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A free, web-based tool that allows students to collaborate on ideas, writing, projects, etc.

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Reading & Writing

BoomWriter provides powerful opportunities for your students to read and write for an audience and purpose.

Voting

Our unique voting system encourages positive, meaningful peer evaluation.

Published

There is nothing better than the moment every student in your classroom is published.

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Reading & Writing BoomWriter provides powerful opportunities for your students to read and write for an audience and purpose. Voting Our unique voting system encourages positive, meaningful peer evaluation. Published There is nothing better than the moment every student in your classroom is published.

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A great way to allow students to create presentations together that they can use to teach others about any given topic. Could be used to assign "pre-reading" research about books, authors, contextual framework of stories etc..

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Make animated videos in minutes. With the help of simpleshow's AI-powered animation maker you can create explainer videos quickly and easily.

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Gwyn Ridenhour is the author of a popular blog called steampoweredclassroom. This TedTalk highlights her belief in project-based learning, and makes a great argument as to why we should STEAM.

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Shaping a Creative Education | Gwyn Ridenhour | TEDxBismarck

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Ever wanted to create the perfect hybrid education for your child, but didn't know where to start? Gwyn shares her experience and a roadmap to creating your own out-of-the-box, student-led, cross-curricular education. Gwyn Ridenhour is an educational advocate, children's librarian, and founder and writer of the popular education blog STEAM-Powered Classroom.

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Exploring English Through Project-Based Learning

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Exploring English Through Project-Based Learning

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steambasedclassroom blog author, Gwyn Riddenhour interviews young picture-book author to exemplify how students can explore English through projects.

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For the last five years, we have eschewed worksheets and textbooks in our homeschool environment, preferring instead a combination of hands-on projects and in-depth exploration. This is true for English as well. When we first started down this home education road, Eva was just six and quite the storyteller. I challenged her to create an entire story and illustrate it. In return, I offered to help her self-publish it into her very own book. Her love of writing exploded that year, and just this week Eva released her fifth book, The Krazy Kinzy Kapers.

Because this is such an intense project, it comprises the majority of her English studies. (In addition, she reads, watches and discusses smart TV series and movies, attends and acts in theater, and creates her own films. On occasion, she writes an essay or two as well.) I've talked before about why I feel this approach beats that of the traditional curriculum/worksheet. But today, I've asked Eva to talk a little about her education and journey as an author. Welcome Eva!
You've been writing one book each year since you were six years old. How do you feel this has shaped your education and/or your life?
I think it's shaped my life in a lot of ways. It's made me love to write, always want to do more English class, and now every time I take a walk, I get brand new ideas for new books. When I got my copy of my very first book, Birds on the Run, I remember I said, "Mommy, I don't want to be a princess anymore. I want to be an author." It's created an identity for me. It makes me more confident. Since I started writing, I really do see possibilities in everything. It's completely altered my life in all those different ways and more.
Can you describe your English studies? What all do they entail?
My English studies generally are a combination of writing the book of the year and reading a literary book. This year, it was Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austin, and now I'm reading How to Read Literature like a Professor for Kids by Thomas Foster. Also, I use many other things in my English studies. For example, TV. My dad and I like to watch a show called Gilmore Girls. I really like it, because it relates to real life situations. Gilmore Girls uses a lot of tough situations that the mother and daughter go through together, and it's fun to analyze with dad and mom, who have both seen it. I also enjoy doing summer theater. Last year I played Jip the dog in the production of Doctor Doolittle - it was so much fun!
Because your English studies are comprised of open-ended activities like reading and writing, how do you learn grammar, sentence structure, parts of speech, etc.?
I learn all of that during the writing process and by reading books. I'll pick apart sentence structure and learn grammar as I read (we did that a lot when we read Pride and Prejudice). In the writing process, all I can say is that you pick up things as you go. Every once in awhile, my dad, who is an English professor, will give my brother and I a lesson on grammar, but I can say that mostly you just pick stuff up as you go.
What else have you learned through your English studies?
I've learned how to format a book, how to examine a story with a critical eye, and lots of other useful things, like how to professionally market and promote a book, how to use social media to my advantage, and how to set up photographs and take professional looking pictures. I've also learned how to examine films with a critical eye. One of my favorite activities this year was learning how to make short videos and upload them to YouTube and my website.
Do you think other kids could benefit from writing a book each year? Why?
It depends on the student, really. If the student absolutely hated writing, then no, they probably shouldn't write a book each year. My brother Ian started writing a book the same year I did, and although he enjoyed it, he didn't want to do it in later years. So mom had him read lots of stuff, and then he would report his thoughts on it. I would have a student try to write a book, and if the student loved writing, then yes! It would be a great, hands-on activity. If not, I would find a way to relate to English using something he/she really loved.
Tell me a little about your book, and about Kinzy in particular.
My book is a collection of short stories about Kinzy the Queensland Koala. Kinzy is "The Charming Koala with the Huge Ego," and thinks he's better than all of his friends. None of them are particularly clever, but Kinzy's probably the least so. He really loves Eucalyptus, which is a plant that koalas eat. His voice is strange, sounding a bit constipated, confident, and exuberant, all at the same time. He came from Australia, but got kidnapped in the great war between the humans and the koalas, known as The War of the Boo-Boo 4 (the Boo-Boo 4 is a gigantic koala spaceship OF DEATH) and ended up in the United States. These days he runs a cooking show called the Kinzy's Cooking Show, where he cooks with eucalyptus and creates such dishes as Eucalyptus Pie and Eucalyptus Stew.
Do you think you'll always be a writer? How has your homeschool environment helped prepare you for your chosen career?
I don't think I'll always be an author. I like cooking, acting, and dancing, although cooking is probably my favorite. I want to run a bakery/restaurant when I, you know, have the money and the experience to open up my own bakery and run it. I like that you can mix ingredients like water, flour, and sugar, bake it, and then it's a delicious thing of happiness. I also like the idea of running my own store, designing it, etc.
What if you don't end up becoming a writer? Do you feel that your experience writing your books will be helpful to you anyway? Why?
I think that the writing element will definitely help. I will always love reading, for one, and writing books will help me enjoy a book's underlying themes and meaning. Also, I think I'll still write books for fun. I might write cookbooks, and I'll definitely continue the Kinzy series. I'll also continue writing as an English curriculum while I'm in school.
What are your future writer-ly plans?
I really want to continue writing, but on the other hand, I have no idea what I'm going to write. I might write another Kinzy story, but I'm also writing a novel in my spare time. It'll be more of a teen or young adult book. It's about a teenager who has a difficult family life, and she goes to find her sister when she goes missing. I also want to make more of the Kinzy's Cooking Show videos, because I want to explore the different possibilities with his cooking environment.

