Innovation and Inspiration

So we just completed the last day of the September STEAM Challenges at Capri!  It was an exciting month of building index card structures to hold Cubby the Cougar.  To adapt the challenge for the kindergarteners, we used cardboard building cards which were a little sturdier.  Here are a few of my favorite moments from the STEAM Space this month!

This fall I am fortunate to be participating the Leading Edge Digital Educator Certification.  Our district sponsored a special CUSD cohort, so while most of the classes are conducted online, when we do have to meet it's conveniently at one of our schools.  They also generously paid for all of our registration fees, showing a real commitment to ongoing professional development.  Over the course of 8 weeks, the 20 or so dedicated teachers in our cohort will be actively participating in online discussions, reflections, and assignments. Our first assignment was to begin or continue to develop our digital presence by creating an avatar on Voki.  I had seen examples of Voki before, but this was my first time actually creating my own Voki.  After creating a character and background, I was instructed to introduce myself and to explain why it is important to create a productive and positive digital presence. Our instructor, Martin Cisneros, also provided a helpful...

I am so excited that we were able to open Campbell's first STEAM Space at Capri!  I piloted the STEAM Challenge of the month with a few second grade classes last week and a kindergarten and fourth grade class this week.  Thank you to the Capri administrators for allowing us to use this extra classroom and the second grade teachers for being so excited and making me follow through with the STEAM Space! My vision for this STEAM Space was to have a space where teachers could come and bring their students to work on a STEAM Challenge.  I wanted to have materials readily available for classes to use and the open space for kids to really get creative and "messy", since I think those are often the two biggest challenges when working on hands-on projects.  Our plan at the moment is to offer a monthly challenge, where classrooms can come in and create! Another part of the STEAM Space was to provide training for teachers.  So today we welcomed the entire staff ...

Several people have asked me what a good first iPad project would be.  My suggestion was to start with a whole class iMovie trailer using one iPad.  Trailers look very impressive, but are fairly easy to make.  I made the trailer below using the Superhero theme as a whole class lesson.  I put my iPad under the document camera so that the students could see what I was doing, step by step.  I found this to be clearer than Apple TV, since my students could actually see my fingers and what they were touching.  Using the Outline titles, we tapped on the text that we wanted to change and could simply type in our own movie title and group names. We then took the pictures we wanted using the Storyboard tab in the middle of the screen.  iMovie also suggests what type of picture or video you might want to take, like group or action shots.  One thing that is a little limiting with trailers is the fact that you must use the number of photos they ha...

Today I had the privilege of observing Shelley Smith teach an Engage NY math lesson with the iPad app Nearpod.  Last year, I kept hearing about this amazing 2nd grade teacher at Castlemont and it was truly a delight to see her in action.  I loved that her students were purposefully working with partners and that conversation was plentiful and valued.  Her thoughtful interactions with her students and her willingness share with other teachers is truly inspiring. Shelley creates Powerpoints for all of the 2nd grade Engage NY lessons and has very generously made them accessible to any CUSD employee on Edcaliber.  She then uploads the Powerpoint to Nearpod and adds interactive features, like drawing, polls, and questions.  To access the Nearpod, Shelley writes the lesson's PIN on the board and students type it on their iPad.  She can then control all of the slides and can see student responses in real-time.  I also noticed that students were particularly...

Last week I had the opportunity to team teach an Engage NY math lesson with Math Coach, Margaret Hulgrave and 5th grade Marshall Lane teacher, Andrea Lawryk!  Our district has officially adopted Engage NY as our math curriculum.  Last year I started having my students students use Edmodo and Notability to work on the Student Materials digitally.  It was a wonderful way to save paper (no more paper copies), my precious time (no more printing and standing at the copy machine), and most importantly it increased student engagement! So with Andrea's fifth grade class, after a review of the math content, we helped them set up their Edmodo accounts.  We found the easiest way to do this was to write the Group Code on the board and to have students create their user profiles.  Students then opened the assignment in Notability and annotated it from there.  We then went over how to export it back to Notability. I also created a few tutorials on how to downlo...

Things were shaking in Amanda Haughes' 5th grade class at Forest Hill yesterday!  Amanda was very brave, letting me pilot the Earthquake Engineering challenge in her classroom.  We were originally going to just do a structural building challenge, but with the recent California Earthquake, we wanted to make it more relevant with a real-world problem. We initially gave students a very vague challenge criteria, "You are going to work on building a structure.  You will be given 100 index cards, 1 clipboard, and 1 foot of masking tape."  We did this intentionally to encourage the students to ask questions about the project.  They all wrote at least one question on their graphic organizer and we answered them as a whole class.  This worked out really well, because instead of us explicitly telling them the "challenge rules", students felt ownership over there questions and discoveries. Amanda even let me test out my new Campbell STEAM Challenge graphic...