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test

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Interested in learning about using google sites for student portfolios and how to set them up.

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As high school instruction changes with the integration of technology, what changes should be considered in higher education for teachers?

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Designing challenges for portfolio-style assessment that engage kids and demonstrate high-level learning

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CCC is an 8-week curriculum designed for children ages 8-12 to get an introduction to coding Arduinos to interact with the physical world, to constructing projects based on unique and personalized challenges and to connecting their work with other makers via an online portfolio.

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I'd like to share and hear from others how coding can connect showing learning goals in all subjects & grades, K-12.

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I work in healthcare at the moment, but I'm endlessly curious how to make people's experiences with technology productive and high quality. Since I wrote my first HTML for $20 to get a guy's photo up on eBay almost 20 years ago I have been amazed by what people can pull together when value and qualtity of experience are at the forefront.

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I would be very interested in gaining any advice and information on PLTW.

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The standard Twitter app feeling clunky and inefficient? Wish you could make better use of the time you have for your PLN? In this session we will share some tools to make Twitter the professional development rocket you've dreamed of.

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I love this idea of sharing what we want. How did you do this

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How about some tips and tricks for beginners, intermediate, and advanced learners.

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Would love to share/hear about your 1:1 iPad experiences in elementary. Instructional activities, management, teacher prep, MDM, or anything else. Half way through our first year of fully 5th grade 1:1 in Columbia.

@mattvillasana

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Interesting in see how others are using/seeing it being used. What strategies are the best to support learners of different ages.

@mattvillasana

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What strategies are being used? What are the best strategies?

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For history/government/etc. What effective projects or strategies do you use to enhance your Social Studies curriculum?

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How do we assess Making & Design Thinking? Should we?

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How do we assess Making & Design Thinking? Should we?

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What do assessments look like in a MakerSpace? How much emphasis should we put on assessments/some sort of grading in such a setting? What are the most critical skills we intend to develop in our students through Making?

@DisruptionDept @NateDisruptsEd

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What devices are out there? Which apps? What platform? How are devices being used?

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Any great lesson plans

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Lucid Chart, the Swiss Army knife of Graphic Organizers

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Lucid Chart, the Swiss Army knife of Graphic Organizers

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Lucid Chart is one of the most flexible web based graphic organizers available, with templates and tools for everything from workflow and knowledge maps to application wireframes and CAD. Best of all it is free for k-12 schools and plugs directly into Google Apps.

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Create a shared vision.

Quickly visualize your team's processes, systems, and organizational structure. Intelligent diagramming lets you visualize complex ideas faster, clearer and more collaboratively.

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Lucidchart is the intelligent diagramming application where seeing becomes doing. With this intuitive, cloud-based solution, everyone can work visually and collaborate in real time while building flowcharts, mockups, UML diagrams, and more. Sign up for free now.

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Using Chrome Extensions To Scaffold Reading Skills

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Using Chrome Extensions To Scaffold Reading Skills

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The Google Chrome store has several excellent browser extensions to help teachers scaffold the reading skills of their students to aid with differentiation and improve comprehension. These are also excellent tools for professionals to more efficiently manage reading loads. What tools do you use?

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I would like to discuss and share ideas about creative brain breaks in the middle of class. To provide opportunities in class for students to take a break and take time to reflect, process and even share what they are learning.

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How can technology assist educators in taking classroom discussions & debates and extend them beyond the classroom? How can technology help spark discussion in classrooms? What programs allow students, who are not comfortable talking in class, to share their insights in some meaningful manner?

@longhornsoftbal

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How are educators using this vs other LMS.

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what should teacher PD look like today? what are we missing? what's holding us back? how might we make it better & more meaningful?

@tbbrwn

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What are your favorite digital storytelling resources for grades

k-5?

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Motivating Students to Lead Changing School Culture

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Motivating Students to Lead Changing School Culture

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It's great to see that students are taking the reigns at schools to improve the culture. It would be great to have some administrators, leadership team members, PBIS team members, etc. share how they got their kids to this point.

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Would anyone be interested in a session where we discuss #digcit for teens and parents?

@kat_byte

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Would anyone be interested in a session where we discuss #digcit for teens and parents?

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Would anyone be interested in a session where we discuss #digcit for teens and parents? It's

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Would anyone be interested in a session where we discuss #digcit for teens and parents

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Would anyone be interested in a session where we discuss #digcit for teens and parents?

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Would anyone be interested in

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I would like to discuss digital art creation tools in the modern art room including iPads digital portfolios, and sharing creative endeavors through social media environments. I would like to discuss creative tools, projects and units that educators have utilized to encourage creativity and use of problem solving skills.

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My 7th graders and I love using @plickers in the classroom.

@bztchr2

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Conrad Wolfram does a Ted Talk on changing the way we teach Math.  Why are we hanging on to teaching hand calculating?  How many kids find that tedious and consequently hate math?

