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Making & Science with Google

April 10, 2017Kelly Tenkely4 Comments52594 views

What it is: Making & Science is an initiative by Google aimed at showing students that anyone can be a maker or a scientist. Using the featured Science Journal app (Android and Chromebook only), students can measure light, sound, and more. They can also use the app to record observations, organize data, and add observational notes. Making & Science has partnered with Exploratorium for some fantastic activities that will have students exploring the world as a makers and scientist in no time. Students will explore light, sound, motion, graphs, conductivity, and much more through activities powered by the Science Journal app.

How to integrate Making & Science with Google in your classroom: The Science Journal app makes any Android phone or Chromebook computer into a scientific tool that students can use to collect data on light, sound, and motion. The activities included encourage students to explore the world as scientists and makers. The activities are simple enough for any classroom, and lead the students through understanding how the world around them works. They are a great kick-off to more in-depth studies of light, sound, and motion and teach students how to use the sensors on their phone and computer to collect data. Most activities take 15-30 minutes, so would be the perfect length for groups of students to visit as a center if you have a few devices for students to use. I love the way each activity thoroughly introduces a concept, and equips students with the tools and understanding for further experimentation and investigation. The activities included are wonderful, but after students have a basic understanding, encourage them to come up with their own investigations of light, sound, and motion.

Students could use the Exploritorium Activities as guides for creating their own investigations and activities to share with the class.

Don’t miss out on the Making and Science YouTube channel, and recommended podcasts. They are AWESOME!

Tips: While the activities reference the Science Journal app for data collection, if you have access to other types of devices you can still use these activities! Just download a light, sound, and motion sensor app and your students can complete any of the activities on the Maker & Science site.

Adobe Spark: Easily create and share videos, images, and newsletters

January 2, 2017Kelly Tenkely2 Comments6550 views

What it is: Adobe Spark is a collection of fantastic (free!) creative tools available online or as an app download.

Create social graphics that are stunning and easy to share (you know the kind: flyers, memes, posters, ads). The example above took under 2min to create and share! 🙂
Make beautiful web stories for event recaps, newsletters, photo journals, portfolios, etc.
Produce and share impressive videos for storytelling, projects, or to share to social media.

If you (or your students) are feeling a lack of creativity, there is even a bank of inspiration that will get you started! This is particularly helpful for your students who struggle with a place to start but are brilliant with a little nudge. Whether you begin with inspiration or not, you’ll be feeling an extra burst of creativity in no time.

How to integrate Adobe Spark in the classroom: The collection of tools in Adobe Spark are perfect for students and teachers alike. Students can use these tools to create book reviews, to document science experiments, for storytelling, to explain their inquiry process, as an eportfolio, to illustrate math concepts, and so much more! These tools will help your students take their learning and present it in a way that is both visually powerful, and easy to share.

Teachers, you can use Adobe Spark to create a weekly newsletter (SO easy to share home with parents!), create photo journals of class events or field trips, to create writing and thinking prompts to share with students, quotes, presentations, and announcements. The photo journal would be a great way to give families a glimpse into your classroom, if you’re like me, your phone is FULL of pictures at the end of each week! If you have a class social media channel on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or YouTube- Adobe Spark is about to take it to the next level of awesomeness!

I love the way that Adobe Spark has made digital storytelling that much easier to create and share. This is a site that you’ll want to bookmark for easy access, and put on all of your students devices if you have a one-to-one environment.

Tips: If you have laptops, the web version of Adobe Spark is best, otherwise download the app!

Tynker: Computer programming for kids

November 22, 2013November 16, 2013Kelly Tenkely9 Comments7959 views

What it is: Tynker is about the coolest way for kids to learn how to computer program- absolutely NO prior programming experience is needed! Tynker leads kids through design thinking through interactive courses where kids can learn how to program at their own pace.

Anyone can teach kids how to program (no really!) because with Tynker, you don’t need any prior knowledge or understanding. Tynker provides teachers with tools, curriculum and project ideas that will have your kids programming in no time! The Tynker curriculum pack starts with 6 lessons. Each one is appropriate for a 45 minute work period. Through the teacher dashboard, you can assign lessons to your students. A built-in tutor provides step-by-step instructions that guides students toward creating a working project. The teacher dashboard also helps you track student progress as they learn and master concepts. No data entry is required, students login and the teacher dashboard auto-magically populates.

When students have completed projects, they can publish them to the class showcase and be shared with family and friends through email, Google+, Twitter or Facebook.

