Thing 35

3D Printing

3D Printing is an awesome new tool that is becoming more accessible to schools and individual families.  The idea of 3D printing is to program a design into a 3D printer, and to have the printer "create" a 3 dimensional item from your design.  If you would have asked me about the whole idea of 3D printing 10 years ago, I would have put it in the same category as time travel and jumping to "warp speed" (even though they did prototypes of 3D printing 25 years ago).  

Schools around the country have started using 3D printing as a tool to aide their lessons.  Math classes have created graphs to better understand their data points and social studies classes have created 3D models of a topographical map.  At Washburne, students have used the 3D printer to make a variety of items, such as a holder for their GoPro, or even a cone for the top of their rockets.  

One of the best parts of using 3D printing is the innovation that it allows.  Students are able to use it to supplement any class project.  Instead of drawing a landscape for your story, you could create one!

The price of 3D printers is also dropping, making them more affordable for schools.  Decent models can be found for $2,000, and the price of the material around 30 cents a gram.  

What better way to get kids to buy into learning about technology than to be able to have them create something tangible they can take home and show their friends and family!

Digital Citizenship

Digital Citizenship covers what it means to use technology appropriately.  Some of the bigger topics included in digital citizenship includes:

• Cyberbullying
• Privacy
• Online Safety
• Online Profiles
• Social Networking

As technology grows more prevalent (1:1 in schools, elementary kids getting their own iPhones, etc), the need to address "how to behave online" is more and more important.  As schools allow more access to technology, we as educators need to be sure we educate our students on how to be a responsible citizen in the digital world.  Resources to educate students are very easy to find and implement in short lessons.  Common Sense Media has videos and plans for kids K-12.  It is age appropriate, and also has information you can provide to parents.

As technology continues to grow and change, we need to be sure that we as educators are also adapting with it.  There will always be new apps or new modes of social media online.  Students who are not aware of possible outcomes, may not know how their actions can affect themselves and others.  Many colleges and potential employers are now checking a personal digital footprint before they make any decisions on acceptance or employment.  The way kids act online has a direct affect on their real life.

There's also Cyber Wise, an organization that aims at educating adults on how to talk to kids about the importance of being a safe and smart online citizen.  

Thing 36: The End!

Thing 34: Breakout EDU

BreakoutEDU is awesome!  I love games (personally) but also love when they can be used in an educational setting.  I could see this being a fun Friday night activity with friends as well!

The one I picked was the Swamp.  It is a simple team building game, rated for younger kids, but I thought it would be a great intro to what a BreakoutEDU is all about.  As I was thinking about this topic more, I thought it could be a great idea for our beginning of the year team building competition.  We do some kind of competition every year with our Team Imagine 7th and 8th graders.  This could be another option.  We could create 4 rooms (all using the same game) and see which group worked together the best to escape the room the fastest.

I also thought this could be a great lesson to put together for KW.  I would have to think about how to make the game into doing something physical (i.e. do 10 push-ups if you think this is the answer, do 10 sit-ups if you think this is the answer).  The drawback to this is I would have to create a lot of boxes to use in my classes of 26+ students.

This made me think of an awesome game I play with friends using my Android phone and an Oculus 360 viewer.  Its call "Keep Talking and Nobody Explodes."  Its basically a bomb defusing game in which one person sees the bomb, and has to relay information about it to the rest of the group.  The other people in the group have a manual that they have to look up and figure out how to disarm the various components of the bomb (i.e. if there are 3 red wires, but no yellow wires, you have to cut the 2nd wire from the bottom).  It's all time based and a blast to play!

http://www.keeptalkinggame.com/

Thing 33

Here is a video I found on Bullying and Harassment.

Thing 32: Atomic Learning

Wow, that was a long quiz...

Ok, now that I've said that, on to Atomic Learning.  I've never used Atomic Learning before, but I've heard the name dropped a few times in the past.  The first thing I noticed, which seems to be a common thread with these online resources, is that there is a LOT of information available.  There's a lot of good stuff available, but there is also a lot of rather...boring...information.  Many of the videos I watched reminded me of taking the SafeSchool videos we have to watch each fall.

One positive that I took away from this tool was that I will be sure to use it as a tool to look up information regarding my topics for Thing 34 (I believe).  The search tool was really the way to go for this function.  I typed in "Digital Citizenship" and was given 15 different pages to further look at.
As for using it with my teaching, I'm not sure I'm sold yet with this program.  There was a lot of information, and it made it difficult to decipher what I actually wanted.  I think it could be used to "preteach" certain technology lessons in other classrooms, but not with what I currently do.  I did do my obligatory "Physical Education" search, and found a cool little QR code idea.  So I guess it isn't all that bad ;)

Thing 31: Learning Gizmos

As I explored the Learning Gizmos available for life science, I couldn't help but wish I had this available to me as a student! The experience using this site was awesome!  You can't get much more hands on learning, beside actually being out in the environment doing experiments.  For a science/math teacher, this would be a great idea to find tasks to back up learning.

As I created my own Gizmo, I spent a little to much time playing the various "games."  I also like how each of the Gizmos come with an already made short quiz at the end.  It helps as a teacher to cut down on time making your own assessment or CFU assignment.  Plus it gives the kids instant feedback.

If you want to check out my Gizmo, here is the classroom code:

WWWJCV98DW

The disadvantage of using an online simulator is that it does take away from that "real world" experience.  I'm all about using simulators when you can't get access to the real thing, but I can see kids getting burnt out from just doing things on the computer.  With a good mix of hands on experience, and online experience, I think simulators have a great place in classroom learning.  

I'd like to see a "sports simulator," in which I could have kids play a "game" of, say soccer, online.  The program could have different things happen, and the kids have to figure out what the rules that are in violation are.  For example, if a kid is having a hard time understanding the off sides rule, they could run a simulation to see what it looks from a different perspective.'

Thing 30: Discovery Ed

I've heard of Discovery Ed before, but only from seeing it on the institute day option list and from talking with people from the Social Studies department.  Its another avenue to explore as you look for various aides for your classroom.

The first thing I looked for was something in Physical Education.  I was surprised by the amount of content they actually had.  There are days when we are rained out, and don't have a 4th teaching spot to use, so this could be a great option for us.  The video I found was about competitive sports in general for kids at the middle school level.  It was about breaking down some barriers that are out there (body image issues, gender roles, etc.)  It was short enough to possible show at the start of the school year.  Watch the video here.  There were also some other topics, including drug and alcohol awareness and anaerobic steroid use.  These are other topics we cover throughout the year.

The Spotlight on Strategies section was pretty cool.  It grouped together a bunch of different resources into specific topics, such as assessment, research, and sequencing.  The cool part of this section is that actual teachers have done these lessons and know what works and what doesn't.  I didn't see anything that pertained to my field specifically, so I looked into some areas about citing sources.  The video talked about related the popular show "Myth Busters" into an activity in which kids would learn how to tell if something they found on the internet was real, or possibly a myth.  It was a good idea on how to teach kids not to hold everything they find online to be the truth.

The Board Builder was a cool idea.  It is almost like creating a small website for a single activity.  I created a short lesson base for advisory.  In 7th grade we examine friendship.  I put together a video clip on friendship, as well as a short written document, then added a few guided questions for kids to work together with in small groups.

Discovery Ed seems like it has a lot of quality resources, but would take a lot more time to go through to see what we could actually use.  I will definitely remember this site for rainy days!