How do we use computers to teach real world Math in our schools?

@sueandrewstech

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Conrad Wolfram: Teaching kids real math with computers

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From rockets to stock markets, many of humanity's most thrilling creations are powered by math. So why do kids lose interest in it? Conrad Wolfram says the part of math we teach -- calculation by hand -- isn't just tedious, it's mostly irrelevant to real mathematics and the real world.

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COPPA & Safety - not fun, but a needed concern

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COPPA & Safety - not fun, but a needed concern

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Does your district have protocol in place for student account access to online resources? Don't know if there's an interest in a short discussion about this or if I just need to create a Google form for feedback. Consider this: a teacher finds a great resource and creates individual student accounts to fully utilize a site's features. Should student names be used? Should any kind of district guidelines be met? Lots of enthusiasm carries us into this, but there are privacy issues outlined in COPPA that have to be considered. Like you, I'd rather spend Saturday with fun and innovative, but safety issues have to be addressed.....

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How can we leverage educational games or even set our whole class us as a game to impact learning in and out of our classroom?

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Prodigy Math Game - Teaching the Common Core

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Prodigy is a Pokemon-style video game that's aligned to the Ontario Math Curriculum for grades 1-6. It is free for schools! Sign up at: ProdigyGame.com UPDATE: We now cover Grades 1-6 in the Common Core Standards (the video says Grades 1-5).

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What Can We Learn from Digital Educators About Teaching STEM Concepts? 

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What Can We Learn from Digital Educators About Teaching STEM Concepts? 

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Everyone knows STEM is critical, and everyone is pushing to create the most engaging STEM curriculum possible. YouTube channels like Crash Course, MinutePhysics, and VSauce seem to have the right formula. What can we learn from their success? I'm really interested to hear thoughts... @alexdetmering

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nobel prize sean carroll neil degrasse tyson minute physics uncertainty principle phd comics stephen hawking brian greene henry reich grinnell college physic...

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Simply put: cool physics and other sweet science. "If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough." ~Rutherford via Einstein? (wikiquote) Created by Henry Reich

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Pear Deck -- Easy Way to Spark Class Discussion

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Pear Deck -- Easy Way to Spark Class Discussion

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Pear Deck is a great way to ask questions to students and get participation from every student. Students are able to respond but only the teacher and the student knows how they responded. It's a great formative assessment. It allows you see if your students are ready to move on. You can ask multiple choice, short answer and numeric questions for free. Best part, it is saved in your Google Drive.

@sara_sedwards

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Building on what @hello_newman posted, I would love a session that was basically a tech tool slam. Go around the room and each partipant has 1-2 minutes to describe a tech tool, how they use it in classroom/education, and its benefits. @suzyjax

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Resources and strategies for engaging students during the ELA block. Web resources and ideas will be shared to promote engagement, critical thinking, and higher levels of learning for all students.

@CaseyEchelmeier

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Promote student critical thinking and questioning through Mystery Locations using Google Hangouts and/or Skype. Provide opportunities for connecting students with other classrooms nationally and internationally.

@CaseyEchelmeier

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Transitioning our local High School into professional environments of learning, like Kansas Northland CAPS in KC, MO, where students are mentored and hearing from professionals in the field. Classes where they work on actual outcomes, project based learning centered in areas of Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM), but possibly any classroom.

@banniejanie

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Personalizing PD:  Genius Hour for Staff

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Personalizing PD:  Genius Hour for Staff

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How can we make staff learning individualized, relevant and highly productive? Taking PD to the next level.

@BethHouf

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The Connected Administrator: Becoming a Digital Leader

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The Connected Administrator: Becoming a Digital Leader

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Tools and strategies for administrators to use tech effectively to engage , transform and connect.

@BethHouf

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A transition many school are making. What does it mean for the library? For the students? For the faculty?

@suzyjax

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How has the Common Core influenced Early Childhood Education and early elementary school? Have children lost the ability to just be kids? Planning on leading a discussion about this at EdCamp.

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Last February, I learned about Kahoot at the EdcampSTL and it has taken over my classroom and my school. I'm looking for the next awesome tech tool that I can use to ramp up my teaching!

@hello_newman

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How about sharing who you are outside of education. Do you have passions that aren't classroom related? Do you have special talents or abilities you would like to share?

@wmchamberlain

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What intervention programs/systems/practices are JHs & HSs using when students are struggling to learn? What do your intervention periods look like during the regular school day? How do schools distinguish between lack of effort and inability to learn?

@DrSteveRitter

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5-10 minute ama sessions with the focus being on ed related issues. The group creates the questions and takes turns answering them.

