I’m amusing myself with Javascript and I’m managing to make things. Last Friday I helped unpack some math manipulatives for our new elementary school. They had many, many things to count. Bicolored beans were one of the items I found particularly odd.1 In any case, given last weeks small foray into JavaScript I knew I […]
Read More… from Bicolored Beans and Dolch Refrigerator Poetry
This is probably too simple. My belief is that we (my colleagues and I) should make/find interesting things. We should publish them online in a way that integrates these interesting things into the frameworks that govern the lives of our teachers (pacing guides, curricular frameworks, state standards). Associated with each interesting thing should be the […]
Presentation Zen: Can (and should) scientists become great presenters? “”People can only learn something new if they can relate it to something they already know. That’s the only way.” “When people like you [scientists & PhD students] talk about their research, half of the time even your peers don’t understand what the hell you are […]
This is an interesting time to attempt interesting things. There is a lot being documented at the moment1 that ought to be shaping how we think and what we do in K12. Mike Caulfield’s posts on distributed flips2 and the design of open materials for blended classrooms3 Jim Groom’s posts on creating open source learning […]
How Einstein Thought: Fostering Combinatorial Creativity and Unconscious Connections | Brain Pickings “Combinatory play seems to be the essential feature in productive thought.” tags: einstein thought creativity connections weekly School for poetic computation “school for poetic computation is an artist run school launching this fall in New York. A small group of students and faculty […]
I saw this in the August 2013 National Geographic. It reminded me of when I taught 6th grade English. I used rebuses quite a bit. It was a fun way to help reluctant readers and writers. The National Geographic article sparked a few new ideas though. First, using The Noun Project as a source gives […]
This is another example of why I find the Internet so amazing. It’s nothing new. It’s just makes the kind of learning I find so attractive possible. Here’s the scenario. We were in a meeting an one of our new ITRTs, Rachel Toy, mentioned this Buck’s Institute Tool that’s meant to help shape driving questions. […]
I’m still messing around with engaging elementary students with measurement and estimation. My own kids seem pretty interested. I don’t know if that’s a good measure at all. It has been a new experience for me to see how the different ages are able to engage with the same media. It is interesting to have […]
Orthography – Futility Closet ““If the professors of English will complain to me that the students who come to the universities, after all those years of study, still cannot spell ‘friend,’ I say to them that something’s the matter with the way you spell friend.” — Richard Feynman This has always been my problem with […]
I’m working more closely with some of our elementary specialists this year. It’s been a good while since I worked with this age group. I’m pretty excited the potential to do some interesting things. Measurement is a big issue for our students in elementary. It spans math and science standards and kids are not connecting […]