A/C in my classroom. It's open windows and fans.  My students in the afternoon are more distracted and off task and much of this I believe, is because of dehydration. Hence, my PSA! I filmed this on the weekend and if I had thought it completely through I would have filmed it at school with some students. I wanted to set up various shots so that it made for a good "sentence" like we learned about the other week. One obstacle was that my dog, Catherine wanted to be in the shots too. Some several have her in the background or just out of shot. I wanted to get students to watch the whole thing so I tried to make it fun, enjoyable but still have good info for them. Enjoy :)

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Video blog on developing the five minds from Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future. Enjoy

Gardner, H. (2009). Five Minds for the Future.

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See the Glog! Access to water: text, images, music, video | Glogster EDU - Interactive multimedia posters

Glogster allows for student discovery of many concepts. The visual nature appeals to our students and creates an environment for easy learning. Students spend a majority of their free time in online environments. A site such as Glogster merges learning with a visual online experience. The online poster invites users to interact and click on the links, images and videos to dig into a particular topic. The posters can be linked to your site, sent as a link or embedded in your class blog. Glogster is easy to use and can be created by students or teachers to present information. Readers will be more engaged when they can see and experience a topic instead of simply reading about it. This is true with all ages and learning styles.

During the Digital Media course this week we have been learning about the respectful and ethical minds. Gardner (2009), describes the respectful mind as seeking to understand and work with those who are different and the ethical mind as abstracting one’s role as a citizen and striving toward good citizenship. When students have an opportunity to explore my glog they will be exposed to a very serious world crisis: access to water. This is a problem that affects many people across the world including the Dominican Republic. Students will see and hear from people affected by this crisis and learn about an easy to use construct that uses water conservatively but to great effects. Students will then be challenged to identify their water usage and reflect on how they might limit their own water consumption. The goal is for students to reflect on the crisis including how they have been personally impacted or are impacting the water crisis. This will develop their respectful and ethical minds. They will then be further challenged to build their own tippy tap. Many of our students live in poor areas where this tool could actually be used. If they will not use it we will take their constructs and donate them to the local community. I am hoping that this simple poster may create a small impact to the water crisis as it affects our students and families.

Have you been using Glogster? What are your successes? 

Gardner, H. (2009). Five Minds for the Future.

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Flattening Fad

Julie Lindsay (2014) says, “Learning is customized to their needs.” This is when teachers can begin integrating the respectful mind. When we understand and respect students backgrounds, knowledge and individual identity. This can happen in many ways but in the flattened classroom our classroom is expanded and students learn these aspects for themselves.

Julie Lindsay (2014) also says, “All of these are just different ways to merge our classrooms in a common experience, to learn about one another.  Students are the greatest textbook ever written for each other.  But we as teachers must open the book.  We must help students get to know each other in ways that are, of course, safe ways that fit with our curriculum.  Our local standards that we have.  But you know it is very exciting. “ This made me want to learn more about the flattened classroom. How can I get started and how can we be involved?

I found some answers on the Flat Connections website, “flat classrooms” are:

Personal, collaborative and challenge-based classrooms

Working together and co-create outcomes

Making positive changes

Global competence, intercultural awareness and digital fluency

Co-creation of learning and actionable outcomes

Build bridges between students

The website shows some very interesting projects that bring classrooms together. It gives great information on how teachers may collaborate with each other. What I don’t like about the website is that it requires a paid subscription. I understand that it builds a framework and provides resources but I feel that the prices are exorbitant for what you get.

When I think about global connections I think about the after school club I run. It’s called Santiago Outreach Program (SOP) and meets every Monday to work on a community project. The group started as a Global Issues Network group. The GIN conference is about bringing groups together that are impacted their world in small sustainable ways. The projects are free to do and the only charge is for the conference itself. My students learned so much the first year and now we are working on impacting education access for all by going into a community and doing activities that promote reading. My students have seen real progress and joy when it comes to reading that is a huge improvement from when we started. Next year the group is thinking about doing a feeding center for the same community.

I can think of no better way to impact and practice the respectful and ethical mind. My students are the ones who create the project based on the needs of the community. Then students must make a commitment to the project and follow through with the activities. It is interesting for students to begin with what THEY want to do or accomplish. Then after meeting with various representatives students discover what the community actually NEEDS. Then SOP meets to discuss what resources we have and we create a plan. This makes students the leaders in the project and I can be support for additional resources, knowledge and empowerment.

What sort of global projects do you do with your classroom?

What is your biggest challenge?

What has been your biggest success?

Future of Education. (2014, January 16). Julie Lindsay & Vicki Davis on "Flattening Classrooms". Retrieved February 23, 2017, from https://youtu.be/RVZuwIhjQvA

Gardner, H. (2009). Five Minds for the Future.