Thanks very much for having me!
To see a preview and order Eva's new book (or any of her other books), click here or go straight to the Krazy Kinzy Kapers by clicking on the picture to the right. Congratulations Eva!

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Exploring English Through Project Based Learning - STEAM-Powered Classroom

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For the last five years, we have eschewed worksheets and textbooks in our homeschool environment, preferring instead a combination of hands-on projects and in-depth exploration. This is true for English as well. When we first started down this home education road, Eva was just six and quite the storyteller.

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This article discusses the differentiation between STEAM and STEM and why STEM may deserve to stand alone.

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The last few years have brought a call from some quarters to update the STEM acronym -- for science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- to STEAM, with the A standing for arts. On the surface, such a move seems harmless. What's another letter, right? But in my view, STEM should stay just as it is, because education policy has yet to fully embrace the concept it represents -- and that concept is more important than ever.

No one -- least of all me -- is suggesting that STEM majors should not study the arts. The arts are a source of enlightenment and inspiration, and exposure to the arts broadens one's perspective. Such a broad perspective is crucial to the creativity and critical thinking that is required for effective engineering design and innovation. The humanities fuel inquisitiveness and expansive thinking, providing the scientific mind with larger context and the potential to communicate better.

The clear value of the arts would seem to make adding A to STEM a no-brainer. But when taken too far, this leads to the generic idea of a well-rounded education, which dilutes the essential need and focus for STEM.

STEM is the connecting of four separate, but similar, dots. The acronym was born in the early 2000s, when the National Science Foundation sought to promote a national conversation about the merits of pulling related areas out of their silos and teaching them in a more multidisciplinary way. Math and science were already well established in education. The thinking was that technology and engineering instruction was far less prevalent in public schools, despite society being dependent on both.

Over time, the four letters have served as the spark to rekindle America's commitment to an innovation economy. The basis of that commitment is a larger, more skilled workforce in STEM areas. Policy from the Clinton, Bush and Obama administrations has emphasized the importance of preparing and encouraging more youth to pursue these fields at a time when they were less inclined to do so, and to provide more support and training for teachers in the subjects.

