Year3-Week12: The Value of Pressure in Learning

The original idea was to post at the end of every week something with much more reflection and thoughtfulness than my previous daily social media posts that I had done over the past two-years. I was able to keep to that schedule for the first eight-weeks or so, but have faltered and failed since then.

Year3-Week5 & 6: There’s No Place Like Home

I came up with this idea that I wanted to work with Kindergarten & first grade using the theme of “my community,” building on what it’s like to live in North Las Vegas and a child’s almost infinite capacity to create based on the tiniest bits of lived experiences.

Year3-Week4 – It’s not like it’s rocket science, kind’a

2018-19 school year week 4. How do you turn left or right with robots that only have one motor connected to a single axle? Hmmm… I hadn’t thought that about that.

Year3-Week3 – Welcoming Our Robot Overlords

I’ve been wrestling with this problem since coming here in 2016: how to get robots into the hands of all of my students in the best way possible… And I was so excited that I didn’t take any photos/videos of the first class that began working on their LEGO WeDo robots (you know that’s excited!).

Year Three Week Two – The Plan’s First Trial

“No plan survives contact with the enemy,” Helmuth von Moltke the Elder, German Field Marshal I think I scared myself last week when posited the difficulty of teaching a single subject across six grade levels much less five subject areas across said six grade levels. Oops.

What Am I Changing for Next Year

Cleared my whiteboard to begin next school year’s plans… no worries, the “days left in the school year” countdown chart is virtually being updated on my iPad.

Learning LEGO EV3 Robots & Kids

  The first time you deploy anything in the classroom, much less something involving lots of small moving parts, I can guarantee that things won’t go as planned but if you planned well you’ll be able to see all the areas you need to fix/change the next time you do the lesson/unit. I’ve been waiting over a year to give

Reflecting on My Photography Editing Deficit (Taking Lots of Photos at School)

On March 2nd I shot over 150 images and videos on two cameras & my iPhone covering two student assemblies for the Jump for the Heart initiative. On the prior Wednesday, February 28th, I shot over 270 images covering a rugby demo/promo event. The Friday before that, February 23rd, I shot over 270 images covering my school’s Black History Assembly.

6 Levels Towards Virtual Worlds

I’ve been thinking about the decades old promises of virtual reality and how my graduate students have responded to their first experiences with Second Life and thought that an info-graphic break down of virtual reality might help us approach the subject with less anxiety or frustration. It really comes down to thinking of the ol’ “right tool for the right