Global Issues Network. (n.d.). Retrieved February 23, 2017, from http://globalissuesnetwork.org/

Lindsay, J. (2016). HOME. Retrieved February 23, 2017, from http://www.flatconnections.com/

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Spotlight on Strategy: Foldable

https://www.smore.com/96j2x

I find the use of foldables to be extremely beneficial to my classroom. It allows students to put knowledge into their own words, use text and images to make it their own and provides scaffolding for all students. Due to the large amount of ELL students in my classroom vocabulary strategies are a must. For new teachers this strategy is one I continuously recommend. The digital media integration is focused mostly on the teachers due to the large amount of resources available online. I know many strategies are out there for students and teachers to benefit from and I hope this one will be of use to many. The digital media resource students will utilize is mainly the virtual lab. I find virtual labs to be beneficial for students to have a variety of methods in which to learn content. The Glencoe website allows students to learn, take notes and then immediately apply that knowledge to an energy transformations lab. I hope you enjoy this Smore. Please let me know in the comments below if you utilize foldables and what your favorites are!

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This week we were asked to post about a conversation with our students about creativity. I thought it might be more creative if you heard it from them. Here is what they have to say about the importance of creativity, how they are creative and how the get creative with technology. I hope you enjoy and have a great conversation with your own students!

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Creative Commotion

Sir Ken Robinson (2007) says, “My contention is that creativity now is as important in education as literacy, and we should treat it with the same status.” This is an important statement for educators. Where is our focus in the classroom, is it on skill or expression? Are we recognizing the students as individuals or simply devices that need to download data? If our teachers are given scripted lessons and standardized testing of students then we become severely limited in our own creativity in the education process. I am extremely blessed to work at a school that does not provide limits to teaching, learning and assessing. As long as we are working towards the standards and we use proven/ effective teaching methods.

Sir Ken Robinson (2007) concludes, “So the hierarchy is rooted on two ideas. Number one, that the most useful subjects for work are at the top. And the second is academic ability, which has really come to dominate our view of intelligence, because the universities designed the system in their image.” When we are limited by the educational system currently in place we retain the ability to be masters of our classroom. We need to be willing to adjust our teaching process to bring out the abilities of our students in our content areas. One of my goals for my classroom is to take the students science skills to the next level, whatever that may be.

About half way into his presentation Sir Ken Robinson (2007) made the statement, “now kids with degrees are often heading home to carry on playing video games, because you need an MA where the previous job required a BA, and now you need a PhD for the other.” I love that of all the things kids with degrees could be doing it’s playing video games. That’s because video games provide so many opportunities for our students. You can work together with friends to complete a task, play against friends, play by yourself or play with friends you’ve just made. By practicing a game you increase your skills through critical thinking and processing while being unaware of doing so. Your brain creates pathways between your visual and motor processing which get better over time. You also work on communication and teamwork skills.

We can tap into these skills in the classroom by bringing in many types of technology. Students can share resources and information socially using diigo. Students can ask questions, comments and share content in our Learning Management System, Moodle.  When it comes to creating presentations students have many options in the technological world including powtoon, prezi, powerpoint, keynote and many others! I enjoy when students make discoveries and bring new applications and sites to use to the classroom.  It is our responsibility to keep creativity in our classrooms if students are not given the opportunity to be creative than it is the teacher who is not showing creativity in the classroom.

What have you done this week to encourage your students to be creative?

T. (2007, January 06). Do schools kill creativity? | Sir Ken Robinson. Retrieved February 08, 2017, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iG9CE55wbtY

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Here is a voicethread I created about creativity in the classroom recently. I truly feel that creativity is one of the most important components in the classroom. Our students need to know that we value them and they are not simply another seat in the classroom. As teachers we need to place importance on diversity in the classroom. What we teach is just as important as how our students learn. We need to assess the ways our students learn and modify our strategies to meet those needs. Are we allowing our students to show THEIR uniqueness in our classroom? Or do we chafe at their unresponsiveness in our classrooms? My encouragement to you is to start something new this week!

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I just eduClipped "Protista Assessment". Check it out...

This is an assessment with resources that I created on our Moodle class. I simply searched and added the same content here to be able to compare how eduClipper and Moodle classrooms compare. I found educlipper to be a little hard to use as a first time user. I do like that anyone can look at the board they don’t need an account. Check out my board and please feel free to give me any suggestions for improvement!

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This project was completed for EDIM 508. I will be using the presentation in my Middle School Science classroom this week. This will be a great interactive introduction to simple and compound machines. Students will have a note taking form to make sure they have accessed all important information. Then students will head into the lab to experience the various machines. This will include making their own Rube Goldberg machine. 