We cannot afford to be distracted from that strategy. A survey of executives by Business Roundtable last year revealed that 4 out of 10 companies still find that at least half of their entry-level job applicants don't even have the basic skills in STEM. Yet these companies will have to replace nearly 1 million U.S. employees with basic STEM literacy (and 635,000 with advanced skills in STEM) in the next five years. This means that STEM education needs ongoing commitment and resources.

I like to think of STEM the same way I think of stem cells -- STEM is foundational. Just as stem cells are a platform for the growth of other tissues, STEM is a platform for many careers. It is too valuable to our nation's future to be put at risk.

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Essay criticizes idea of adding the arts to push for STEM education

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The last few years have brought a call from some quarters to update the STEM acronym -- for science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- to STEAM, with the A standing for arts. On the surface, such a move seems harmless. What's another letter, right?

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The Washington Post posits if America's "obsession" with STEAM is harmful for students.

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Fareed Zakaria, a columnist for The Washington Post, is the host of "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN and the author of "In Defense of a Liberal Education."

If Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country's education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills. Every month, it seems, we hear about our children's bad test scores in math and science - and about new initiatives from companies, universities or foundations to expand STEM courses (science, technology, engineering and math) and deemphasize the humanities. From President Obama on down, public officials have cautioned against pursuing degrees like art history, which are seen as expensive luxuries in today's world. Republicans want to go several steps further and defund these kinds of majors. "Is it a vital interest of the state to have more anthropologists?" asked Florida's Gov. Rick Scott. "I don't think so." America's last bipartisan cause is this: A liberal education is irrelevant, and technical training is the new path forward. It is the only way, we are told, to ensure that Americans survive in an age defined by technology and shaped by global competition. The stakes could not be higher.

This dismissal of broad-based learning, however, comes from a fundamental misreading of the facts - and puts America on a dangerously narrow path for the future. The United States has led the world in economic dynamism, innovation and entrepreneurship thanks to exactly the kind of teaching we are now told to defenestrate. A broad general education helps foster critical thinking and creativity. Exposure to a variety of fields produces synergy and cross fertilization. Yes, science and technology are crucial components of this education, but so are English and philosophy. When unveiling a new edition of the iPad, Steve Jobs explained that "it's in Apple's DNA that technology alone is not enough - that it's technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields us the result that makes our hearts sing."

Innovation is not simply a technical matter but rather one of understanding how people and societies work, what they need and want. America will not dominate the 21st century by making cheaper computer chips but instead by constantly reimagining how computers and other new technologies interact with human beings.

For most of its history, the United States was unique in offering a well-rounded education. In their comprehensive study, "The Race Between Education and Technology," Harvard's Claudia Goldin and Lawrence Katz point out that in the 19th century, countries like Britain, France and Germany educated only a few and put them through narrow programs designed to impart only the skills crucial to their professions. America, by contrast, provided mass general education because people were not rooted in specific locations with long-established trades that offered the only paths forward for young men. And the American economy historically changed so quickly that the nature of work and the requirements for success tended to shift from one generation to the next. People didn't want to lock themselves into one professional guild or learn one specific skill for life.

That was appropriate in another era, the technologists argue, but it is dangerous in today's world. Look at where American kids stand compared with their peers abroad. The most recent international test, conducted in 2012, found that among the 34 members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the United States ranked 27th in math, 20th in science and 17th in reading. If rankings across the three subjects are averaged, the United States comes in 21st, trailing nations such as the Czech Republic, Poland, Slovenia and Estonia.

In truth, though, the United States has never done well on international tests, and they are not good predictors of our national success. Since 1964, when the first such exam was administered to 13-year-olds in 12 countries, America has lagged behind its peers, rarely rising above the middle of the pack and doing particularly poorly in science and math. And yet over these past five decades, that same laggard country has dominated the world of science, technology, research and innovation.

Consider the same pattern in two other highly innovative countries, Sweden and Israel. Israel ranks first in the world in venture-capital investments as a percentage of GDP; the United States ranks second, and Sweden is sixth, ahead of Great Britain and Germany. These nations do well by most measures of innovation, such as research and development spending and the number of high-tech companies as a share of all public companies. Yet all three countries fare surprisingly poorly in the OECD test rankings. Sweden and Israel performed even worse than the United States on the 2012 assessment, landing overall at 28th and 29th, respectively, among the 34 most-developed economies.

But other than bad test-takers, their economies have a few important traits in common: They are flexible. Their work cultures are non-hierarchical and merit-based. All operate like young countries, with energy and dynamism. All three are open societies, happy to let in the world's ideas, goods and services. And people in all three nations are confident - a characteristic that can be measured. Despite ranking 27th and 30th in math, respectively, American and Israeli students came out at the top in their belief in their math abilities, if one tallies up their responses to survey questions about their skills. Sweden came in seventh, even though its math ranking was 28th.