Happily, Tynker works entirely in your web browser. There is nothing to install or setup. It is good to go right away! Equally happily, Tynker is FREE for your school! Woot!

How to integrate Tynker into your classroom: Not only will students learn the basics of programming with Tynker, they can use it to demonstrate their learning through their creations. Students can compose stories and comics that retell a story, historical event, recent field trip, fiction or non-fiction. Using the physics features, students can learn some basics about physics and cause the games they create to be more realistic. They can also demonstrate understanding of physics principles through their creations.

Students can use Tynker to create their own apps to show off their understanding of new math/science/social studies vocabulary, math or science concepts, retell stories, character sketches, games, animations and more. In addition to being able to create stories, games, and slideshow- students can also program original music and create computer art.

Don’t think you have time in your curriculum? Take a look around Tynker and think about natural ways you could use it to enhance your curriculum. Instead of asking your students to create a book report, have them program a retell using Tynker. This will take some additional background knowledge (they will need to go through a Tynker tutorial or two) BUT the outcome is well worth it. You will have asked your students to learn something new semi-independently, beefed up logical/mathematical thinking skills through programming, and invited students to think critically about what they read to tell the story to others through a program. Worth the additional 45 min! Students could demonstrate a math concept, show the steps in a science experiment, retell an event in history, and even compose their own music through program. When you start thinking like a maker as you play with Tynker, you will realize there are infinite opportunities for including Tynker in your curriculum. If you are still convinced that you can’t find the time in your heavily scheduled (sometimes scripted-sad) day, why not start a before or after school program, summer camp, lunch club, etc.?

At Anastasis, we have Crave classes every Wednesday. These classes are offered by our teachers every 5 weeks. Teachers choose an area of learning that they crave and create a class based on that (we have everything from programming, to cooking, to forensic science, hockey history, junk orchestra, iPad rock band, to chess and da Vinci art). Students get a list of classes at the beginning of a new block, and get to choose a class that they crave. The result is a wonderful mixed age (k-8) class of passions colliding. The kids LOVE Wednesdays for this awesome hour of our day. I’m excited to offer a Tynker class for our next block of classes (along with playing with our new Romo robot!), I think this is going to be a popular class!

Tips: If your school uses Google apps for education like we do, your students can log in with their Google information.

What do you think of Tynker? How do you plan to use it in your classroom?

DIY: a maker site for kids

March 8, 2013March 8, 2013Kelly Tenkely1 Comment4645 views

What it is: I LOVE everything about this site. It truly embodies everything I love about learning and technology. DIY is an online club for kids to earn maker skills. Kids (otherwise known as Makers) share their creations and work with a larger online community and collect patches for the skills they learn. Each skill has a set of challenges that help kids learn different techniques and create something fantastic. When a child completes a maker challenge, they can add photos and video to their online portfolio to show off their creation. DIY is a website where kids get a public portfolio, an app that they can use to upload videos and pictures of their projects, makers can choose to do challenges to earn “Skills” badges, and a parent dashboard where teachers or parents can follow along on all activity.

Maker identities are always secure, children are asked to choose an animal and a nickname to help protect their privacy. Parents get access to see what their kids are posting online.

I love that this site encourages creativity, reflective portfolios and using technology constructively. It is an outstanding balance of online and offline activity!

How to integrate DIY into the classroom: At Anastasis, we strive to encourage a maker community. We do have a 1:1 iPad environment. For many, this equates to a technology rich environment (it is) where everything is done or consumed on a device. I can think of nothing sadder than reducing learning to a device! We most often use our technology to capture and share our learning. DIY is a fantastic site that makes way for kids to be curious about the world around them, create something new and use technology to innovate.

DIY is a great place to help students discover the love and joy of being a learner and a creator. It fosters a classroom culture of innovation and sharing of learning and accomplishment. So many of the challenges incorporate learning that support standards and other learning that is “required” in the classroom. These challenges would be great to take on as individual makers, in small groups of makers, or to tackle as a whole class. Don’t think of DIY as an “extra” thing to add into your classroom routine. Instead, look through the challenges through the lens of how it can enhance the learning objectives in your classroom. Embrace the maker culture in your classroom and allow room for creativity and innovation. The inquiry model of learning lends itself beautifully toward this. DIY could be the catalyst to making the shift away from more traditional learning and into an inquiry based model.

Tips: Instead of assigning “traditional” homework (read: piles of worksheets), assign a challenge from the DIY site. Better yet, let students choose their own challenge to tackle and make time in the classroom for them to share their creations and accomplishments.

Leave a comment and tell us how you are using DIY in your classroom.