Gardner (2009) describes the disciplined mind as, “being capable of applying oneself diligently, improving steadily and continuing beyond formal dedication. The synthesizing mind selects crucial information from the copious amounts available, arraying that information in ways that make sense to self and to others.” This Prezi about simple machines is great for students because it is similar to a power point which is familiar but “Fancier”.  In my experience students are more likely to learn through visuals and graphics before simple text. A Prezi like the one here incorporates audio, video and graphics to facilitate learning of content. My Middle School students would be able to incorporate choice by deciding where to start their learning. However, upon completion of the Prezi students will have been exposed to all the content for the lesson. According to Gardner (2009) there are four essential steps to disciplining a mind: Identify the important topics/concepts, spend significant amounts of time, provide a variety of learning options and set up a performance of understanding. This Prezi will be an introduction of the topic. Students will then complete a virtual lab showing how the equations for mechanical advantage are related to the machine. After assessing that learning has happened we will move into learning about Rube Goldberg Machines. With my entire 7th and 8th grade students we will turn the Science Lab into one big Rube Goldberg machine. This will allow students to activate their discipline and synthesizing mind. For my higher achieving students I would like to have them add more content to the Prezi. I am not sure of the best way to have several workers about to input data onto a Prezi so a different format might be easier. When students are able to provide information for their peers there is a sense of leadership and accomplishment. This sort of facilitation is my goal for my courses. There are so many resources out there but our students are the ones who are able to say, “Here, this infographic I really learned from, or check out this video it had a great experiment, etc.” For me this is the ultimate goal of a digitally infused classroom. 

Gardner, H. (2009). Five Minds for the Future.

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Here is an image that I can use in my 7th/8th grade physical science class. We are studying work and power and I will use this as a bell-ringer at the start of class. This will serve as a review from the previous day and a funny image of the teacher (me). Enjoy! What do you think? Work?

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Genny Gunsolus on Twitter

“Hi, nerd here! I'm a Science Teacher at Santiago Christian School in the DR! I want to learn more about digital resources for the classroom!”

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Here is my final submission for EDIM 516: Digital Literacy. The video is about Learning Management Systems and their use in the classroom. Enjoy!

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Here is my expert interview with Dr. Boehning, my Principal. The interview is about using Learning Management Systems, Moodle in particular. I hope you find this helpful and enjoy :)

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Glory of Gaming!

For this week’s commentary I am going to merge the topics a bit and discuss how I have seen games work to support education.

Gaming is something that our students are doing. If we can show students what and how learning can happen with games I have found them to be very receptive. In assessments for Middle School Science I give students many choices on how to show their learning as long as they explain specific content. Here is a video one of my students created using Minecraft and other media to explain the rock cycle. This showed his skills in content, creativity, multimedia integration and what he was excited to explain.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-CJTStY8Pso

For formative assessments my favorite gaming system is Kahoot!. Kahoot! is available on all devices and can also be used in pairs or groups. Students can make quizzes, teachers can make quizzes or there are pre-made ones on their website. Using a home screen to load the quiz students use a code to enter the game. After starting the quiz students will see the question on the main screen and then see options for answers on their own screens. After selecting an answer, times are tallied and points are awarded. The top several players will be able to see their score on the main screen and each player sees their score on their own screen. Teachers can chart scores and see which questions students do not understand and are able to give immediate feedback or modify their classroom teaching. Following is a video on using Kahoot! in your classroom and their site.

https://youtu.be/PYfoRRtLXys

https://kahoot.it

At several of my schools I have integrated video game design into classes or clubs. I used an amazing, free (yes!! FREE!) program with elementary and middle school students. This program is gamestar mechanic. There is a teacher guide which outlines lessons, gives resources and activities that are able to be used instantly with students. The guide is easy to use and change based on your students, time and knowledge. The instructor does not have to be very tech savvy and students are able to be fully supported online through blogs, online guides and the activities in the program itself. By signing up as a teacher you can create a class that students sign in to so you can track their progress and see what they have completed. Students learn and practice many skills such as creative problem solving, STEM learning, art, storytelling, etc. Here is the link to the site and online guide if you are interested.

http://gamestarmechanic.com/

http://learningguide.gamestarmechanic.com/

There can always be too much of a good thing however. When students are not being effective with their gaming in the classroom it does not always support their learning. Or at least, they may not be learning what we want them to. In some play students can become too aggressive or demeaning to their peers which would not support a positive culture of learning. Students would have to be in control of how much effort they are putting forth in playing the game to show or master learning which can be somewhat problematic for those only extrinsicly motivated. Learning cannot always be done in play and this can be a focus to students who desire content to always be presented in a “fun” way. However if we integrate gaming into content and teach students to manage their time wisely they can be a great tool for learning and gaining valuable life skills.

I would love to help you integrate gaming into your classroom. How can I help?

What is your favorite educational game?

Do you let students use “class time” to game?