Thirty years ago, William Bennett, the Reagan-era secretary of education, noticed this disparity between achievement and confidence and quipped, "This country is a lot better at teaching self-esteem than it is at teaching math." It's a funny line, but there is actually something powerful in the plucky confidence of American, Swedish and Israeli students. It allows them to challenge their elders, start companies, persist when others think they are wrong and pick themselves up when they fail. Too much confidence runs the risk of self-delusion, but the trait is an essential ingredient for entrepreneurship.

My point is not that it's good that American students fare poorly on these tests. It isn't. Asian countries like Japan and South Korea have benefitted enormously from having skilled workforces. But technical chops are just one ingredient needed for innovation and economic success. America overcomes its disadvantage - a less-technically-trained workforce - with other advantages such as creativity, critical thinking and an optimistic outlook. A country like Japan, by contrast, can't do as much with its well-trained workers because it lacks many of the factors that produce continuous innovation.

Americans should be careful before they try to mimic Asian educational systems, which are oriented around memorization and test-taking. I went through that kind of system. It has its strengths, but it's not conducive to thinking, problem solving or creativity. That's why most Asian countries, from Singapore to South Korea to India, are trying to add features of a liberal education to their systems. Jack Ma, the founder of China's Internet behemoth Alibaba, recently hypothesized in a speech that the Chinese are not as innovative as Westerners because China's educational system, which teaches the basics very well, does not nourish a student's complete intelligence, allowing her to range freely, experiment and enjoy herself while learning: "Many painters learn by having fun, many works [of art and literature] are the products of having fun. So, our entrepreneurs need to learn how to have fun, too."

No matter how strong your math and science skills are, you still need to know how to learn, think and even write. Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon (and the owner of this newspaper), insists that his senior executives write memos, often as long as six printed pages, and begins senior-management meetings with a period of quiet time, sometimes as long as 30 minutes, while everyone reads the "narratives" to themselves and makes notes on them. In an interview with Fortune's Adam Lashinsky, Bezos said: "Full sentences are harder to write. They have verbs. The paragraphs have topic sentences. There is no way to write a six-page, narratively structured memo and not have clear thinking."

Companies often prefer strong basics to narrow expertise. Andrew Benett, a management consultant, surveyed 100 business leaders and found that 84 of them said they would rather hire smart, passionate people, even if they didn't have the exact skills their companies needed.

Innovation in business has always involved insights beyond technology. Consider the case of Facebook. Mark Zuckerberg was a classic liberal arts student who also happened to be passionately interested in computers. He studied ancient Greek intensively in high school and majored in psychology while he attended college. And Facebook's innovations have a lot to do with psychology. Zuckerberg has often pointed out that before Facebook was created, most people shielded their identities on the Internet. It was a land of anonymity. Facebook's insight was that it could create a culture of real identities, where people would voluntarily expose themselves to their friends, and this would become a transformative platform. Of course, Zuckerberg understands computers deeply and uses great coders to put his ideas into practice, but as he has put it, Facebook is "as much psychology and sociology as it is technology."

Twenty years ago, tech companies might have survived simply as product manufacturers. Now they have to be on the cutting edge of design, marketing and social networking. You can make a sneaker equally well in many parts of the world, but you can't sell it for $300 unless you've built a story around it. The same is true for cars, clothes and coffee. The value added is in the brand - how it is imagined, presented, sold and sustained. Or consider America's vast entertainment industry, built around stories, songs, design and creativity. All of this requires skills far beyond the offerings of a narrow STEM curriculum.

Critical thinking is, in the end, the only way to protect American jobs. David Autor, the MIT economist who has most carefully studied the impact of technology and globalization on labor, writes that "human tasks that have proved most amenable to computerization are those that follow explicit, codifiable procedures - such as multiplication - where computers now vastly exceed human labor in speed, quality, accuracy, and cost efficiency. Tasks that have proved most vexing to automate are those that demand flexibility, judgment, and common sense - skills that we understand only tacitly - for example, developing a hypothesis or organizing a closet." In 2013, two Oxford scholars conducted a comprehensive study on employment and found that, for workers to avoid the computerization of their jobs, "they will have to acquire creative and social skills."

This doesn't in any way detract from the need for training in technology, but it does suggest that as we work with computers (which is really the future of all work), the most valuable skills will be the ones that are uniquely human, that computers cannot quite figure out - yet. And for those jobs, and that life, you could not do better than to follow your passion, engage with a breadth of material in both science and the humanities, and perhaps above all, study the human condition.

