Innovation and Inspiration

I was so excited when the CUE STEAMPunk Drone Suitcase arrived in Campbell! I had heard about these awesome Parrot Flying Drones, but had never actually used one. Thanks to the CUE STEAMPunk Mobile Labs and Parrot, we were able to test four of them out for FREE! Before they arrived, I began planning which schools I would use them with and which content areas they could be best integrated with. Thanks to CUE STEAMPunk Teacher Advisor, Brian Briggs, I was able to quickly find a few lesson ideas on his Drone Academy:  http://rockstardrone.weebly.com/ With our STEAM students at Monroe Middle School, we had them start with Mission 1: Speed and Distance. Students used the Tickle App to predict and measure the different distances that Parrot would travel, when adjusting the time and speed. It was amazing to watch the students eyes light up in both fear and excitement as they programmed the drones to take off for the first time! Next, I took the drones to visit the students at Cas...

We tried a new coding app and coaching model at Lynhaven last Monday! The administrators were really supportive and covered two of the class periods so that I could work with all four first grade classes. We had two classes in the room at once and all four teachers could observe and assist me at the same time. Then, after recess we switched to work with the remaining two classes, so all four teachers could observe and assist me a second time. It was ambitious to have 50 first graders working on a new project at the same time, but with 5 teachers it worked out well. The first graders were just starting to learn about habitats and animal adaptations. So we started by having all of the students select an animal (or sprite) that they had some prior knowledge with. We then had students select a background of the habitat that their animal lived in. We chose Scratch Jr. specifically for this project, since there were pre-made background images of the arctic, desert, savannah, ocean, an...

Our 2nd Annual CUSD STEAM Showcase was a huge success! Thank you to all of our hard working teachers, students, administrators, and our community partners for celebrating STEAM in our district. We estimate that we had over 1,200 people attend the showcase this year! This year, we also included student performances. We had both elementary and middle school CUSD Extensions Drama performances, Lynhaven 5th grade Drumming and Poetry, elementary and middle school choirs, and our three middle school bands. Below is a clip of the Lynhaven 5th graders and their enthusiastic teacher, Asha Finkel, performing at the showcase! All of our 12 schools presented at least one classroom STEAM project. Some of the projects that I got to learn about from our students were engineering toys, bridges, simple machines, global warming, hands-on art sculptures, optical illusions, ceramics, math and technology projects, Blue-bot Literacy Adventures, Dash Robot Missions, MakeyMakey computer science game con...