Innovation and Inspiration

  Introducing Campbell Union School District's first STEAM Innovation Teacher Leader cohort!  Blackford Elementary School - May Liu Capri Elementary School - Gloria McGriff and Teresa Iden Castlemont Elementary School - Jisung Chong Forest Hill Elementary School - Julie Hart Lynhaven Elementary School - Megan Delaye Rosemary Elementary School - Jessica Branstetter Sherman Oaks Elementary School - Lino Gutierrez Marshall Lane Elementary School - Michelle Beddo Village Elementary School - Elizabeth Shepherd Campbell Middle School - Kimiyo Cordero Monroe Middle School - Anthoney Roe Rolling Hills Middle School - Carrie Tibbs These 13 innovative teacher leaders have been selected to lead and continue to develop our district's STEAM program. Their first group challenge, to come up with a few Back To School Ideas that teachers in their grade level could use to start their year in a STEAMy way! Read about the ideas that we designed that day on  RAFT Ed...

As the school year has come to a close, I wanted to reflect on a few of the successes of last school year. Our 9 elementary schools have created their own school STEAM Space or STEAM Centers. And our 3 middle schools have STEAM resources in their libraries. I can't wait to work with our school leadership teams to help them develop a plan to provide meaningful STEAM experiences for every student! I didn't really get to blog last year, so my new goal for this school year is to blog once a week!

I'm back from my maternity and so excited to be back in the swing of things! This year we have a new (part-time) STEAM TOSA, Sherry Burch, and I am thrilled to have partner to collaborate with! One of the first projects that we worked on together was a Saturday STEAM Academy class with the Piper Kits! We had gotten the Piper Kits through Donors Choose, with the majority of the funding coming from Groupware. Sherry had her STEAM class build the laser-cut, wooden Piper boxes, which she said was both challenging and fun for the kids, as some of them had never used a screwdriver before. As part of the introductory Minecraft programming lessons in the Piper Kit, students use a Raspberry Pi to build the controls for their computer. They first worked with a partner to connect jumper wires to buttons to be their up, down, left, and right controls. They also problem solved to create circuits operate buzzers, LED lights, and switches to truly bring their computers to life. At the end o...

At Sherman Oaks Elementary School, all students in grades TK - 6 prepare an exhibition project to present to the community at the end of the school year. I was thrilled when 3rd grade teacher, Vanessa Diaz, reached out to me about planning their exhibition project around the 3rd NGSS standard of Life Cycles and incorporating programming with the Dash Robots.  In groups, students researched a plant or animal and the different stages in its life cycle. Each student was then responsible for typing a paragraph about a particular stage in the life cycle in Spanish or English (since Sherman Oaks is a Spanish immersion school). Students then worked with their teams to create a poster to organize the stages of their life cycle. We asked them to map out at least six different stopping points for Dash to stop and teach others about that particular stage.  When programming, we also challenged students to have Dash always facing the audience when he is saying something. This ...

We recently had four 3D modeling and printing trainings in our district to build interest and expertise around manufacturing and design. We had over 80 teachers, technicians, librarians, and parents throughout the district participate! The trainings were facilitated by myself and Sam Patterson, Technology Integration Specialist at Gideon Hausner Jewish Day School. During the training, we focused on using TinkerCAD and the Polar 3D Cloud. You can view resources from our training by: Clicking Here  We also encouraged teachers to think about a project that they are currently working on and how they can incorporate 3D modeling and design. I also created several screencasts that teachers could use with their own classes to get started with 3D modeling: As a follow-up, two of the classrooms that I've recently worked with are Anne Stephano's 2nd grade class and Brian Tamekuni's 4th grade class. The second graders had been learning about bicycle safety, so we had them use Tink...

The 2nd graders at Sherman Oaks Elementary school are hard at work learning about materials and their properties, one of their new NGSS performance expectations! Their teacher, Maria Guevara, is one of our new NGSS Teacher Leaders, and invited me to try out a Mystery Science Lesson with her. All 2nd - 5th grade units are currently available for a free trial on  https://mysteryscience.com/  K - 1st grade units should also be available in the fall. The students started by watching a few short videos and discussing the guiding question: Why do we wear clothes? Students were introduced to different material properties like, light, heavy, hard, soft, stretch, and staff. Students were then given the challenge of designing a hat using different materials. They first tested all of the materials for softness, stiffness, and sweat-soaking (water). They then used what they had learned about each material to design and create a hat that they could wear outside. We added that they s...

Our 4th graders at Blackford Elementary School have been busy starting their 3D jewelry design and printing factory! 4th grade teacher, May Liu, was part of our 2015 Advanced STEAM Cohort and was excited to work on a project with Blackford's new 3D printer. We recently purchased a Polar 3D printer for all of our elementary and middle schools through a K - 16 Manufacturing Grant that we are part of with our local high school and community community college. We selected the Polar 3D because of its ability to send prints wirelessly through the Polar Cloud (great for sharing with multiple classes), its included live video capabilities, the ease of preparing the build plate (only a layer of hair spray is needed), the safety and environmental impact of using recycled PLA filament, and its relatively low cost of $599 (with educational pricing). We first had students do the first three self-paced tutorials on TinkerCAD.com (using their district Google Accounts to sign in) with their Chro...