@wmchamberlain

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Boosting Students Motivation in the World Language Classroom with 1:1 iPads

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Boosting Students Motivation in the World Language Classroom with 1:1 iPads

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Learning a language does not have to be boring anymore. With technology, we can visit virtually other countries, and connect with new friends around the globe. I am looking to find other World Languages colleagues who are interested to connect via Skype, and continue learning about apps that will boost my students' motivation. I use Google Classroom, Curriculet, Tellagami, Kahoot!, Powtoon, Edmodo, and others to create an environment where my students can learn a new language and have fun.

@Sra_Arnold

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The Role of Content in Today's Classroom

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The Role of Content in Today's Classroom

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Learning materials are no longer synonymous with textbooks. What other options are out there? Do faculty still need the linear, structured textbook or is there enough confidence, support and high quality material available online to fit most K-12 learning objectives? Looking for a conversation on best textbook alternatives, including OERs, how to find them, organize them and use them. @CarrieJWatkins

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Most teachers have heard the term PLN, but many don't know how to establish one. A great session would include things like the use of Twitter, Google+, Facebook, blogs, etc.

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As I mentioned on Twitter earlier this week, I find a particular kind of math problem extremely exciting now. Here are five of them. I want to know what to call them. I want to know what are their essential features. I want more of them and I want to read more about them.

Here is one of the five, taken from Scott Farrand's presentation at CMC North.

Here are some points in the plane:

(4, 1), (17, 27), (1, -5), (8, 9), (13, 19), (-2, -11)
(20, 33), (7,7), (-5, -17), (10, 13)

Choose any two of these points. Check with your neighbor to be sure that you didn't both choose the same pair of points. Now find the rate of change between the first and the second point. Write it on the board. What do you notice?

From Henri Picciotto's review of Farrand's session:

Students are stunned to learn that everyone in the class gets the same slope. This sets the stage for proving that the slope between any two points on a given line is always the same, no matter what points you pick.

In an email conversation with Farrand, he proposed the term "WTF Problems" because they all, ideally, involve a moment where the student exclaims "WTF":

Set up a surprise, such that resolution of that becomes the lesson that you intended. Anything that makes students ask the question that you plan to answer in the lesson is good, because answering questions that haven't been asked is inherently uninteresting.

These seem like essential features:

These problems are all brief. They slot easily into an opener.

They look forward and backward. They fit right in the gap between an old concept and the new. They review the old (slope in this case) while setting up the new (collinearity).

Students encounter an unexpected result. The world is either more orderly (the slope example above) or less orderly (see problem #2) than they thought.

And the weirdest feature:

They require the teacher to be cunning, actively concealing the upcoming WTF, assuring students that, yes, this problem is as trivial as you think it is, knowing all the while that it isn't.

When did they teach you that in your teacher training?

It's striking to me that the history of mathematics is driven by the explanations following these WTF moments:

We knew how to divide numbers. We didn't know how to divide by zero. Enter Newton & Leibniz explanation of calculus.

We knew how to find the square roots of positive numbers, but not negative. Enter Euler's explanation of imaginary numbers.

We knew what Eucld's geometry looked like, but what if parallel lines could meet. Enter the explanation of hyperbolic, spherical, and other non-Euclidean geometries.

There are lots of WTF moments that haven't yet been explained.

In school mathematics, though, we simply give the explanations, without paying even the briefest homage to the WTFs that provoked them.

What Farrand and you and I are trying to do here is restore some of that WTF to our math curriculum, without forcing students to re-create thousands of years of intellectual struggle.

So help me out:

Have you seen other problems like these?

Who else has written about these problems? I believe we're talking about disequilibrium here, which is Piaget's territory, but I'm looking for writing local to mathematics.

Featured Comments
David Wees cautions us that the effect of these problems depends on a student's background knowledge. If you don't know how to calculate slope, the problem above won't surprise, just confound. I agree, but the same is true of textbooks and nearly every other resource.

Michael Pershan worries that the "twist" in these problems will become overused, that students will become bored or expectant. ( Clara Maxcy echoes.) I demur.

Dan Anderson offers other examples. As do Mike Lawler, Federico Chialvo, Kyle Pearce, Jeff Morrison, and Michael Serra.

Franklin Mason critiques my math history without (I think) critiquing my main point about math history.

Scott Farrand, whose presentation at CMC-North inspired this post, elaborates.

Ben Orlin summarizes the design of these problems in four useful steps.

Terri Gilbert summarizes this post in a t-shirt.
Featured Tweet
2016 Jan 24. An example from systems of equations.

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As I mentioned on Twitter earlier this week, I find a particular kind of math problem extremely exciting now. Here are five of them. I want to know what to call them. I want to know what are their ...

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How is this tool used by other educators? What is G+ and what are G+ communities?

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Just as important to intelligence as an IQ test is creative, or divergent intelligence - your ability to think "outside the box," or to find multiple ways to solve a problem.