One final reason to value a liberal education lies in its roots. For most of human history, all education was skills-based. Hunters, farmers and warriors taught their young to hunt, farm and fight. But about 2,500 years ago, that changed in Greece, which began to experiment with a new form of government: democracy. This innovation in government required an innovation in education. Basic skills for sustenance were no longer sufficient. Citizens also had to learn how to manage their own societies and practice self-government. They still do.
Twitter: @FareedZakaria
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Why America's obsession with STEM education is dangerous

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Fareed Zakaria, a columnist for The Washington Post, is the host of "Fareed Zakaria GPS" on CNN and the author of "In Defense of a Liberal Education." If Americans are united in any conviction these days, it is that we urgently need to shift the country's education toward the teaching of specific, technical skills.

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STEAM: Great Policy for 21st Century Education

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STEAM: Great Policy for 21st Century Education

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Why is STEAM important for kids TODAY? This source explores why 21st century students specifically are in need of a STEAM education.

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There's a reason why so many schools, teachers, and students are excited about STEM or STEAM (STEM plus arts & design, as championed by the Rhode Island School of Design). They make learning more fun and engaging, not to mention provide students opportunities to use content knowledge and skills in ways that are practical and applicable to the real world, just like they would if they were working on science or engineering projects in the field.

We also know that the value of STEM is great, when considering the kinds of jobs our future workforce will have the greatest need to fill. Georgetown University conducted a study on job growth and education requirements across the workforce through the year 2020, and found that almost 5 million jobs will go unfilled because of skills gaps, particularly in the growing fields of healthcare and STEM.

Given the importance of creativity for the future of our workforce and life success in a world where change is becoming the only constant, many educators and policymakers are embracing STEAM, to ensure that the arts get top billing as well.

At the end, what we are really interested in is that students get exposure to hands-on learning that challenges them to think critically and creatively, and lets them apply important content knowledge in meaningful ways. The focus is on higher-order thinking skills, the same ones that show up in the ESSA legislation, particularly when dealing with assessments. ESSA encourages multiple modes of assessment that allow for greater flexibility, personalization, and more accurate ways to capture what students know and are able to do through portfolios, projects, and more.

STEAM provides a great way to get there, as well as a vehicle for exploring the 4Cs and yet another way to connect to our Framework for 21st Century Learning, which outlines the content knowledge and themes, learning and life skills, and various supports that all students need to succeed in today's world.

We don't need every child to grow up to become a scientist, engineer, or designer, but we need every one to grow up knowing how to think like one. With STEAM, we can really make sure that students are ready for many of the challenges they will face, and to create a world where "Every Student Succeeds" is not just an aspiration.
Dr. Helen Soulé is the Executive Director of Partnership for 21st Century Learning (P21), where she has led the organization's state recruitment and support effort, the 21st Century Learning Exemplar Program, and other initiatives. Soulé is a longtime educator with P-16 leadership experience at the local, state and national level. Nationally, Soulé served as chief of staff to the assistant secretary for the Office of Postsecondary Education in the U.S. Department of Education, and Executive Director of Cable in the Classroom. She is a founding member of the State Educational Technology Directors Association and the recipient of several awards, including Converge magazine's 30 "Shapers of the Future" award, E-School News "Impact 30 Award for Excellence", and the Mississippi Educational Computing Association's Technology Educator of the Year award.

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Why STEAM is Great Policy for the Future of Education

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There's a reason why so many schools, teachers, and students are excited about STEM or STEAM (STEM plus arts & design, as championed by the Rhode Island School of Design).

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steamedu.com answers any and all questions in regards to STEAM. A great resource to become acquainted with STEAM initiatives.

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STEAM represents a paradigm shift from traditional education philosophy, based on standardized test scores, to a modern ideal which focuses on valuing the learning process as much as the results. In essence, we dare our students to be wrong, to try multiple ideas, listen to alternate opinions and create a knowledge base that is applicable to real life as opposed to simply an exam.

Deron Cameron
Former UPES Principal - US's 1st STEAM Certified School
Current TCSS Curriculum Coordinator

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STEAM represents a paradigm shift from traditional education philosophy, based on standardized test scores, to a modern ideal which focuses on valuing the learning process as much as the results. In essence, we dare our students to be wrong, to try multiple ideas, listen to alternate opinions and create a knowledge base that is applicable to real life as opposed to simply an exam.