Okay, the production values are not great, but hear me out on this one. This is a comp sci education classic from Nick Parlante at Stanford back in the 1990s. This was used in my university coursework to teach pointers, a concept than can be tricky to grasp when you’re new to computer science. What […]
We actually use Explain Everything a lot in my school. Within my cohort, we’ve been using it extensively in math to have students explain how they solve problems as a final assessment for units. This is great, because we can figure out who copied from their friends, see who is mimicking rather than deeply understanding,
Screencasting with Explain Everything Read More »
UPDATE: I have received some friendly feedback from my classmates. They have suggested a few additions worth looking into: Labeling and categorizing bins/shelves Including a large poster explaining the design process (I feel that this would need to be very stripped down to be something that students actually pay attention to) Replacing painting large words
You know what I like about this article? It acknowledges knitting as a STEAM activity. Often, as with makerspaces, only certain types of activities are held up as “STEAM” (usually those that are attractive to boys) and others are dismissed as “arts and crafts” (usually those that are attractive to girls). This is an ongoing
STEAM in the Library Read More »
This week, we’re looking at the 2017 Horizon Report (Freeman et al.), a document outlining issues and trends in technology and K-12 education. I’ve just got a new job at a brand-new school of Integrated Arts and Technology, and I think it will be interesting to look at the issues that could come up in
Five Year Horizon for my LLC Read More »
This week, a lot of folks shared solutions to specific issues, but I find that this is less useful to me than strategies to help others perform their own troubleshooting without me. I’ve worked in IT before, and what I learned was that, beyond a lot of teachers not being very tech savvy, a lot
Troubleshooting Strategies Read More »
This weekend, I goofed around in TinkerCAD. When I was in university, UBC Rapid (the 3D printer engineering design team) ran a competition called HY3P (Hack Your 3D Printer) which I entered with a team, and that was probably the last the time I did much around 3D printing. Thinking about 3D modeling and printing
A caveat: I’m supposed to be writing about the computational thinking experiences I have observed at my school. Because I started my teaching career the same year as that pesky global pandemic, I haven’t really had much of an opportunity to observe others’ teaching of computational thinking and participation besides one two-week practicum during my
Computational Participation Read More »
For this assignment, I chose to complete some of the computational thinking lessons from Digital Technologies Hub (based on prior work by Google). These assignments were based around an online coding platform named Pencil Code. For this post, I will be looking at this platform, along with some other educational programming platforms used by teachers
Computational Thinking Platforms Read More »
Yay, we’re talking about my teaching specialty this week! I can finally feel like my skills are valuable in the library learning commons! Computational thinking and robotics are somewhat strangely arranged in the BC curriculum as we move from grades 6-12. This post will discuss where the terms appear in the curriculum and then discuss
Computational Thinking and Robotics Read More »