Let's explore several alternative intelligence tests (including the one linked here) and brainstorm how we could use these to empower more students into identifying as "smart".

@chuckcbaker

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Are you ready?

This intelligence test measures your creativity and ability to think of multiple solutions. Play the timer below for 2 minutes, following the directions in the Google Form below. (reset the timer after each box.)

I started reading Malcom Gladwell's Outliers this week. The basic thesis of this book is that "outliers," particularly successful or extraordinary people like Bill Gates or Andrew Carnegie are not solely the product of hard work, genius, or go-get-ivesness, but a combination of brilliance, opportunity, and/or luck.

In one chapter he uses the case of psychologist Lewis Terman's longitudinal study of geniuses, "Genetic Studies of Genius". Terman's "termites," as he called them were children selected from prestigious families and schools for the highest of high of IQ scores. His hypothesis was that when these children grew up and impacted their professions, you would find multiple Nobel laureates, Pulitzer Prize winners, and influential civil servants.

More than 40 years into the study, his hypothesis was critiqued as resoundingly false. One contributing factor to success beyond our popular notion of "high IQ" is creativity. Successful individuals are not only "smart," but they are often creative problem solvers and abstract thinkers.

Gladwell introduces an "alternative intelligence test," that measures divergent intelligence ( ability to think creatively in many directions vs. traditional IQ assessments that measure convergent intelligence, the ability to eliminate other options to a "right" answer). One of the more popular tests is Guilford's Alternative Uses Task (1967), which asks participants to think creatively about common, everyday items.

How could I use this in my class?
I think administering the Alternative Uses Task would be a great thing to do with your students when trying to unlock creativity or effort in your classroom. Many students who may feel insecure about their traditional IQ intelligence could do well at the task, opening up for you (and them) the idea of who is "smart" in your class.

Divergent thinking is important in finding multiple solutions to problems that can often get kids stuck on word problems/ open-ended problems. Knowing who the creative thinkers are in your room helps you and your students know who to go to as the "experts" when students are stuck for ideas. Facilitating these exchanges also open up opportunities for leadership beyond the "smart" students, engaging more of your students.

It could be especially interesting as an opener to presenting your students with a 3-Act Math Story.

WANT SOME FOR MORE?

You can find "Brick and Blanket" and four additional creativity tests on this post from 99u.com

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Are You "Gifted"? - Try This Intelligence Test

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Are you ready? This intelligence test measures your creativity and ability to think of multiple solutions. Play the timer below for 2 minutes, following the directions in the Google Form below. (reset the timer after each box.) I started reading Malcom Gladwell's Outliers this week.

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"Unlocking Creative Genius" in Math Class (6-12) 

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"Unlocking Creative Genius" in Math Class (6-12) 

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You're a math teacher, and you take your job seriously, so you don't have time for hand turkeys.

How can we use opportunities for creativity to reinforce learning, promote wonder and "WTF" moments, and create narrative experiences beyond the textbook that your students will use to recall what they've learned? @chuckcbaker

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Outliers: Making Opportunities for Success for our Students

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Outliers: Making Opportunities for Success for our Students

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The basic thesis of Malcom Gladwell's book, Ouliers, is that the ridiculously successful athletes, business men/women, and innovators of our culture are not so much more gifted

than their peers, but are given layers of extraordinary opportunity throughout their lives that compound into "success."

How can we structure our classrooms/schools to provide our students free time to practice/innovate/problem solve?

I DONT have a ton of practical answers, but I LOVED this book, and would really enjoy discussing how things like makerspaces, genius hour, and PBL fit into this. :)

@chuckcbaker

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Connected Classrooms & Robotics in Grades K-8

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Connected Classrooms & Robotics in Grades K-8

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Share your favorite projects using Sphero, littleBits, etc. Let's brainstorm how we can connect classrooms through robotics projects. @debbiefuco

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How can we take our students beyond the Hour of Code and apply the skills they have learned. How can we help students to become 'makers, creators, innovators?' @debbiefuco

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One of the most beautiful theaters in the city. We're so blessed by this amazing space. We hope it will help inspire your own inner creativity!

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Fingerhut Visits Grand Center Arts Academy

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Real Vision Images 575 views T & T Productions

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GCAA GALA - SUN THEATRE GRAND OPENING 2014 PRODUCED BY: REAL VISION IMAGES CONTACT FOR VIDEO WORK @ CSREALIST4EVER@GMAIL.COM

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One of the AMAZING reasons we're at Grand Center is because of their Makerspace. The Makerspace will be up and running for EdcampSTL. Learn more about their Makerspace here:

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Andrew Goodin is Facilitator of the Makerspace at Grand Center Arts Academy in St. Louis, Missouri. More about Andrew Goodin: Andrew Goodin manages the GCAA Makerspace, a collaborative workshop in which students use their artistic abilities to solve real-world problems in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics. He earned a B.S.